Stepping Out on Faith
A Sermon by Matt Fitzgerald
St. Pauls United Church of Christ
Chicago, Illinois
January 13, 2013
We don’t know anything about the thirty-odd years that Jesus
lived before his ministry began. Some scholars argue that our
modern understanding of “carpenter” is incorrect, because it
calls a union card to mind, a skill set, stability. But in the
ancient world the word meant something like “day-laborer.” And
so they propose that Jesus spent the vast majority of his years
. . . drifting.
Imagine such a man standing on the banks of the River Jordan. He
is in his early 30’s. He has a sense that he is called to
something, but it is an inarticulate suspicion, rather than a
crystal-clear vision. If anything, he knows that his life could
be more important, more intense, more meaningful. And so he is
imbued with a sense of longing, a yearning, holy restlessness.
He's tried to satisfy this itch on his own, but it continues.
He has spent the day sitting on the Jordan’s sandy shore,
watching John baptize dozens of people. He watches the baptisms
the way you might watch a worship service on your television. At
a distance. Curiously. Skepticly. Can John prove the truth of
the God he's calling people toward? Can John prove that God
loves you just the way you are the moment that you are brave
enough to admit it? It seems safer to try harder. Try harder to
earn the love you're longing for. He sits with many others who
feel the same way.
Meanwhile, the trusting ones wade straight into the water. The
earnest ones wade into the water. The desperate ones wade into
the water. Repentant for mistakes made. Hungry for new life.
Jesus sees a parade of them moving toward the baptizer.
And something calls him forward. He kicks the sandals off his
feet, and wades into the river. The current pulls him forward,
until suddenly he’s standing before John in the middle of the
Jordan. Without a word he leans into the baptizer’s arms. But
not just John's arms, God's arms. John takes his weight, holds
him, and then quickly drops him in the water. Jesus’ body breaks
the surface – he disappears into the muddy flow – and then
resurfaces. Immediately the truth of the universe becomes clear.
Immediately the true nature of God's attitude toward his
aimlessness grows clear: “You are my Son the Beloved; with you I
am well pleased.”
Meanwhile, his friends on the river bank remain unconvinced that
a God who accepts you, broken, selfish, willful, sinner, and
then turns you around with the power of His love is actually
real. It is safer to believe that the best way to serve God is
to follow His rules, not drop to your knees and confess that
following His rules is impossible.
I like this portrait of an aimless Jesus brave enough to realize
brave enough to believe that when he steps out on nothing but
faith God will gladly accept his aimlessness and everything
else. That’s the Jesus I believe in when I hear this story. The
Jesus who decided to step out on faith and put all his trust in
God.
The bone dry crowd on the riverbank refuses to make that kind of
decision. They live in a world where get what you deserve which
means the only way to get God’s love is to earn it.
Is God love or is God the harshest judge? Is God’s love
available only inside the small box of our good behavior? Or is
grace wild and free? Does God hate our mistakes? Or is She
waiting for us to turn to her and acknowledge our essential
brokenness? Was Martin Luther right when he told his best friend
that trying to live a purely moral life was like trying to “win
an argument with the devil” and he should therefore give up,
drink beer, sing songs and just let God love him?
Those skeptics on the river bank were not stupid. They knew that
this is what John the Baptist was asking them. And wouldn't
answer. Or maybe they couldn't answer.
Can we? Can you?
It feels good to rely upon the rules. To dot your“i's” and cross
your “t's” and reap the benefits that come to those who know
which hoops to jump through. Indeed many of us have spent good
portions of our lives doing exactly what we should. And it
works. Indeed, it works so well that we can forget that the
carefully constructed identity created by the combined force of
outside pressure and our inner critic is not the truth of who we
truly are. Perhaps that's the greatest gift Jesus gave us with
his baptism - he modeled the kind of courage it takes to admit
your own essential weakness, to accept that you can't make it on
your own. To place all your trust in a God whose love transcends
the rules and is therefore impossible to prove.
When my sisters and I were small children and began to misbehave
in public my mother always said the same thing in the same sharp
whisper: “Don't show them what you're really like!” Words to
live by. The problem is that if we refuse to wrestle with what
we're really like, we will never be able to receive God's love.
God's grace is amazing. It is good. But before it can heal us,
we must recognize that we are wounded. Indeed, sometimes it is
grace that wounds us. Which is to say that before She can
console my true and truly broken self, God must first compel me
to wade into the water. Must leave me with no choice. Must toss
me in the river.
I spent my first years as a minister right there on the river
bank. Refusing to step out on faith. Afraid of making mistakes.
And you know what? I don't think I made any. I hope you're as
impressed by that as I was. Dimly convinced that God had a
standard of perfection I must meet I convinced myself that I was
meeting it.
A young couple who worshiped at my congregation came to me for
help with their wedding. Her family wanted a Catholic wedding.
They agreed to this, but wanted me to play a role in the
ceremony, to read the scripture and say a prayer. We lived in
Chicago then. As did the couple. But her parents' church was in
a small town in Southwest Michigan, right across the border,
about a 90 minute drive outside the city.
On the day of the wedding Kelli and I got off to a late start
and pulled into the church's parking lot about five minutes
before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. I pulled my robe on,
threw my stole on and we quickly stepped through a side-door
that looked like it probably led to the priest's office. It
didn't. It opened straight onto the chancel. I was three steps
in the door when I realized this. And then I remembered
something worse. When you cross the state line from Indiana into
Michigan you move from the central time zone into the eastern.
We weren't 5 minutes early, we were 55 minutes late.
We didn't miss the whole wedding. It would have been much better
if we had. Instead we missed everything but the “you may kiss
the bride” which was just about to happen when I came bursting
through the door. Have you ever caught a dirty look from a bride
in her wedding gown? Have you ever ruined a wedding? Not a good
feeling! Indeed it was devastating. The bride, the groom, 5
bridesmaids, the best man, the organist and the soloist and
certainly the priest, they all glared at me. It seemed that even
the Bible in the lectern and the cross upon the altar were
frowning. “How could you!” The entire weight of the church in
full disapproval. And you call yourself a minister!
My carefully constructed false self was devastated. I was not
some perfect pastor. I was the same mistake prone man that I'd
been all my life. I slunk straight backwards, stumbling over
Kelli and we slunk back toward our car.
We didn't exchange a word. It was all mortified silence.
Interrupted by “Excuse me. Reverend? Mrs. Reverend? Don't worry.
It's going to be okay.” We turned and saw someone's grandmother
(probably not the bride's grandmother) standing in the parking
lot. She said it again. “Don't worry. You're going to be all
right. They got married. Everything is wonderful. Everything is
going to be all right.”
When I looked at her all I saw was kindness in her eyes. Right
at the precise moment when Kelli and I needed nothing more.
The great poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins says that Christ plays
in ten-thousand places. “For Christ plays in ten thousand
places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the
Father through the features of men's faces.” And the features of
an elderly woman's face. Someone I'll never see again, but
needed to see right then. For there was God. Not in the frowning
bible or the scowling cross upon that altar. Not in the church,
but in the parking lot. Not in the disapproval, as appropriate
as it was, but in the mercy as undeserved as it sure was.
And all the while the folks on the river bank mutter at the
baptist “who are you to proclaim that such freely given Grace is
nothing less than the truth of God?” Prove it. And John says, I
won't. I can't. You can't prove grace. You can’t prove that God
adjusts to our vagaries and our failures. You either accept that
God is love, or you don't. I will either receive God's mercy or
I won't. If there is some standard of truth we want to hold
Grace to in order to believe it we ought to worship that
standard of truth and not the love of God. Christ's mercy cannot
be verified. All you can do is receive it and thank God for it,
let it begin to heal the broken truth of who are right now - and
let it proclaim the person that God sees each time he looks at
you. Beloved son. Beloved daughter. Beloved One. Amen.