“Preserving a Heritage, Providing a Future”

Date:  March 21, 2010

Script:  Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14

Revd William F. Meier    ~   First United Methodist Church, Saint Cloud, Minnesota

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GATHERING STRENGTH

I looked over my shoulder

at the bedroom mirror and flexed my biceps.

I inspected my body and studied

the body of Charles atlas in a comic book.

One time, Old Man Brunner winked

and told me how to build muscles—

every day carry a calf for ten minutes

until it’s a cow and you’re a gorilla.

In the barn, I bent over the calf,

put my left arm under the neck,

my right arm behind the back legs,

and stood up, the calf across my chest.

I marched in giant steps around the pen.

I dreamed about the people who would come

from all over to watch.  The headlines

would say, Boy Carries Full-Grown Steer.

But through the dusty window, I looked

hard at the steers in the feedlot,

their blocky shoulders bumping for space

at the feedbunk.  I set the calf down.[1]

Setting the calf down.  It is a recognition that the logic at some point breaks down, reaches its limit.  Our own strength and efforts will only take us so far toward our goal—the rest is beyond.

I hear the same kind of realization in Paul’s teaching today.  “…Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss…” All the accomplishments and credentials he had built up didn’t count for much in terms of getting Paul where he wanted to go spiritually.  “Knowing Christ”—being “in Christ” is where it is at, Paul says. 

Setting the calf down means we can’t do it alone.  Relying on God’s grace instead of our own abilities to be good or follow the rules is a major step on the spiritual journey.  It is part of the surrender, the giving up we talk about, and what we have to give up is any reliance on our own goodness. 

At the end of my favorite Flannery O’Connell story called Revelation, a religious vision enfolds the main character who sees a grand parade of earth’s people walking up the stairway to heaven. At the end of this line she sees people like herself and she is stunned to see something in the look on their faces:

“And bringing up the end of the procession was a whole tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself...had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right... Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”

It is that kind of shedding—of even virtues, that Paul says that he is doing as he is “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead…”  He realizes that he cannot do it alone and so places all his chips on God’s love and grace in Christ. 

In Isaiah we find similar words:  “Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old” (Isaiah 43:18).  For a church in the midst of relocating those words have a harsh edge to them.  One of the phrases we are using for our “A Time to Build” campaign is “Preserving a Heritage, Providing a Future.”  What might the Word be for us in this today?  My sense is this:  We have a wonderful heritage here.  We don’t want to forget what lies behind us, or the former things.  We have a great past, great identity, great vision and ministry in the past that is cherished by us.  In many ways it is that past that is propelling us into the future, but the message is this—we cannot count on our past, alone, to ensure successful ministry in the future.  Like circumcision for Paul, it guarantees nothing.  We must be open to the new thing God is doing.  We are not going to forget the former things, but we are going to be open to new ways of being, new ways of ministry, new places and new people.  Our prayer is to perceive the new thing God is doing.

Isaiah was telling the Israelites that what God is about to do might not look like the exodus from Egypt (“former things”); being brought back from exile in Babylon is going to be a whole new kind of salvation & deliverance.  Paul is telling us to rely upon Christ, not our own efforts, energies, or histories. 

And so we are moving forward into this new thing God is doing.  We are doing it in the same spirit as Jesus; in trust and obedience.  We trust in God’s faithfulness & life giving power, and we seek to be obedient to God’s kingdom, even if that involves suffering.  Finally, we find ourselves “in Christ” when we understand our story as a part of God’s larger story of resurrection.  When we seek out where God continues to bring life and light into dark places of death and join in the resurrection God is bringing.

Paul found that his own strength didn’t amount to a hill of beans…the logic and reality broke down at some point.  What does count is love.  Love, like Mary’s as she knelt at Jesus’ feet, anointed them with the perfume and whipped them with her own hair—filling the whole house with the wonderful smell.  It was a crazy thing to do…outrageous, extravagant, beyond generous.  In this love poured out, all were blessed (except the stingy, selfish and narrow-minded Judas), and continue to be blessed.  When we let go of our own efforts, our own goodness…God’s love flows through us effortlessly, spreading to others, infusing the whole creation.