A Fourth Church Sermon by John W. Vest

April 29, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Who’s Your Yoda?

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

John 10:22–30
Acts 9:36–43

“My sheep hear my voice.
I know them,
and they follow me.”

John 10:27 (NRSV)

’Cause I’ve been watching you, Dad, ain’t that cool?
I wanna be your buckaroo, I wanna be like you
And eat all my food and grow as tall as you are.
Then I’ll be as strong as you and Superman.
We’ll be just alike, hey, won’t we, Dad?
When I can do everything you do,
’Cause I’ve been watching you.

“Watching You”
Performed by Rodney Atkins

If you are anything like me, from time to time you get nostalgic about the past, nostalgic about your childhood. And every now and then, there’s a movie or a television show or a song that triggers a particular memory or just puts you in a generally nostalgic mood. Your mind drifts away to another time and place. A smile quietly stretches across your face.

There’s a song on the radio now that does just that for me. It’s called “Watching You” and is performed by Rodney Atkins. Perhaps you’ve heard it. For the sake of all of us, I won’t try to sing it for you this morning. Instead, I put one of its choruses on the cover of today’s bulletin, probably the first time that the lyrics to a country music song have graced the worship bulletin at Fourth Presbyterian Church. (Depending on how things go this morning, it could be the last!)

It’s a wonderful, sweet song about a father who realizes that his four-year-old son is following his every move, soaking up both virtues and vices as he tries to be just like his dad. The song starts with a four-letter word the young boy learns from his father and lets slip one day and concludes with him praying to God just like he’s seen his dad do. The choruses perfectly capture the innocence and sincerity of a child trying to live up to the image of his first hero in the only way he knows how.

I remember those days myself. I remember wanting to be just like my father, watching his every move, studying his mannerisms and reactions. As I grew older, my aspirations naturally deepened as I considered his values and morals, his work ethic and his devotion to our family. Truth be told, to this day I still try to be the kind of man I think my dad is. I still turn to him for advice, from little things like what cut of meat to buy for my barbeque to bigger things like how to plan for the future of my own family. My dad is still very much my hero.

I hope that you can identify with what I’m saying. I hope that everyone has somebody—a mother or a father, an older sister or brother, an aunt or uncle, a teacher, a coach, a youth leader, a pastor, an older colleague, a friend—somebody that you’ve looked up to. Somebody that has given you a standard to aspire to. Somebody that has shaped who you are and who you hope to be.

We usually call these people mentors. And like I said, I hope that everyone has at least one person like this in their life, because mentors are important. We all need them.

We take this seriously when it comes to youth ministry here at Fourth Church. Through our various programs, we try to ensure that in addition to their families, the young people of this congregation will have faithful adults in their lives to serve as mentors and role models. It is our hope that by populating these kids’ lives with such adults, we can provide for their spiritual needs and help them grow into faithful adults themselves. It’s a daunting task, but an important one.

Mentors are important. At the last assembly of the Presbytery of Chicago (the governing body that oversees the ministries of the Presbyterian congregations in the Chicago area), there was a speaker from the Christian Industrial League, who took some time to discuss the work of her organization and the Presbytery’s support of it. At one point she mentioned one of her personal mentors, someone who had taught her a lot about service and had inspired her to do the kind of work that she does. In a completely offhanded, unassuming way, she referred to this gentlemen as her Yoda.

Now I don’t think she meant anything much by it, but this comment struck me as peculiar. Yoda, of course, is the Jedi master and instructor of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the epic myth we know as Star Wars. It’s a perfectly good analogy or metaphor for this type of person. Yet it sounded funny to my ears. I turned to a friend who was sitting with me that day, and with a mischievous smirk on my face I asked her, “So, who’s your Yoda?” As the words left my mouth, I knew I was on to something.

“Who’s your Yoda?” What a great question! Who’s your mentor? Who’s your role model? Who’s your Yoda? I’m thinking about having T-shirts made—and if anyone else tries to beat me to it, I’ve got lots of witnesses this morning that you heard it from me first. Now I just need to convince George Lucas . . .

Who’s your Yoda? At first I thought that this question might be generationally restrictive, that folks older than myself might not get much out of it. But my fears were put to rest on Friday afternoon when John Boyle, one of our parish associates, stopped by my office and proclaimed, completely unprompted, “The Lord is my Yoda. He keeps me from wanting what I can’t have.”

Indeed, John saw where I am going with this and perhaps you do, too. In our first scripture lesson this morning, Jesus says this: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Those of us who call ourselves Christians follow Christ. “Mentor” and “role model” are surely not sufficient to describe what Jesus is for us, and suggesting that Jesus is our Yoda may push the envelope for some of us, but I think you get the picture. As Christians, we study what Jesus does and we seek to replicate his life in our own lives.

But what does this really mean? What does it really mean to follow Christ?

It’s an especially interesting question because Jesus did some pretty crazy stuff that we can’t be expected to do ourselves. Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, calmed storms, healed the sick with only a touch. Jesus raised people from the dead. What does it mean to read stories like these one moment and then in the next hear Jesus tell us to follow him? “You’ve got to be kidding!” is my response.

But if we have ears to hear, I think we’ll discover that Jesus isn’t kidding.

Our second scripture lesson this morning comes to us from the book of Acts. Acts of the Apostles is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke. Like Paul Harvey, it tells the rest of the story—what takes place after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. It is the story of the early church, the story of Peter and Paul and many others who were moved by the Spirit to continue what Jesus had begun in their midst: the creation of a new and unique community of faith. These first church leaders, many of whom were some of Jesus’ earliest disciples, attempted to follow their leader’s teachings and model their lives after his.

The story of Peter raising a woman from the dead presents us with an interesting opportunity to reflect on what it means to follow Christ, because in this story, Peter himself does one of those crazy things that seem impossible to replicate. Just like his rabbi Jesus, Peter raised a woman from the dead. You don’t see that every day.

So where does that leave us? If Peter can do it, does that mean that we can, too?

Now there are some Christians today who claim that miracles like these do in fact continue to happen on a regular basis. For example, Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians would argue that the Spirit empowers the faithful today in the same ways that the Spirit empowered the Christians in the book of Acts. People speak in strange tongues and others interpret. Ecstatic experiences of the Spirit are common. God still heals through prayer and faith.

Other Christians would argue that such miraculous phenomena were isolated incidents not meant to extend beyond the apostolic period. Miracles like this were signs of God’s special blessing on those who bridged the gap between Jesus and us, the architects of the early church. Such outpourings of divine power simply validated this nascent Christian movement and gradually disappeared as the church established roots.

Still other Christians would question whether or not such supernatural events ever happened at all. There’s not much in our experience today to lend credence to these ancient stories. And if God could heal and raise people from the dead back then, why doesn’t it happen now? What kind of God teases us with such blessings and then takes them away, leaving us to fend for ourselves against death, disease, and nature?

These are important questions, but for this morning, at least, I want us to set them aside. Questions like these arise from a literal reading of this text. But as we Presbyterians know, literal reading is not the only way to approach the Bible.

Biblical scholar and theologian Marcus Borg has written numerous books in which he outlines and puts into practice what he calls a historical-metaphorical approach to reading the Bible.1 By this Borg means that we need to consider the historical context and conditions from which these ancient texts arose as well as the context and conditions in which we read them today. He also suggests that metaphor is a helpful lens through which to approach these writings.

Our text from Acts this morning lends itself quite well to this approach. You see, on a literary level, this story of Peter raising a woman from the dead relies heavily on a similar story about Jesus from the gospels. In fact, the parallels are so close that we can reasonably conclude that one relies on the other for inspiration.

These parallels are best seen in the version of the story from the Gospel of Mark. (2) In Mark, Jesus is called to come heal the daughter of a man named Jairus. But while Jesus is still on his way, the young girl dies. Yet Jesus does not despair and continues to the house.

In a similar way in Acts, Peter is called to the house of a disciple named Tabitha, who became ill and died.

When Jesus arrives at Jairus’s house, he finds people “weeping and wailing loudly.”

When Peter arrives at Tabitha’s house, he finds the widows of the community weeping and mourning Tabitha’s death.

Before turning his attention to the deceased girl, Jesus puts all of the people in Jairus’s house outside.

Before turning his attention to the deceased woman, Peter puts all of the people in Tabitha’s house outside.

Jesus consoles the girl’s parents and then takes the child by her hand and says in his native language of Aramaic, “talitha cumi!”—“little girl, get up!”

Peter prays and then turns to the body and says in his native language of Aramaic, “Tabitha cumi!”—“Tabitha, get up!”

There’s but one letter difference between the word Jesus uses to address Jairus’s dead daughter and the name of the woman Peter raises from the dead. It’s not a coincidence. These stories are related. One is modeled on the other. One copies the other.

Now the point of showing you this is not to neutralize the truth of either story. Quite to the contrary, my point is to show you that even in the literary constructs of these stories there is a truth that transcends the literal events described. In a metaphorical way and even at the literary level, we are shown that our calling is to follow Jesus. For us today, I don’t think that raising someone from the dead is quite the point. I think that the point is following Jesus as closely as we can.

Just like Jesus, we are to love God with our entire beings.

Just like Jesus, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Just like Jesus, we are to love our enemies.

Just like Jesus, we are to proclaim the arrival of the kingdom of God and to live it out in our own lives.

Friends, this is a high calling, perhaps the highest calling there is. But I don’t think it’s just for people like Peter. And I don’t think it’s just for certain people in the church today. I think that we are all called to model Christ’s life for each other and for the world. It’s not just people with white collars and black robes or people we call elders and deacons. It can’t be. It has to be all of us, because individually we are sure to fail.

On numerous occasions Peter himself failed, as did pretty much all of his companions. But together they made a powerful witness to God’s love for this world that continues to this day. Through them, the power of the risen Christ lived on way past Easter morning.

Friends, Christ lives on today as well, right here in our midst. And if we allow it, Christ can live on in our very lives. Christ can empower us to do things we never thought possible—to love like we never thought we could love, to care like we never thought we could care, to forgive like we never thought we could forgive, to sacrifice like we never thought we could sacrifice. We may never literally raise someone from the dead, but, friends, there is plenty of death in this world, plenty of death in our own lives that needs new life. And God is calling us to play a part in this incredible story of redemption.

When we follow Christ, others see Christ in us. They may wonder, “Sho’s your Yoda?” And maybe, just maybe, they’ll want to follow as well.

Amen.

Notes
1. For Borg’s basic premise, see Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

2. Mark 5:21–43. For more on this literary analysis, see Paul W. Walaskay, Acts (Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 100–102.