September 27, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Alive

Alice M. Trowbridge
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 150
James 5:13–16
Mark 9:33–41, 49–50

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Mark 9:35 (NRSV)

The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

Irenaeus of Lyons

As parents of two little girls, my husband and I find our reading list is dominated in these years by their selections, selections like E. B. White’s Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web and C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Some nights I can’t tell who is more excited to read the next chapter: our children or us. Even though we know these stories back and forth from our own childhood memories, there is always something new to appreciate in them, and of course discovering the story again through our children’s eyes is one of life’s most precious gifts.

On occasion in these years, we are able to squeeze in a grown-up book, a book of our own choosing, and one that I just finished was Barbara Brown Taylor’s newest, An Altar in the World, which has been referred to several times from this pulpit over the last couple of months. It’s about her encounter with God beyond the walls of the church, in simple ordinary acts of daily life. Barbara Brown Taylor helps us to discover the sacred in the small things we see and do and reminds us that even the duties and hands-on labors of life are actually moments of devotion, reminds us of the values God consistently favors and the values we consistently tend to undervalue or overlook.

There’s a section in her book in which she speaks about being fully alive. She links this to “the peculiar Christian insistence that God is revealed in humankind—not just in human form but also in human being”; that in Jesus, “God is made known to us, and in Jesus, we get a look at what it means to be both fully human, and fully divine. . . . His full humanity was on full display as he taught, healed, fed, and freed people, just as it was when he honored the poor, defied the powerful, and turned the institutional tables, along with his own cheek” (An Altar in the World, p. 118).

It’s hard for us to fully appreciate this aspect of Jesus—that he is both fully human and fully divine and that he came not to be served but to serve. This is what eludes the disciples time and again in Mark’s Gospel. They just cannot fathom that this one who came to lead them must also die on the cross. It’s as if their minds cannot get around the truth of Jesus’ full humanity and full divinity. the disciples know well Jesus’ activities throughout this Gospel thus far, for he is the one who cast out demons and cleansed the leper, he healed the paralytic and preached the gospel across the land. He stilled the storm and healed the demoniac and the hemorrhaging woman and restored life to Jairus’s little girl, and he fed the 5,000 and walked on water and brought sight to the blind man in Bethsaida.

I wonder if Jesus had said to the twelve disciples early on, to Peter and Andrew there by the Syrian Sea at the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel, “Come, drop your nets, and follow me, follow me as I heal and preach and teach and pray, and then follow me as I suffer, bear a cross, and lose my life. I will ask you to do the same—to bear your cross, and to give of yourself, to lose your life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel. So come, follow me”—I wonder if they ever would have stepped foot outside of the hull of their fishing boat if they had realized how hard it would be to follow where Jesus would lead them, in word and deed.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s advice is not to think about it too much—Jesus’ full divinity and full humanity and the road the Messiah must walk. Instead she says, concentrate on being alive!

Practice being fully human yourself. Jesus clearly thought this was the best plan. When people wanted him to tell them what God’s realm was like, he told them stories about their own lives. When people wanted him to tell them God’s truth about something, he asked them what they thought. With all kinds of opportunities to tell people what to think, he told them what to do instead and showed them how to live: Wash feet. Give your stuff away. Share your food. Honor all God’s children. Pray for those who are against you. Be the first to say, “I’m sorry.” Being fully human in these ways became a full-time job for his followers. It became a vocation in itself, no matter what they happened to do for a living. (An Altar in the World, pp. 118–119)

It demands their all.

As I’m sure you have noticed, Fourth Church is in its annual fall kickoff mode these days. This Sunday marks the third consecutive Sunday of festivities and events to help the congregation reconnect with one another and with our life of faith, with programs for enrichment and fellowship and learning. The Fall Academy Classes begin this morning, and today we launch the 2010 Annual Appeal for Fourth Presbyterian Church and Chicago Lights. Throughout the church you have seen stations with our theme, “Called to Be a Church Alive,” inviting us to get involved in all aspects of life together, in worship, education, discipleship, mission, and service. Today is also, as you will find when you enter Anderson Hall after this service, the Volunteer Fair, where more than thirty organizations from both within the church and mission partnerships beyond these walls are present for you to explore, giving you opportunity to roll up your sleeves, to jump into action, and to lend your gifts to others.

God measures greatness not by success but by service. Our scripture today comes from a section in Mark’s Gospel about discipleship. And the segments we read today tell us several things about the life of faith. First, we learn that God’s relationship to the world is not defined by power or dominance or prestige; it is defined by love. And that love is made known to us in the person of Jesus, who came to show us how to live and how to be alive, how to be fully human, what to devote our time and energy to, what to value most and what to care about. Second, we see in Jesus’ words today that God wants our participation, our plunging into the work and the labor of the world. As Peter Gomes puts it,

The God who acts in Jesus Christ does so in such a way as to stir us up to action wherever we can and with whatever we have, so that the love of God can be translated into human form and human effort. If God can invest God’s love in the form of a human being, live this life and die on the cross for our sake, dare we invest less in humanity than God? Dare we invest less in ourselves and in our world than God? Ought we not to take the sign of God’s love for us in Christ as a sign that we are lovable and the world is worth loving? If that is true, there can be no limit to what we can attempt as God’s representatives in the world. (Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, p. 179)

God has made God’s work our opportunity. And in today’s scripture, we cannot miss what God’s work is all about: welcoming the stranger, the least, the last, the lost, the person whom society may ignore but who is of great value in God’s eyes; it is about broadening our definition of who God’s people are, lest we think of ourselves more highly than we should. It is about enacting deeds of compassion and generosity, literally offering someone a cup of water, serving a meal to someone who is hungry, looking someone in the eye, honoring their dignity irrespective of their station in life. The disciples were silent when Jesus came upon them arguing. I think they were ashamed for their self-centered squabbling, for they knew instantly that in the presence of Jesus, they were in the presence of true greatness.

One of the main reasons we so often fail to succeed in God’s notion of service and humility and being at peace with one another in community is that we guard ourselves. We put on layers and facades. We are so often identified with our roles in society, noted author of Jungian psychology Irene Claremont de Castillejo writes, “that when we meet other people, we find they are oftentimes not really there. . . . I cannot meet a doctor, a civil servant, a hospital nurse, or a shop keeper unless these throw off their disguise and look me in the eye. And similarly, to be met, I must be myself” (Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology, p. 19). When we engage others at this level, a level deeper than the ways life in the world has conditioned us to see, we begin to see one another for the precious, unique creature that God made each one of us to be.

John Bell and Graham Maule of the Iona Community in Scotland collaborated on a hymn they call “A Touching Place,” and the poetic words that begin the hymn are as follows: “Christ’s is the world in which we move, Christ’s are the folk we’re summoned to love, Christ’s is the voice which calls us to care. And Christ is the one who meets us there. . . . To the lost Christ shows his face; to the unloved he gives his embrace; to those who cry in pain or disgrace, Christ makes, with his friends, a touching place” (Love from Below: Wild Goose Songs, Volume 3, p. 67).

So whether it’s reaching out to befriend a homebound member of the congregation or tutoring a youngster once a week or serving a meal to someone who is hungry, give of yourself. Whether it’s advocating for the voiceless and the powerless or standing with people as they transition from their homeless life and get back on their feet or praying with a perfect stranger, give of yourself. Whether its sewing quilts for children living with cancer or AIDS or building houses for people with no home or reading to the blind, give of yourself. God’s power has only one true form in the events of the world, and that form is in service, serving others through love. Just as we saw modeled in how Jesus lived his life, tirelessly thinking beyond himself, so we are charged today to do the same: “Whoever wants to be first, must be last of all and servant of all.” This is what brings about our own deepest joy.

This is what keeping our saltiness means. This is what defines us as people of faith—how we spend our time, where we invest our energies, whom we choose to notice, to learn from, and to serve. In his book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, William Law says,

We cannot heal all the sick or relieve all the poor; we cannot comfort all in distress nor be a parent to all the parentless. We cannot deliver the many from their misfortunes or teach them to find comfort in God. But if there is love and tenderness in our hearts that delights in these good works and ignites in us a passion to do all that we can, if our love has no bounds but continually wishes and prays for the relief and happiness of all who are in distress, who find themselves in the fires of life, we can know that we are doing all that we can with all that we have been given to follow in Jesus’ everlasting ways. (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, pp. 291–292)

Henry Nouwen, in Bread for the Journey, writes, “Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human acts. This will gain us our lives” (p. 138).

In her book titled Illuminated Life, Joan Chittister writes,

The attention we give to another exposes our real sense of the breadth of the universe and stretches it beyond ourselves. And what we find in our service to others, what we see in others is a kind of commitment it takes to go on believing when our own belief falters. We look to others for the kind of vision that expands our own beyond the daily. We depend on others for the kind of wisdom that exceeds mere answers. We hold on to others to find the kind of love that makes life rich with meaning, certain proof of the everlasting love of God for whom there is no word. (Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light, pp. 32–34)

And this, after all, is the value of being a part of a community where our shared memories and our common hopes bind us together as one people.

Gomes again:

We become in ourselves, in our own persons, in our daily work acts of God, evidence and living proof that the God who acted in the lives of the prophets, the martyrs, and the saints still acts in the likes and in the lives of us. We are charged to be about God’s activity in the world, for it is through us, our patience, our labor, and our love in a world easily content without God, that God will be known and served. (Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, p. 179)

So go into Anderson Hall following this service, stop by the computer stations around the church today, jump in, get involved, and give to the world. Give not because you feel obligated, but give of yourself because you honor the gifts God has blessed you uniquely with and because you recognize that in giving you are most fully human, most fully alive. All thanks be to God. Amen.