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Trinity Episcopal Church |
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Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
The Collect of the Day
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.(Romans 12:1-8)
Diverse Gifts Wanted
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector
One of the items we have in our house is a Victrola – a crank-wound record player invented by Thomas Edison and manufactured by the Victor Talking Machine Company. One day some children were over and asked what the Victrola was. I cranked it up, and put on a 1905 recording of the Marine Corps Band directed by John Philip Souza himself. I explained that the record was like an old-fashioned CD and the machine worked like a wind-up toy. But, the boy continued to look puzzled. Finally he asked, “But where does it plug in?”
To kids who are used to downloading their tunes onto their computers from Napster, a crank-powered record player is old technology indeed! New technology is in many ways better, bringing huge improvements in sound quality, speed, and convenience. But at the same time, new technology also brings new problems and worries.
One advancement I like a lot is the wireless network technology available for computers, like we have here at church. This technology lets computers connect to the internet and to our printer without a wires. It is clean and simple. But this advancement has spawned a new breed of computer hackers called “war drivers.”[1] War drivers are individuals who drive around cities and neighborhoods looking for wireless networks that have ranges extending outside the perimeter of buildings. War drivers do this in order to gain free internet access or illegal access to an organization’s data. War drivers – the legal ones at least – liken themselves to European explorers of the 17 th and 18 th centuries; they are contemporary cartographers who prepare and exchange maps. One such explorer said that “we are interested in how the technology works and in raising security awareness by showing how many unsecured access points are out there. We don’t gain access to the networks we find; we just log and move on.” [2]
War drivers are like people who collect books but do not read them. The have a lot of information at their finger tips but they do not use it. And that just might be a good metaphor for people both inside the church and outside the church who go at their spiritual lives like a war driver. Rather than landing in one place or another, they roam the streets with their antennas up, cruising from one spot to another as they experience one kind of spiritual option or another. They don’t necessarily spend enough time in any one place to experience true transformation of spirit or if they do spend time in one place they don’t become involved. Rather they logon for an hour or so and then promptly return to their lives unchanged by the experience.
In the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul encourages his readers to stop cruising around looking for something, and to locate instead in a very specific network neighborhood. He suggests that we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship.” In other words, Paul tells us to find a place and settle into it. Paul hopes that those of us who have found a spiritual center will allow ourselves to live into a structured relationship with God.
“Structured relationship?” you might ask. Yes, a structured relationship – like a body is structured with its many components. When Paul said that a community of God was like a Body, he relied upon the body image as it was understood in the ancient world. But Paul meant more than that. He meant that believers are not only like a body but that believers actually constitute the “Body of Christ” – that is, they are somehow transformed into a mega-human, something that has divine intention and purpose in bringing about real transformation in peoples lives.
Eugene Peterson, the author, poet, Presbyterian minister and writer of The Message, a contemporary version of the New Testament, provides a fresh view of today’s epistle that speaks to the importance and worth of the structured relationship with God.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”[3]
Spiritual living in a structured relationship in the Body of Christ is not about a search for “what’s in it for me.” In fact it is not about you and it’s not about me. It is about figuring out how to tap into the Spirit and what God is doing in the world. Spiritual living is learning to seek and discern and fulfill what is the will of God – what is “good and acceptable and perfect.” When we live spiritually, we move away from the desire to satisfy ourselves, and begin to experience real transformation as a community of believers. We move to a way of being that seeks to improve the entire community – the Body of Christ. Empowered by the Spirit, we begin to act with a sense of unity that provides coherence to our individual lives as well as the entire Body.
But the unity cannot and should not be reduced to mere uniformity. That is because the functioning of the larger Body requires the diversity present in the entire community. And the presence of that diversity precludes rigid uniformity. The key to success of the Body is for each member to discover and live out the gifts given to them by God with the encouragement and support of the other members of the Body. No matter what the gift, whether it is private or public, big or small, upfront or behind the scenes, every human being is gifted with something that is of benefit to the larger Body of Christ.
In our Old Testament lesson today, we heard the story of how Moses, a child of Hebrew slaves, came to live in Pharaoh’s royal household. It is a powerful story that shows how five women were moved by pity and compassion to overcome their own fears and defy the brutal tyranny of Pharaoh to save one Hebrew boy from certain death. These women were from different segments of society: the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, his mother, Jochebed, his sister, Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter. Diverse in their beliefs and social status, they nonetheless determined what was good and acceptable and perfect and then acted with the common godly purposes of mercy and justice. They fulfilled the providence of God and preserved Moses. It is not hard to imagine how differently the story would have ended had even one woman not acted with compassion.
In talks with clergy and leaders of other churches throughout our Diocese and beyond, I have heard several consistent themes. One that seems to be shared by many churches is that so much of the ministry and work of the church is done by a relatively small number of people. And when that happens, the diversity that the Body needs so very much to function becomes lost. In addition, the 10% who do 90% of the ministry quickly fatigue and the Body weakens as a result. Paul rightly emphasized the diversity of the members and their gifts because it reflects the diversity of God’s multifaceted, abundant love and grace, and it acknowledges that sharing responsibility is a healthy attitude for everyone.
All of this is Paul’s way, and my way, of saying that we need you – all of you – at Trinity. Not doing the same things, but doing lots of different things. Not just 20 or 30 of you doing, but all of you doing. Whether it is giving blood, purchasing school supplies, editing the Tidings, writing copy for the newspaper about our work, serving on the Altar Guild, pledging financial support, mentoring students at Mary Bethune Alternative School, visiting our homebound parishioners, serving at the altar, bringing goodies for coffee hour, volunteering to serve as a Sunday school teacher, singing in the choir, transporting fellow parishioners to doctor’s appointments, or changing light bulbs, every gift you bring supports and enriches the Body.
Rally Day will be in two weeks. We will have one service at 9:00 a.m. that day in order to give all of us an opportunity to attend the ministry fair in the Parish Hall and really look at the rich diversity of ministries we have. And you will be asked to prayerfully consider becoming an active and vital member of this Body. I hope you will respond with generosity, love, and compassion.
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Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.” Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
1 If the LORD had not been on our side, *
let Israel now say;
2 If the LORD had not been on our side, *
when enemies rose up against us;
3 Then would they have swallowed us up alive *
in their fierce anger toward us;
4 Then would the waters have overwhelmed us *
and the torrent gone over us;
5 Then would the raging waters *
have gone right over us.
6 Blessed be the LORD! *
he has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.
7 We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; *
the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the Name of the LORD, *
the maker of heaven and earth.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] “War Drivers.” Homiletics.17(4):62-66, 2005.
[2] Xni Jardin. “Wireless Hunters on the Prowl.” 2 July 2003; Accessed 18 August 2005 at http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,59460,00.html.
[3] Eugene Peterson. The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Publishing Group, 1993), 328.
The Mission of Trinity Episcopal Church is to be an open and diverse Christian family dedicated to serving God and all creation by fostering spiritual growth through worship, prayer, education, service, stewardship, and celebration. |
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Copyright © 2008, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved. 21 August 2008
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