St. George's Episcopal Church
Roseburg, Oregon
The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 16A
21 August 2005
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St. George's Episcopal Church |
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Exodus 1:8-22; 2:1-10
Psalm 124:1-8
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
The Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA
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)
Becoming “We-Driven”
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector
Once upon a time we invited our neighbors and their two small children over for dinner. One of the items we had in the dining room was a Victrola – a crank-wound record player invented by Thomas Edison and manufactured by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The two children asked what it was. As I explained what it was, I put on a 1905 recording of the Marine Corps Band directed by John Philip Souza himself. As we listened to the march, the boy asked me, “But where does it plug in?”
A few years later, I was cleaning out some stuff from the garage, and a few neighborhood kids were “helping me.” From the bottom of a dusty box I pulled out a rotary telephone. One of the kids looked at the old black phone in puzzlement. He had never seen a phone with a dial.
While advancements in telecommunications bring improvements in speed and connectivity, advancements usher in new problems and worries. One new advancement I have been so pleased about is the wireless network technology available for computers. This technology lets me connect to the internet with my lap top without a wire running from the computer to a telephone jack. It is clean and simple. But this advancement has spawned a new breed of computer hackers who engage in “war driving.”
“War driving” is a term that derives from the older term “war dialing” that emerged from the 1983 science fiction cult classic film War Games. In that movie, a high school computer game player used a computer program and modem to call thousands of telephone numbers each minute seeking companies that made computer games. This was a seemingly harmless activity, as long as he only played games (and if we ignore the fact that he stole the games!). But it became a deadly practice when he began playing a war game with a Pentagon computer that was in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
All over the country there are war drivers in cars and trucks – some with antennas sprouting out of them; if they are low tech, their antenna’s might be fashioned from a Pringles® can. Inside the car, they have a laptop computer, a wireless adapter, and some acquisition software to detect and exploit existing 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.
Now maybe you don’t have a wireless system in your house or business, and don’t worry about such things. But many stores and companies use wireless systems, and are vulnerable. At the first worldwide wardrive meeting – which was a gathering of security professionals and wireless enthusiasts in 2002 – 10,000 wireless networks were identified. By 2004, almost 230,000 were charted (2004 was the last year for the worldwide wardrive).[1] Virtually all of silicon valley in California has been mapped.
And mapping isn’t the only thing happening. There are some major spooks out there collecting corporate information. In May 2005, executives of some Israeli companies were arrested or are under investigation for corporate espionage. These spooks have been found all over the world including the middle east, Japan, China, Europe, and the United States.[2]
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.[3] 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.”[4]
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 treat 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 spot to experience true transformation of spirit.
In the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul encourages his readers to stop driving 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 “park it.” Paul tells those who are driving around seeking a spiritual home, 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 widely used 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.”[5]
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 logon to God and what God is doing in the world. In computer language it is putting ourselves under one network administrator. And rather than seeking to fulfill our own needs, we seek to discern and fulfill what is the will of God – what is “good and acceptable and perfect.” When we do this we move away from the desire to satisfy ourselves, and begin to experience real transformation. We move away from a war driven philosophy toward a “we-driven” point of view that seeks to improve the entire network – the family of God.[6] Driven by God’s grace, it is a unity that provides coherence to our life.
But the unity cannot and should not be reduced to sheer uniformity. That is because the functioning of the larger network requires the diversity of the entire community. And the diversity rules out any concept of rigid uniformity. The key to success is for each member to discover and live out the gifts given to them by God. 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.
Not too long ago, a representative from the Diocesan Council came to St. George’s and asked three questions of the vestry and our members who attended the meeting: (1) What excites you about St. George’s? (2) What concerns you about St. George’s? and (3) What do you see God calling St. George’s to do? I have asked other churches these same questions as well. And one concern that seems to be shared by many churches is that so much of the ministry and work of the parish 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; the Body weakens as its work becomes stale. In addition, the 10% who do 90% of the ministry quickly fatigue. Paul rightly emphasizes 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 all.
All of this is Paul’s way, and my way, of saying that we need you – all of you – at St. George’s. Not doing the same things, but doing lots of different things. Not just 10 or 15 of you doing, but all of you doing. Whether it is giving blood, purchasing school supplies, writing copy for the newspaper about our work, pledging financial support, teaching English as a second language, visiting our homebound parishioners, serving at the altar, bringing cookies for coffee hour, doing yoga, volunteering to serve as a Sunday school teacher, singing in the choir, transporting fellow parishioners to doctor’s appointments, changing light bulbs, or stocking shelves at FISH, every gift you can bring supports and enriches the Body.
In a few weeks we will have our ministry fair as part of “Get on Board” Sunday. At that time you will have an opportunity to 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 it had not been the LORD who was on our side
– let Israel now say –
2 if it had not been the LORD who was on our side,
when our enemies attacked us,
3 then they would have swallowed us up alive,
when their anger was kindled against us;
4 then the flood would have swept us away,
the torrent would have gone over us;
5 then over us would have gone
the raging waters.
6 Blessed be the LORD,
who has not given us
as prey to their teeth.
7 We have escaped like a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the name of the LORD,
who made 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.
Now 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] Information from http://www.worldwidewardrive.org/.
[2] Guy Kewney. “Spyware, not wireless war-drivers, remains the real security threat.” Posted 31 May 2005; Accessed 18 August at http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/2271).net/index.cfm/article/2271.
[3] 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.
[4] Xni Jardin. Op cit.
[5] Eugene Peterson. The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Publishing Group, 1993), 328.
[6] “War Drivers.” Homiletics.17(4):62-66, 2005.
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Copyright © 2005, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
18 August 2005
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