We Are More Than We Can Imagine

I Thessalonians:
I Thessalonians is the earliest written book in the New Testament. The focus of the book is to share with these early believers that, as Christians, they are to live by faith, a deep trust in God, love and hope. The reason for this teaching is found in a verse just before the one we read which says, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through Jesus Christ.” Salvation means that we find healing, wholeness and harmony in our lives even now. So the work of the church, the reason for community is to support one another in this hope. How do we do this? Let us see.

Read 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Ephesians:
The prefix “en” means to wrap another in.” The call to encourage each other is a call to join our courage to another’s so that we can strengthen each other in the journey to salvation, to wholeness even now. The founder of our denomination John Wesley said, “That God loves us so much that God will never leave us as God finds us.” That God seeks to help us grow and become new creations in Christ Jesus. Hope was mentioned as part of our faith journey in the verse from Thessalonians we just read. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, states that hope is something that is not yet seen. In this verse, we will see that this hope and possibility may even be beyond what we can conceive in our own minds.

Read Ephesians 3:20-21

SERMON:
There is a wonderful little quote that describes the work of the church. It starts out, “The church exists to comfort the afflicted.” I believe it is what we do best. When we know someone is hurting through a death, or facing surgery, or in pain as a loved one is facing some kind of crisis, we immediately place them on our prayer chain and hold them in love in the presence of God. We seek ways to be supportive through our Stephen Ministries, or simply in our friendships. The church at times realizes the deepest sense of our compassion as we seek to comfort those we love who have been afflicted in some way.

But, as many of you know, the second part of that quote goes, “The church exists to afflict the comfortable.” This one becomes a little harder and more problematic. Who, when they are feeling good, wants to be made to feel uncomfortable? And what’s the point anyway? Why would we want to do this? Let me share a couple of personal stories that have helped me understand why this part of our challenge is so important.

The first is when I went to seminary. Let me just say that seminary was one of the highlights of my life. I would gladly do it all over again, and again, and again. But after my first year of seminary I could not have said that to you. When I entered seminary, I obviously had a faith and I felt a good start in my relationship with God. When I started classes, everything I had believed about God was challenged in these classes. Hard questions. Probing questions. Thoughtful but discomforting questions. By the end of that first year I was depressed. I was not sure what I could or should believe anymore in my Christian faith. Shortly after my first year ended I was attending a workshop and I ran into my former District Superintendent. Of course he immediately asked me how my first year in school had gone. I took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eyes and lied. I said, “It was wonderful. I learned so much.” He looked me straight back in my eyes and then this knowing smile came to his lips and he said, “Really. That’s interesting. After my first year in seminary I was an agnostic.” Then he simply reached out and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Hang in there George, before your done they will put everything back together for you and it will be a richer, stronger and more in depth understanding of your faith.” He was right. Seminary did bring it back together for me, gave me a great foundation to embark upon what has proved to be a lifelong process of learning, growing and becoming closer to my God. And it was and is a stronger faith for I learned there are answers to hard questions. I also learned that when I did not want to ask the hard questions it was not God I was protecting but my own limited understandings of God. I also learned that God has answers to these hard questions and does not need to be protected by me.

While I was in seminary I also served a student pastorate. It was great because I was able to use immediately what I learned in seminary in my sermons and classes, sharing the scholarship I was being introduced to in my studies. One day I was sitting in my office at the church and there was a knock at the door. I opened the door to find a woman who was one of my parishioners. I could tell by the look on her face this was not going to be a happy meeting. She said, “I came to tell you that I have to leave the church.” Of course I said, “May I ask why?” “Sure,” she replied. This is what through me. “I know all that you say in your sermons is true, but I do not want to believe it.” Now I was really puzzled. She continued, “Every day I pray that God will watch over my family and keep them safe. I know things happen like accidents and loved ones get hurt, but I want to believe that my family is safe, so I do not want to be challenged by what is really happening around me.” I was not sure how to respond to this, so I supported her right to do what she needed to do for herself and her family. But I also remember thinking, and maybe praying, “God help her if some crisis or tragedy happens, for how will she ever find any solace in her beliefs. If a hiccup in life happens, as we all know they do, how will she be able to come to God in good faith. This God was supposed to protect her and her family. This God let her down. Did she do something wrong that God chose to act differently? You can begin to see some of the scenarios. Her God and her faith was created out of her fears and not from what she knew to be the reality of her world. In her need to keep her simple faith, she had put up blocks to learning a deeper understanding of her faith that would indeed have addressed her fears in a much more realistic relationship with God.

We learn, we study, we grow, because it helps us to move beyond simple answers to a complex life. It helps us come to a deeper understanding of our faith and a better understanding of God. Even if we do not need those answers immediately, we will need them someday. It is not the right time to discuss the topic of Rabbi Kushner’s book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, in the midst of a bad thing happening to a good person. It is too late then. I promised myself that I would not be afraid to afflict the comfortable, for one day we will be the afflicted and need to find comfort. We will need the deeper, richer understandings of God that are available to us if we take the time to learn and grow in them.

But there is another reason I have promised myself that afflicting the comfortable is important. Our faith and trust in God is there to do so much more than just make sense of and comfort us in our times of need. To afflict the comfortable, to afflict each other is an expression of love as we seek to help each other become the beautifully created people God has always dreamed we can be. In the book study we are doing presently there was a quote that caused me to pause. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” (Repeat).

Let me share one more story from the seminary time of my life that shows the challenge we all face even when we seek to do our best to share our faith in our deepest hopes of helping others see their power beyond measure. One of the theology courses I took was Feminist Theology. It was part of a larger class called Liberation Theology, where we looked at how we could help those who were stifled by the culture to become free enough to seek their own deep sense of capableness. I was so excited about what I heard that I came back to my church and gave them the whole load. On Mother’s Day I preached a sermon entitled, “The Equality Of The Personhood Of Women.” I was magnificent, at least so I thought. I liberated every woman in that church. There was no doubt that they had been freed to find their deeper selves and break from their traditional roles, and see their power beyond measure. After the sermon was over, there were three women in the congregation that had just finished a Bible Study that had promoted the more traditional understanding of women. Unfortunately for me, two of the three were sitting on the outside aisle of the church, so that as soon as the last hymn was sung they were able to sprint back and start giving me the what for about my sermon. They were furious. Fortunately for me the third woman had been sitting in the middle of the pew and was blocked in by her family although I could see she was ready to jump a pew to get back to me. As the rest of the congregation was leaving they just gave me and these two women a wide berth and waved at me and smiled as they left. Finally the woman who was stuck in the center of the pew broke free and she came running back at me, al five foot of her. She was so mad at me she began to jump up in the air so she could swat me on the shoulder. All three were letting me have it. Now I am sure I over stated my case, and that I did not share what I wanted to with a lot of tact. Fortunately, people in student pastorates have a lot of grace and soon things we were fine between me and these women again. But I found it wonderful that when I was to be reappointed to another church, these women were the saddest to see me leave. One had gone back to school, another had branched out to a new career. I want to believe that some of their new adventures were the result of helping them see themselves as the capable, special, wonderfully created people they are. I also want to say that I do not approve of slapping the preacher as a way of expressing your displeasure over what he or she says.

To afflict each other’s comfort levels, to challenge each other’s beliefs about our capableness and God’s calling and guiding in our lives is our deepest expressions of love toward each other and trust in what God has in store for those who love him. We must and we will always be there to comfort each other when we are afflicted, for it is a deep expression of our love for each other. But I hope we can see that by afflicting each other when we are comfortable is just as loving and important in our communal life together. For we are more capable than we can conceive even at this moment. I cannot imagine that we, who are to love each other, would not encourage each other to become the best we can be, the hope that God created us all to become. Growth can be and often is uncomfortable. But if we trust in God, we will be amazed at what we can become, and how we may serve, and the difference we can make in this God’s world.

Sermon delived by Rev. George Cushman on June 1, 2008.