Sermons

“Invest in Futures: Learning What Works”

Matthew 17:1-9; I Corinthians 3:5-15 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – February 23, 2020

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might be both humble and bold in following your guidance in building up your church.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Peter really wanted to be a builder.  Paul said you can only build on the foundation that is there, and that foundation is Jesus Christ.  So what do you do if you want to be a builder, and the foundation ignores all your attempts to share blueprints? If you know anything about Peter, you know that he just pressed on undaunted, continuing in his impulsive, enthusiastic ways.  Perhaps you’ve heard of “leading from behind”?  It’s a phrase that aims to describe how wise, skilled leaders empower their employees to take initiative and use their gifts and such, all while keeping an eye on the general direction from the back.  Leading from behind is just as hard as it sounds.  Our friend Peter, on the other hand, was all about following from the front, which is the exact opposite in almost every way.  This is an approach that feels a little too familiar, doesn’t it?

We are on our second Sunday of our annual week to celebrate Week of Compassion, our denominational disaster relief and humanitarian development fund.  And I hope you will give a generous over-and-above gift as part of this celebration, because the work Week of Compassion does, all over the world, including here in California is amazing and life-changing.  But as we celebrate them this year, I mostly want to focus on what we can learn from Week of Compassion, about how to flourish as a ministry and truly be God’s hands and feet in the world.  Last week we talked about what it means to be true partners with others.  The humility and trust required for true partnership are not to be taken for granted.  We saw how spiritual maturity and effective ministry go hand in hand.  Without partners – dedicated Christians and people of other faiths – all around the world, Week of Compassion couldn’t do what it does.  We could not claim, from here in La Mesa, California, to be ministering to girls in the hill country of Thailand who are at risk for exploitation.  Because Week of Compassion continually seeks out partners in the places we serve and listens to them – to their problems, their challenges, their hopes and their ideas – we are able to add in our resources and gifts in appropriate ways that help them flourish.

How did Week of Compassion get so good at developing and maintaining these partnerships?  Humility and trust are a huge part of it.  Being willing to notice and reflect when what we’ve done didn’t really lead where we’d hoped.  Constant prayer to keep the work grounded in the grace of God, the sacrificial love of Jesus, and the creative power of the Holy Spirit.  It is God who gives the growth, says Paul, and we only flourish when we remember that.  But that’s the spiritual side.  What does the practical side look like?  How do we learn what works?  I think it’s what we might call “trial and error.”  I hope you weren’t wishing for something more magical than that.  Because this is what we’ve got: the opportunity to try things and see if they’re effective or not, and if they’re not, the chance to make adjustments and try again.

Have you ever noticed that the name of this method for learning things isn’t “trial and success”? It’s called “trial and error” because the point is that we can learn from what goes wrong.  If that’s how we learn, why are we so afraid of failure?  There are times when we’d do well to emulate Peter a little more.  The biblical witness doesn’t emphasize his transfiguration faux pas, but that’s really because it doesn’t have to.  It’s dramatic enough with just the bare bones.  He’s obviously really excited about this vision he and James and John were given, of Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah.  But then his enthusiastic response is completely ignored by both Jesus and the Voice from the Cloud, because it was so appallingly inappropriate you just want to pretend it never happened.  I can’t decide if this is more or less embarrassing than the time Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” to him.  This is how Peter rolls; it just keeps happening.  But you know, I can’t think of a single instance in any of the gospels where Peter is described as daunted or chastened or embarrassed.  Not once.  He just keeps getting it wrong and continuing on in spite of himself, until he’s suddenly the “rock” upon which Jesus is building his church.  You have to admire the tenacity, despite the lack of teachable spirit.

Do you suppose we would have a different perspective on this if there were a “Gospel of Peter”?  If he’d written a memoir, would we hear an internal dialogue of Peter chastising himself for getting ahead of Jesus and making a fool of himself yet again?  It had to be a little bit of a struggle.  Paul hints at this sort of pain in the last verses we read from First Corinthians.  We are all builders, building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, he says.  Different builders will choose different materials, and all of what is built will be judged.  The work that survives the testing will result in reward for those builders.  But what about the ones who fail?  “If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire,” writes Paul.  Have you ever had a failure like that?  Have you ever feared a failure like that?  Have you ever been saved by a failure like that?

What would it mean for a congregation to go through a failure where it felt like everything we’d worked for was burned to the ground?  Do you think we’d survive?  Would we have eyes clear enough through our tears to look down and see that we’re still standing on the foundation of Jesus Christ?  Would we have hearts humble enough to notice if we’d shifted the focus of our building plans so far in the direction of our own desires that we would need to walk back over there to re-build on the solid foundation that is Jesus Christ?  Trial-and-error can be terrifying, but because we are church and not just a random collection of human beings, we have both guard rails and a safety net that aren’t always present in normal process of trial-and-error.

We are blessed, as a congregation, to have resources that give us a practical safety net, so that we can keep trying various things out to see which models best fit the future God is shaping for us.  But more important, because we are church, we have the spiritual guard rails of the gospel, which help us discern and articulate our identity, our purpose, and our guiding values.  We don’t have to give energy to things that do not match the priorities of the gospel, because we know in advance that such things will not be blessed by God.  We don’t have to waste time with shallow gimmicks or trying to be something we’re not, because we know that’s not what Jesus calls us to do.  The trick here is to emulate Peter’s tenacity, but not his tendency to follow from in front.

Whatever it is we decide to try – and I hope we will try a lot of things, which means we’ll fail at a good portion of them – whatever it is we try, we must keep Jesus front and center.  That is how we stay centered over our spiritual safety net, the promises of God.  That is how we ensure that the foundation we’re building on is truly Jesus Christ and not our own fallible, if temporarily impressive record of achievement.  How do we learn what works?  We get out there and try things, but not without spending equal amounts of time in worship, Bible study, prayer, and intentional conversation about where God is leading us.

The stakes for the future of this congregation may not feel as high as responding to an earthquake in Haiti or a famine in Somalia, but they are.  As we celebrate and support the work of Week of Compassion this year, let us also look to them for inspiration.  They have become such a beloved, stalwart ministry of the Christian Church because they have stayed grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ, approaching their work with humility, trust, gratitude, and courage.  I know that we can do the same.  Alleluia and Amen!