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The Er Factor
A sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland on January 21, 2007
The football playoffs continue today. We’re down to the final four and we all know what that means: the Super Bowl is a couple weeks off and the commercials are getting really good. There have been some years where the advertisements were the most entertaining part of the games.
Advertisements are about what I call the ‘er’ factor. The er of our being thinner, fitter, richer, cleaner, safer, smarter, cuter...or that something that is better, faster, sleeker, fancier.
The er factor is about making all our dreams come true, at least for a while. We want, for the most part, to have a perfect life and a perfect world, to live in the perfect house with the perfect car in the garage. We want to feel perfect in our skin, to know that we have done the best job we can do and have been the best person we can be.
And we also know, “The world is not as God would have it be. The kingdoms of this world are not yet the kingdom of God.”
Those words are Verna Dozier’s words found toward the end of her book, The Dream of God.
We’ve been talking about The Dream of God these past few weeks in our Christian Formation time.
The dream of God: “a friendly world of friendly folk under a friendly sky.” The dream of God where people are free and people are fed. The dream of God: a day when all people are counted and all people count.
Verna also goes on to say that we may have lost the capacity to dream, to dream the big dreams about our human condition and about human kind.
We’re called to have big ideas about the kingdom of God. I don’t know that we’ve lost the capacity to dream, we dance around the big dream’s edges all the time. That’s why the ‘er’ factor continues to sell us on a lot of stuff we may or may not need.
But the big dreaming that Verna says we are made to do is a bit daunting. I’m not sure that I’m always ready. I would much rather stay in my small corner of the church and do what I can without risking too much. I mostly want the ‘er’ factor to make my dreams come true.
To tell you the truth, I think it’s the ‘er’ factor that has highjacked our church. People want assurances that if they believe, and believe in the right ways, then they will be safer and surer and smarter and cleaner and fitter. And to tell you the truth, that’s not what this Christian faith and life is about.
This Christian life is all about risk. We’re the kingdom of God people. We’re people with kingdom of God ideas. We’re asked to take our already perfect selves, with all our imperfections, and apply our gifts to the needs of our world. If our gifts are financial, we’re to apply ourselves to mediating the financial problems of the world, or our little corner of it – to making sure that there is economic justice for all people. If our gifts are artistic, then we’re to make our world more beautiful. If our gifts are those of diplomats and peacemakers, then we’re to be about the work of reconciliation. And so on. The Christian life is all about opening doors and yet shutting out oppression. It is about building up the people of God and tearing down the ways in which we tear apart each other.
This life is about our lives, our lives together as one people of all races and places and kinds and stripes and likes and loves.
This life is about us and this life is about a dream. We are about the dream of God.
That’s what Jesus was telling us when he took that scroll and read from it. He said “today this reading has been fulfilled”. Today, not tomorrow. Today is the day.
Verna may be right and we’ve lost or avoided the dream, but who can blame us. We live in the real world. We want to follow Jesus but we also value our life and our way of life. To be quite honest, following Jesus just doesn’t seem prudent.
And what does it mean to follow Jesus and the big kingdom idea of God?
Verna would tell us to listen to the story that is told in scripture, to listen to it for our learning.
The Bible is a big picture story, a story or better yet a collection of stories, poems, and historical renderings about two faith communities, the Hebrews and the Christians.
Scripture is full of fact and fiction. It is at once historically accurate and wildly fanciful about what really happened and to whom and when.
When we read the story of the reading of the scroll from Nehemiah we are hearing about a people who have been forced from their homeland and now are trying to find their way back to a faith that some have nearly forgotten.
When we hear Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth we are overhearing a letter to a real congregation. A congregation that is at odds. A congregation that is uncertain. To help them through the troubled time, Paul picks a metaphor, the metaphor of the body.
The bible uses picture, ideas to help us grasp to meaning of our being God’s people and to help us understand the very nature of God. We are always approaching a mystery and we shouldn’t be surprised that a full understanding of that mystery eludes us. But we try as best we can because with its stories and poems and metaphors the bible is a theological record, and the purpose of theology is to make meaning.
Think about the story Jesus told about the extravagant love and hospitality of God in the prodigal son. The story about the prodigal son is about the son who told his father to ‘drop dead’, left home, and ran around with all the wrong people. He was having a great time until he realized he had squandered his fortune and no longer had two shekels to rub together. One day while he was making a meal out of what was left in the dumpster, he decided it was time to go home, and home he went with his tail between his legs. We would expect his father to say, at the very least, “I told you so.” But the father threw his arms around the son and threw him a party.
Listen to the story – there is no rejection in the kingdom of God, there is only unlimited love and forgiveness and return.
Over and over again we are reminded through Jesus of God’s love of our poor and downtrodden spirits, and of those who are simply poor and downtrodden. Over and over again when we think there is no hope hope emerges. We are taken on a walk with two disciples after Jesus is dead and there before them is a risen Christ. This is the kingdom of big ideas, of hope restored, of rescue and return, of life out of death.
Verna says that the bible stories are there for our learning. We’re learning about big ideas and kingdom comes.
We’re learning as Jesus unrolls the scroll and rolls it up again that everything we want, everything we hope for, everything we wait has been fulfilled.
But how? How can we believe that? Aren’t we still waiting? Aren’t we still struggling with oppression and violence, of poverty and disease, of lives and futures lost because of war and lust for power?
But listen again, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Today. Mother Teresa kept on.
Something has happened that is true -- today.
Some big idea, some kingdom idea is taking place, today.
It’s happened before. Something about the future is at hand, something about the way the future should be is taking place and the present leans into it.
We talked about such a happening last week when we read the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. “I have a dream”, he said. He saw the big picture, the kingdom at hand and he saw blacks and white hands joined.
When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued during the Civil War, the slaves did not immediately go free. But Lincoln declared that whether or not these men and women were out of bondage on that day or in the days to come, they were nevertheless free men and women.
Lincoln had a kingdom vision, he had a kingdom dream and dreams are what our lives as the followers of Jesus are made of.
Verna says that scripture is for our learning and I think she would say that what we learn there is about the kingdom dream of God – a dream that is about what is true today and what will one day be apparent to all.
We may not be able to fix the ills of this world but we know the ills that prick our consciousness and make us uncomfortable or ashamed or sad – and when that happens, you and I have touched the dream, today is the day.
Because we notice and know what shouldn’t be ---today is the day.
Because we notice and know what should be---- today is the day.
Verna says that scripture is there for our learning. It’s not a book to tell us what to do and not do, but a collection of stories that speak to our hearts and leads us into the dream of God.
When we are open to learning then we will see what Jesus has been telling us all along –that today is the day.
For we are the ones who bear the responsibility for the dream. We have it in us to be the healers and reconcilers and the prophets and the dreamers of what has always been. We have it in us to be the kingdom at hand. Today scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing. Today is the day.
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