PENTECOST 16 September 16 2007 the God Who Doesn T Give Up

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PENTECOST 16 (C) September 16 2007

The God Who Doesn’t Give Up

Grant Bullen

Honesty, Spin and Consequence

The coach of the Adelaide Football Club (my team!) was quoted in the paper last Sunday, after a disappointing end to the season, saying that he was ‘confident that the club was on the way up!’ Well I guess it was necessary for him to say something up-beat in public… but I sure hope in private there’s a whole lot more painfully honest soul-searching going on than that! When your team has the oldest playing list in the AFL and was the second lowest scoring side in the competition, pretending to be ‘on the way up’ is not going to get us anywhere. Harsh reality needs to be faced and some brave decisions need to be made… But this of course doesn’t just apply to football clubs. Rigorous honesty is essential for any organisation, any business… any church… and indeed any person… in order to be healthy.

My own personality seems to be genetically hard-wired to reach for the bottom line. I hate skating on the surface – I always want to get to the bottom of things and look at stark reality… no matter how painful it is. Parishioners often tell me that ‘I’m too hard on myself’… and occasionally…that I’mtoo hard on them! Perhaps this is a personality flaw, a sign of damage deep within… but I maintain there’s an important spiritual principle involved in self-honesty… I don’t think the Spirit can do much with us… until we’re prepared to know the truth about ourselves.

Meanwhile… in our media-driven culture…we’re drowned in ‘spin’ – that is, the art of making things sound and appear better than they really are. Of course there’s the obfuscation of politicians, but many people play the ‘spin’ game… The 21st century Church is as bad as anyone. Always wanting to put a positive gloss on things... as if we’re afraid of what the truth might reveal.

And it’s not just organisations who pretend… it’s people… it’s us!

Why do we do that? Why go to such elaborate efforts to present ourselves as different people from who and what we really are? I guess it’s fear… Fear of the pain that true honesty always brings… Fear of rejection – ‘No one would like me if they knew who I really was.’… And perhaps there’s a deep unconscious fear – a primal fear fed by centuries of manipulative dogma – that saysif God really knew who I am… what I think… what I feel… He’d push me away too… or punish me even.

On the basis of (almost) 30 years experience as a priest, I can tell you… very few people ever tell God who they really are. So let’s ask the question… if we were entirely honest with God, what would happen? If God knew the sort of person I am, what would His response be?

The Woman and the Lost Coin (Luke 15.1-10)

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells two parables. Both are making the same point about the nature of God, so we can save time and concentrate mainly on the second one… The Lost Coin. (8-10) (Remember the simple principles of understanding the parables – they are only ever making one point and they’re always funny!)

It’s a simple story. There’s a woman with 10 silver coins. We’re told they’re silver to alert us to the fact that these aren’t valuable coins… think 5 cent piece… they’re not worth much. But when she loses one she goes berserk! She turns the whole house upside down until she finds it… and when she does, she calls the neighbourhood over for a party, screaming in exultation, ‘I’ve found my 5 cent piece… I’ve found my 5 cent piece! Rejoice with me!’ Jesus turns to the guffawing crowd with a grin and says, ‘Well that’s what you’d do wouldn’t you?’ And they roar back, ‘Of course we wouldn’t! She’s nuts… she’s obsessed with that one bloody coin. Why go to all that stress and effort looking for it? It would have turned up somewhere, someday… and so what if it didn’t… it’s only 5 cents after all. She’s crazy – all that fuss over one coin!’ Jesus says, ‘No of course you wouldn’t… but God does! ... That’s the way God is with you. He’s crazy about you and he’s never ever ever going to let you go.’

Unconsciously we’re afraid of God pushing us away. But the truth is… God’s crazy about us. He’s never ever going to let us go.’

Us…Not ‘Them’

Fabulous parable… but cast your memory back… I’m sure that as a child I was always taught this applied to other people. Those terrible people who didn’t come to church! They were the lost ones that God was searching for.

But rejoice – this is about you and me. We are the lost coins that God is crazy over! God is searching for us, no matter how lost we may have got ourselves… and He’s never ever going to give in. Whatever it takes… for as long as it takes.

Do you get it? I’m happy to be honest about my lost-ness and you can join in with your life if you want… God has been so incredibly generous to me… and ever since childhood I’ve heard God’s callto live abundantly in Love and Grace. But I’ve been so afraid… so will-full… so determined to have it my way. So busy with everything else… so consumed with stuff that doesn’t matter. I get lost so easily – sometimes for hours… sometimes for years. And yet God never ever gives up on me. The invitation to life is always there. His grace searching me out, opening new doors of possibility. Always there… Never giving up on me… No matter what…

Can you see why I’m addicted to self-honesty? If you don’t know that you’re ‘lost’ you’re never going to wake up to being found?[i]

The Truth Will Set Us Free

Our liturgical focus today is “Celebrating Faithfulness In Stewardship”. A few people have challenged me for naming it thus… ‘But Grant… are we faithful in stewardship? Do we have anything to celebrate?’

Well I’m no heart-reader so I don’t know, but as your priest I work on the trust that we’re all doing the bestwe think we can… in all areas of church life. I choose not to sit in judgement but rather to accept that for good or ill, this is the reality of who we are. It’s true, that I have times when I’m disappointed in us… as there are times when I’m disappointed in myself.

But I personally am willing to celebrate our faithfulness in stewardship, for regardless of how lost (or not) we are, this is the honest truth of who we are. And no matter how we look to others or to ourselves, we are a ‘lost’ church that God is crazy over. We are a church that God is not going to give up on.

So as your priest I thank you from my heart for all you give to this church… in time, energy, love and money. Thank you! But can I ask you one thing? … In a couple of weeks, when the results are tallied and we see what sort of a budget this enables us to craft for next year, let’s use this as a gift of honesty for our church. Let’s say together… So this is the sort of church we’re prepared to be at this time of our life.[ii] Because a church that can be honest about where it is, even if it is hopelessly lost, has the openness to being found. The Spirit can do unexpected things with an honest church… and very little with a church living in ‘spin’.

Conclusion

You often say in affirmation of my preaching… ‘Grant… we really appreciate your honesty.’[iii] Thank you… but it’s one of those personality traits that bring problems as well as gift. Hard enough to have me as a Vicar… can you imagine what I’m like to live with? Can you imagine day after day of this questing for the bottom line! Awful! How has Kathryn put up with it for all these years? Simple… because she’s crazy about me and refuses to give up on me!

(Good you’re laughing now… so I can be Jesus-like and slip in the subversive punch-line.)

That’s how God is with you! So why not take the risk of being honest about who and where you really are.

That’s how God is with us as church! What have we got to lose by being rigorously honest about where and who we are… about what sort of church we are currently prepared to be.

[i]This is why Jesus says the ‘tax collectors and prostitutes’ are closer to the Kingdom than respectable people – because desperate people are more likely to be honest about being lost.

[ii] I think churches like ours are often so schooled to think about the sort of church they should be that they find it very hard to accept (and therefore be honest about) the sort of church they are.

[iii]I hope everyone reads these endnotes because there is an important personal disclaimer to make. I am committed to rigorous self-honesty, but of course there is all manner of stuff in my life that either I cannot see or am too scared to see… and thus there is ‘dark’ stuff within that I am definitely NOT honest about. And in preaching, there are limits to my ‘honesty’ – I certainly don’t reveal all, but only what I think is safe and helpful. And there are some things that I don’t even tell Kathryn. There are some things that are only spoken to God.