Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

6/25/06 - Proper 7B

The Rev. Scott A. Benhase

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation." 2 Corinthians 5:18

We all have things we are sheepish about, particularly those things that we know are sort of silly and ridiculous, but we like them anyway. They don't make sense, they aren't rational, but we like them almost in spite of ourselves. Some call them "guilty pleasures." I, like all of you, have them. So, I have a confession to make about my guilty pleasure - I like Superman - the comic books, the TV shows, and the movies - all of them. The latest movie is coming out this in two days and I'll probably go see it with my dark glasses trying to be incognito. Well, I feel better now that I've got that off my chest.

I think the reason I like Superman so much is that no matter what kind of trouble Lois Lane or Jimmy Olson ever got into, good, old Superman could get them out. Whether they're in a car heading for a cliff or in a plane crashing to the ground, Superman could always rescue them. No matter what fix they were in, Superman rescued them "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Look up in the air!" Never mind.

Anyway, I used to see Jesus as just like Superman, especially when I'd read parts of the Gospel like our lesson today. Jesus, I thought, was just like Superman. Only it wasn't Lois and Jimmy in trouble, it was rather Peter and the rest of the disciples. Jesus steps up and says, "Peace! Be still," and the storm calms down and everyone once again is safe. So, I thought Jesus was just like Superman and that having faith in him meant believing Jesus would fix anything with his super-human abilities. "Look, up in the air, it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's Jesus "fighting the never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way." That's what I used to believe anyway.

I don't believe that it any longer. You see, our lesson from Job this morning paints another picture of God's power in the world. In this story, God tells Job about his power in creation. Here God is described not as Superman, but as a mother who gave birth to the sea and who wrapped the clouds in diapers. This picture of God's power reminds me of that wonderful old Gospel tune, "Jesus, Savior, Pilot me," where the line goes - "as a mother stills her child thou canst hush the ocean wild." I think Jesus stills the storm like a mother calms her crying child. I know from experience that you can't calm a crying child by playing Superman. I've tried it, believe me. I've raised my voice, thrown out my chest, and said, "Hush, be quiet!" It just doesn't work. Superman would be as helpless as any of us with a crying child. He might force the child into silence by his superior strength, but a mother who calms a crying child does so using a different kind of power - the power of love.

When a mother hears her child cry, she can't ignore it. She goes to the child and holds it securely. It's not superhuman strength that calms the child, rather it's the loving arms of the mother who holds the child regardless of whether he's thrashing about or clinging tightly. It's not the mother's superior strength, but rather her closeness that gives her the power to calm her child. So I don't read today's Gospel and hear Jesus shout out "Peace! Be still!" doing the Superman thing with his chest out to the storm. On the contrary, since Jesus is Lord of the earth, he's speaking to his creation, calming it as a mother calms a child. I hear him saying, "Peace, be still," just as if he were singing a lullaby to the storm.

Now, I'm not saying that Jesus can't do the Superman thing. Of course, he could. But that's not the nature of God. The strength and power of God isn't shown so much in the whirlwind, but rather as Elijah experienced it as a still, small voice. And for Saul of Tarsus, soon to become the Apostle Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus, the voice of Jesus comes less as a mafia-like threat as it comes as a maternal pleading, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

Although God could dazzle us with displays of power and side-shows of strength, God's nature as revealed in Jesus is to win us over with the power of love. It's the cross of Christ where we meet the nature of God most powerfully. And it's the reconciliation that was accomplished on that cross where we experience most viscerally the love of God. It's not Superman-like power we see in the cross of Christ. Rather it's the loving, reconciling power expressed when Jesus says: "Father, forgive them, for they know what they do."

Jesus reconciles us to God on the cross and he does so in spite of us and without our consent. The cross is God's preemptive strike against the sin of the world. The cross is the only event in human history that can rightly be labeled "shock and awe." As St Paul writes in today's epistle: "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting [our] trespasses against [us]" (2 Corinthians 5:19a). And God has given you and me the task of taking this message of reconciliation" to the world.

But how should we be ministers of reconciliation to a world that does not yet know that God was in Christ reconciling the world back to God? I believe the answer lies in how you and I received that gift from God. Our ministry of reconciliation to others must mirror God's ministry of reconciliation to us. We must take the message of reconciliation to others in lullabies, not shouts. We must hold others in the arms of love the way a mother holds a child. We must share the Good News with others the way a mother pleads with her child and not in the way that Superman dispatches Lex Luthor. The Superman way is not the way of the cross. We need less high-testosterone evangelism and more maternal evangelism.

Now, I'm not suggesting some namby-pamby proclamation of God's message of reconciliation. If some think that then it's only because they associate maternal love with weakness and indecisiveness. Those are merely culturally-driven stereotypes. I don't know about your mother, but there was nothing weak or indecisive about my momma. She was and is a force to be reckoned with.

My sisters and brothers, no one will come to Jesus; no one will accept God's message of reconciliation, if we do so by high-powered force. And, even if we did so, we would not be true to the mind of Christ. Likewise, if we seek to dazzle people with stories of God's power and side-shows of strength, then we're missing the main point of God's story told in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And the main point, once again, is this: "that, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting [our] trespasses against [us], and entrusting the message of reconciliation to [us]."

We must not forget that. God's love for us is stronger than anything we could ever imagine. But we also must remember that it's conveyed to us in a way that's the exact opposite from how the world defines strength and power. It's conveyed to us by a God who loves us as a mother loves her child.

We live in a world that is literally dying for reconciliation. Our families and our community need it. The bitter partisanship we see across our nation should tell us that our nation needs it. The clearest and most powerful definition in the Bible of what it means to be Christian is simply this: It's to be ministers of reconciliation.  To be such a minister, we will need to love with motherly tenacity. I believe that's our calling. All we need now is the will to love others with such a love. Will you?

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