Reflecting on the Journey
Proclaiming and administering charity creates a humble church!
This week, I wasn’t quite sure how to start out the sermon. I knew what I wanted to say. I knew the picture I wanted you to see. But I just didn’t know where to begin. You see, a week-and-a-half ago, I put together a midweek devotion for All Saints Sunday. For better – or worse, the image that came to mind was a scene from The Greatest Showman. A musical that came out a couple years ago. The story’s loosely based on the life of P.T. Barnum. And it’s about that greatest show he put together. A show made up of the flotsam and jetsam of the world. He brings them all together so that for a coin, the world could come and stare at them all. Tom Thumb. The Bearded Lady. The Dogface Boy. The Tattooed Man. The Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng. Barnum gathered them up and put them on display.
But there was one scene … When this group of misfits, when this group of outcasts, when this group of freaks burst into a formal affair – tuxes, gowns – singing and dancing. “This Is Me!”
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say/No one’ll love you as you are
Amid the shock and awe of the beautiful people, they claimed their place in the world.
Look out ’cause here I come/And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen/I make no apologies, this is me
As I watched, I saw the church! I saw the church! Theologically speaking, we the church, we the chosen, we the people of god, are the outsiders, the pariahs.
As church, especially here in America, we have a pretty inflated image of ourselves. When we speak, we expect people to listen. We’re privileged. We’re advantaged. And for a while, we, too, were polite society. We were the beautiful people. But truth be told, there’s a hardness, a chill, about that kind of church. A privileged church, an advantaged church, more often than not, is, also, an arrogant one. Drawing lines. Setting limits. Determining whose life matters. And whose life doesn’t. For them, there’s only the good, the better, the best. Self-righteous. Self-confident. The kind of church that has it all. That needs no one. That lacks nothing. It’s the city on a hill. The light of the world. It’s the saints standing in the midst of the congregation, lifting hands, raising faces to heaven, thanking god there’s not like everyone else. Not like the freaks or the misfits or the outcasts.
Meanwhile, those freaks and misfits and outcasts stand far off, heads bend, hands folded, wishing they were someone else. Anyone else. Embarrassed. Ashamed. At whom they are. At what they are. That kind of church boasts and brags not in themselves, but boasts and brags in god! In god’s grace! In god’s mercy! The ship of fools, that sideshow, is a gentle church. It doesn’t rant and rave. It’s doesn’t point fingers or shake fists. It doesn’t threaten. It doesn’t damn. It simply, humbly, does what Christ does. It loves. It loves. It turns the other. It goes the extra. It does unto. It gets up from the table. It rolls up its sleeves. And it kneels before the people around it and washes their feet. One. By one. By one. In the end, it opens its eyes, raises its head, and it looks the world in the eyes. It claims its place. The place god’s love has given it. No embarrassment. No shame.
We are bursting through the barricades/And reaching for the sun
(we are warriors)/Yeah, that’s what we’ve become
If we’re good enough for god, well, then that’s all that matters!
For Christ, there at the beginning, it wasn’t the high and mighty that held his attention. It wasn’t the powerful and rich. The dignified and the respectable. It was the people. Nameless. Faceless. It was the hungry and thirsty. Sinners and tax collectors. It was all those battered and broken by the changes, by the chances, of life, of living. It was people just like us! “Consider your call,” Paul writes, “Not many of you were wise. Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble birth. God chose the foolish. God chose the weak. God chose what is low and despised. Things that are not. In order to reduce to nothing all the things that are!”
God chooses the freaks! God chooses the outcasts, the oddballs, the misfits! To prove to the world that it’s not all about us! To prove it’s all about god! God’s choices! God’s decisions! God’s grace and god’s charity and god’s love! Because of that, we’re not the city on a hill that can’t be hidden. But we’re more a manger on a long winter’s night. We’re the light of the world, but not the kind that blinds people with our brilliance. Instead, we’re more the kind that comes from a cross rooted in a dusty hilltop outside the walls of a dusty desert town. We’re the sideshow! We’re the circus! We’re the ship of fools! That people stare at as they drive by! That people thank god they’re not like! Maybe it isn’t, so much, that we’re constructing a new church … as it is deconstructing the old one. Becoming, once again, as it was in the beginning!
We know who the congregations are that are made up of movers and shakers. We know who the congregations are that everyone who is anyone belong to. And we’re not one of them. We’re not one of them. Maybe once upon a time. But not here. Not now. When the church is built, it’s not built from the top down. We don’t begin with a steeple; we start with the ground beneath it. When a community is created, when it’s born again, it doesn’t start with angels and saint; it starts with people. Plain. Ordinary. Everyday. Misfits. Outcasts. Freaks. Before it even goes prime time, it starts as a sideshow, a carnival, a circus.
It starts with the people god claims as god’s very own. Only then can the world come. Only then can the world stare. Only then can they discover. Discover not what we have accomplished, but what god has done, what god is doing. We proclaim Christ – Christ and Christ crucified – and god does the rest. Rather, we proclaim Christ – Christ and Christ crucified – and god does it all!