The Treasure Worth Everything
July 24, 2011
Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss, July 24, 2011Part of the Pentecost series, preached at a Sunday Morning service
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“The Treasure Worth Everything”
Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss
July 24, 2011
There’s an ugly rumor going around that I want to address this morning—a rumor that I have betrayed my deeply-held values, that I went back on my word to go along with the crowd. So I want to begin this morning by confessing to you that yes, it’s true. I joined facebook.
I already have 69 friends and it’s making me ridiculously happy. You see, on facebook I get to see the first photos of my new nephew and hear what’s going on with people I haven’t laid eyes on in years. My sister’s best friend, whose witty personality I have missed ever since I left Michigan, recently posted, “No power at my house. The down side: no air in this ridiculous heat. The upside: someone had to finish the ice cream before it melted.” Facebook makes me laugh.
But there’s a shadow side as well. The exhilaration of “friending” more and more people eventually gives way to the fact that most of us just weren’t designed to maintain that many relationships. The enjoyment of witty commentary fades into irritability at the same folks who complain about the same things day in and day out. But it would be rude to de-friend them, right? And then I find myself wrestling with the demon of envy as I read post after post of accomplishments and cute kid moments and travel adventures. Life is somehow more perfect when it’s broadcast over facebook. The awkward moments, painful arguments and stress get lost in translation and our lives can look exciting, successful, and hilarious every day.
If it sounds like I’m complaining, maybe it’s because I felt forced into facebook, which is pretty much taking over the world. Even on the UCC’s own website, I can’t comment on an article without belonging to facebook. Sara and I are part of a coaching program for new church starts and all of the online conversation takes place on—you guessed it—facebook. And it’s true, I do want to see photographs of my cousin’s baby after it’s born, and she doesn’t do email. But she’s on facebook.
Now before this begins to sound like some crazy tirade against facebook, rather than a sermon, allow me to offer a theological critique. Could it be that facebook is so popular because it promises to quell the deepest hunger of the human heart—our need for love and acceptance? Our most primal human fear must be the fear of abandonment. When I have 69 friends incessantly chatting me up on facebook, I don’t feel so alone. Someone has a birthday and everyone comments, “Happy Birthday!” Someone’s kid has the flu and a cascade of mothers share in the lament. And while it’s not a bad thing to feel connected and supported and understood, the connections we make over facebook only run so deep.
Most of us don’t really want to share the deepest burdens of our heart in an online format with 69 people from various eras of our lives. So we spend most of our time on surface stuff. When we dare to wade into the waters of a deeper conversation about politics or the economy or the pressing social issues of our day, facebook, like most online forums, can devolve into self-righteous, blood-boiling clashes of opinion that seem far nastier than most face to face conversations.
And so I can attest to the truth that it’s possible to have 69 friends on facebook and still feel somewhat alone. It’s possible to broadcast the details of our daily lives far and wide and still sense that no one really knows what’s going on with us. Is this generation being numbed by the dissonance between the outward appearance of numerous friends and the inward reality of feeling alone? Will it shape our children into a generation that is hi-tech but low-functioning when it comes to the monumental labor of true friendship and enduring love? I know a local therapist who confessed to being bewildered by the stories of teens entangled in romantic relationships that exist solely online—complete with texting, sexting, and instant messaging. That’s right—teenagers today can have relationships that begin and end online, but never functionally exist in the realm of face-to-face relationships. Talk about feeling alone.
Why do we allow these shallow social connections to dominate our daily lives? Theologian Jeanyne Slettom states, “Some of us fear that if anyone really knew what was in our minds, or hearts, they would leave us. Some of us fear that we have been so deeply degraded by our experiences; things done to us—that we are unlovable.” Have you ever felt unlovable? Not just by your family or friends, but unlovable by God?
If you have, then Paul’s words to the Roman church in our scripture reading this morning are good news. Paul proclaims, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s right. Nothing you’ve done or left undone. Nothing you are or aren’t. I read this passage last Sunday at the Black Mountain Center to a room full of folks who live with profound developmental disabilities. I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
The apostle Paul writes from experience. We first meet Paul in the Scriptures as Saul, a militant inquisitor and chief prosecutor of heresy. Saul was both a Roman citizen by birth, and a Jew, loyal to his ancestral faith. His citizenship assured him certain privileges. His heritage included a solid education in religious law. Committed to the tradition of his parents, Saul perceived the growing Christian movement as a threat to the purity of his faith.
And indeed it was. Much like Jesus, the early Christian movement challenged the status quo. They lived in intentional community, shared a common purse, and proclaimed the liberating love of Jesus. The early Christian movement was dynamic, speaking truth in the places of power, constantly recruiting a diverse group of unlikely folks. And because the early church began to build a community where Jews and Gentiles ate and prayed and worshiped together, it violated the religious separatism that constituted Saul’s concept of a pure faith. The crucified Christ was offensive to him. Saul expected a triumphant messiah, not one who bore the wounds of human violence.
The Bible reports that Saul ravaged the church. He approved of the stoning of disciples, and dragged off both men and women to prison. Saul resisted the still-speaking God, instead clinging to old patterns of certitude and authority. He viewed life through a rigid frame that didn’t allow for new revelation. Even when presented with testimony after testimony, Saul’s heart was hardened to the transformative experience of the other. He believed that it was his right and his duty to enforce his frame of reference with violence.
What an unlikely leader for the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the early church! What a scandalous author of some of the most powerful Scriptural essays on love and reconciliation. Violent, religiously intolerant Saul is the last person I would have chosen to spread the Jesus movement. But isn’t it just like God to choose a staunch exclusivist to unite Jews and Gentiles? Isn’t it just like Jesus to knock Saul off his high horse, to blind him so that he might see anew?
Paul also confessed a thorn in his side that aggravated his spirit so much that he regularly fell to his knees to pray for deliverance. The thorn harassing his flesh may have been an unruly ego, an insatiable desire, or a consistent deficiency in ministry. Perhaps it was a disease of the body, an illness provoked by his frequent imprisonment and wide-reaching travels under poor conditions. Regardless, we know it was a chronic condition. And we know what God had to say about it—“Nothing in all of creation can separate you from my love known in Jesus.”
This, my friends, is good news. It’s good news for anyone who’s imprisoned by loneliness. It’s good news for those whose hands are dirtied with the work of building community in a shallow society. It’s good news if you’ve betrayed your beloved, if you’re living a divided life, if you’ve been distracted by the noise of your ambition, if you’ve neglected to listen to your child. If you have been bullied by consumerism, if you’ve been hurt by the church, if you don’t know how to make peace in your home let alone in the world, it’s good news that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the radical, reconciling love of God. It’s good news that in the broken-down weakness of our human hearts, our failures can’t keep us from God’s all-encompassing love.
If we can’t quite wrap our minds around this radical love, if we can’t quite get a handle on it, don’t miss the end of that verse… “the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul suggests that this is why Jesus came—to tell us, to show us, to embody for us, the love of God. UCC pastor Martin Copenhaver explains incarnation as the understanding that in Jesus, God was enfleshed in a human body. “It means, in part,” he writes, “that nothing I experience is strange to God. In Jesus, God has been there.”[1] From the cross, Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “The desperate Jesus who fleetingly thought that God had abandoned him” is the same one through whom God reveals an unrelenting love.[2] In Jesus, God invaded a world hijacked by brokenness and death and disarmed every power that claimed to separate us from God—the power of bad religion, the power of violent empire, the power of disease, the power that divides people by class and gender and ethnic identity, and yes—even the power of our personal demons. In Jesus, God proclaimed then and still proclaims now that divine love is here for the taking, it is available to us in this very moment.
When we live out of the rich reality of God’s undying love for us, we begin to live in God’s realm. And the power of living in God’s realm changes everything. It is the mustard seed that grows into the greatest of shrubs, the yeast that leavens the whole loaf, the treasure buried in a field, the pearl for which we will sell all that we have. Living out of the reality of God’s love, living in the power of God’s realm, is the treasure that is worth everything, our total commitment.
It’s easy to miss if you don’t read commentaries on Jesus’ parables about God’s kingdom, but a mustard seed, in Jesus’ time, was considered an invasive weed. No one wanted to plant a mustard seed in their yard and see it take over everything. It was like kudzu. Likewise yeast was used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as a metaphor for the unclean, something that insidiously corrupts the whole. You see, when Jesus led people into a deeper relationship with God, he didn’t talk about high holy days or the temple. Instead, he spoke of ordinary, even unholy things, that undergo an extraordinary process of transformation.
The good news this morning is not just that nothing can separate us from God’s love, but that God’s love ignites in us an extraordinary process of transformation. If we live out of the truth that we belong to God, that God’s love is closer to us than the sweat on our skin, more integral to our beings than the breath in our lungs, if we live out of this radical truth, we can’t help but be transformed. Thanks be to God. Amen.
