St. Paul’s On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

June 14, 2009; 2 Pentecost

Recognition Sunday

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Mark 4:26-34

GOD IS CALLING YOU, IS WITH YOU

Jesus is Lord; Dependable Appliance Repair

        When you drive down 9A and turn right on North State Road into Briarcliff Manor, there’s a telephone pole that sometimes has a sign on it. The sign reads: “Jesus is Lord.” It’s a very reassuring sign to those of a Christian bent, especially in this present age when you’re not too sure where the world is heading or how well it’s doing – generally not too well.

        The sign is hand lettered on what looks like a piece of cardboard or old plywood, so it has a reassuring, homemade quality.

        I saw it for the first time after Easter. Under it, a couple of days later, appeared another sign. “Dependable Appliance Repair.” Hmm, I thought, is that what He’s doing now? I mean – after He was risen, after all that Crucifixion, Resurrection stuff; after atoning for all the world’s sins and facing down the powers of darkness, after dying and having some time on his hands – Jesus could live a relatively obscure life, just generally making himself useful around the place.

        “Jesus is Lord. Dependable Appliance Repair.” I kind of like it. Jesus is not doing anything major, but he can be counted on for those minor things that keep life running smoothly – toasters, broken hearts, minds – you know, dependable appliance repair.

        Whether that means he only fixes dependable appliances – the ones you actually need – or fixes appliances dependably – so those hearts and minds actually last under difficult circumstances, or both – is left open to question.

        Jesus is Lord. Dependable Appliance Repair. How reassuring. It’s nice to know you can call on the Creator of the Universe for those fussy jobs. We should all do that when our own attempts to fix our appliances fail miserably.

        As I recall, it was a local phone number. So Jesus is always with us and is easy to reach, with no long-distance charges.

        You do, of course, have to pick up the phone.

        The Creator of the Universe created each of us in his own image; that is to say, beautiful, loving and creative. Then He sent us out into the world to be beautiful, loving and creative. Then he maintains us.

        The problem is, most of us don’t believe that – that we are beautiful, loving and creative. The other problem is, most other people don’t believe that about us either – that we are beautiful, loving and creative.

        Yet God did create us that way, as he did David in the story this morning – and honestly I didn’t pick the story when I knew which graduates were being honored today. It came up in the Lectionary. It’s that spooky thing the Holy Spirit does behind the scenes when we think we’re in charge.

        At any rate, God created David the future King in this loving, creative and beautiful way. And later God was there in David’s life to repair him dependably again and again and again – the way God is with us when we fail again and again and again.

        Nobody believed David was loving, creative and beautiful, in the story today. No one believes any one of us are – except God, who sent Samuel to call him to be King.

        I think that God sends us as the Church to be Samuel in the world – to be the ones who see and identify and call out the love, beauty and creativity in others, when the world does not see it.

        David’s family doesn’t see his beauty. So often a child’s family doesn’t see their inner beauty. They can be too busy working, herding sheep like Jesse’s family, nose to the grindstone in a difficult world.

        Sometimes the Church doesn’t see the inner beauty. Sometimes the Church sees only outer beauty, the way the world does – as Samuel is at first convinced that God called Eliab, a fine young specimen of a man. All too often we are just as easily fooled as everyone else.

        But God hangs in with us, and keeps on speaking to us. We can hang in with God, and keep on listening to God even after we have been deaf once or twice as Samuel was.

        Eventually Samuel works his way through Jesse’s sons. He asks if Jesse has any other kids. Jesse’s answer seems to be – you’ve got to be kidding. I have one more but you may not be interested in him.

        Samuel says – “Send and bring him.” The Church says to the World – “send and bring him.” Bring the ones you have no use for. Bring the ones you see no talent in, no good in. You’re wrong. “Do not look on his appearance,” the appearance of this other, more impressive one, “or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

        It occurs to me that we are starting this summer music camp soon, for the two weeks after July 4^th weekend in the evening, because we know there is talent out there that the world may not see; but the kids who have it know its inside of them, even if they can’t afford to nurture it themselves. We can. We can be Samuel.

        “Send and bring him here.”

        David comes. Greg comes. Liam comes. “Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him, for this is the one.’”

        It is interesting that while the Lord can create someone and call someone, He still needs us to anoint him or her publicly, to accept and commission and encourage them publicly.

        This is what we do today in recognizing those who have ministered to the church in so many wonderful ways this year. We affirm, accept and rejoice in the wonderful work God has done in you for us this year.

        Now David slips up in the long haul. There is that unfortunate episode with Bathsheba, and her husband was put in the front line of battle to get him conveniently out of the way – but David was called to account and repented and was reconciled with God; and continued his ministry without other interruptions.

        Again, dependable appliance repair.  God doesn’t call us and abandon us. He lifts us up and is with us and helps us and forgives us, no matter what; and we can keep on serving Him and His people.

        This is what Jesus teaches us again and again, spreading his message to the Gentiles, a new audience, since the Jews already know it from their history.

        He speaks of how the Kingdom of God is like a man who plants a seed – just a seed, an incomprehensibly small, little, insignificant object. Yet it sprouts and grows, “he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

        What a miracle. You plant a seed, and it comes up vegetables. Add a little seasoning from other herbs you’ve grown, serve it up, invite a friend, and you’ve got a loving conversation, a creative relationship, new ideas and thoughts and dreams for a future – all because you planted a seed.

        The magic of creation. God knew it was there. We didn’t, but we planted it by faith, knowing good things would come.

        Good things come from people – even if other people have no faith in them because they are not big and tall and well-schooled in the ways of the world.

        A kid gets here fresh from a difficult week. He or she puts on a long white robe and picks up a cross and suddenly he or she is an acolyte leading a procession that goes all the way back to the ancient church in Rome and all the way forward to God knows where, with countless acolytes leading countless processions into countless churches big and small, where the word of God will be proclaimed and the people of God ministered to.

        We give thanks for two graduates today who both play musical instruments. The instruments will echo in every heart and cause different strings and sounds to vibrate in every heart, sending messages of hope, memory, love, joy to every brain here and beyond, some of them messages only dimly traceable to the notes played here and yet each one created by those notes and by the hand of God who made the person who made the note, though no one else knows or even understands that. We in the Church do, for we are told it.

        We in the Church teach those words to our children and honor the teachers who teach and the students who learn, who take those words of God, those seeds into their hearts; and the seeds of God sprout and grow, we don’t know how. We really don’t know how, for how could such seeds combine with uncleaned rooms or undone chores, the defiance of growing up or the difficulties of school or neighborhood. And yet they do; and as God always knew, we get a beautiful person and a minister of God, a mustard seed Christian who starts small but is able to minster to diverse people by their particular talents.

        We honor and give thanks today also for 3 people who by their gifts of money and love, this year and for many years, enable other hearts to grow in love, other minds to grow in knowledge, other people to find comfort and rest here on the hill so we all can go forth in ministry refreshed and renewed every week – to go in peace to love and serve the Lord, in all our neighborhoods and communities.

        God made a perfect David and hung in there with him so he could minister to God’s people, though God’s people may not have seen it at first. God has made a perfect you and hangs in there with you, with dependable appliance repair, so you can minister to God’s people though God’s people may not see it at first.

        God has made a perfect St. Paul’s though we may not see it at first for we are of the world like Samuel was; but God is with us, working with us as he was with Samuel, working with him and enlightening him day by day.

        We will probably always be not too big, and not too rich, as David was. But perhaps God called David so God would be glorified, not David. For when David killed Goliath, everyone including David knew it must have been God.

        God calls the small and weak to minister to the world so the world will know it was God who was ministering, who was loving them.

        “Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will call upon the Name of the Lord our God,” says the psalm. We do that at first because we have no horses or chariots or the money to buy them. We do it second because we’ve learned it works.

        There is another great story in the Bible; of how Samson killed the Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass. I learned in seminary that this is significant not because the jaw bone of an ass was, as it turned out, a significant military weapon. It was significant because the jaw bone of an ass is ridiculous – and its success shows that it must have been God who did the real work, not Samson, and not the jaw bone.

        Ever since then, whenever I’m about to start a job that I seem woefully unsuited for, I think to myself ‘well, its jaw bone of an ass time.’ ‘No one will ever think I did this by my own skills because they already know how limited my skills are.’ And that, of course, is why God calls upon you, me, St. Paul’s, to do that job – because everyone will know it must be God who’s at work because it sure can’t be us.

        Except Samson does pick up the ridiculous jaw bone, by faith. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing, Lord’ he must have asked.

        David did step forward to face Goliath, with the 5 smooth stones from the river bed, and got himself anointed by Samuel earlier, and was probably just as confused and doubtful about his own talents as his brothers were. Yet he stepped forward.

        The acolytes still hoist the cross. The preacher preaches. The kids show up for Sunday School. The teachers teach. People give time and money.

        ‘You sure you know what you’re doing here, Lord,’ we ask. ‘I mean, it’s just we here, normal human beings who don’t’ amount to much.’

        ‘Yes, normal human beings,’ says God. And we do amount to much, because He created us loving, creative and beautiful.

        And He is with us always, in good times and bad, repairing, fixing, mending, sending us out again.

        There is a lovely prayer on the back of the bulletin today. It’s about God: Father, Mother, Spirit, strengthener, lover, with us always in a myriad of ways – with us always from first breath to last and in all the ministries in between; in the sinful times too, pulling us out of them and sending us on.

        Jesus is Lord. Dependable Appliance Repair. So, fellow appliances, let’s keep on working for Him, and with Him.