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

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

January 20, 2008; 2 Epiphany

The Sunday before Martin Luther King Day

Isaiah 49:1-7

John 1:29-42

LISTEN – TO YOUR SUFFERING

Fellow insignificant ones, fellow humans; here we are again. Here we are again after another week, to show God and each other nothing more than a little more suffering, nothing more than a little more joy, nothing more than a little more pain, nothing more than a little more happiness; nothing more than the usual collection of human emotion, and human suffering or success that he has gotten used to over the millenia of watching over his creation.

What will he do with it? What will he do with this offering we bring – as sad as some of it is, as happy as some of it is, as powerful as part of it is, as meaningless as the rest of it is?

Why, he will make something meaningful of it. He will make something joyous of it. He will make something useful . . . of all of it, of all of it.

He will make it useful – to others who have gone through suffering or are going through it. He will make it useful to others who have gone through pain or are going through it. He will make it useful – to others who are going through joy and happiness and don't know what to make of it or how to use it for others.

God is all about usefulness to others, even those who think they have no need of us; even those whom we think have no need of us because they are too rich or mighty or powerful, and we are too weak and insignificant.

Yet they still suffer. And no amount of power or might or money can shield them from the fear that stalks at night when they should be asleep and their lives are falling apart.

Nothing will help them – but those who went through it too, or almost went through it, and the One, the Risen Savior who went through it with them, however you know that Risen Savior, whatever you call him: Friend, Teacher, Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God – the whole range of names used of Jesus by the disciples in the Gospel of John today, who clearly knew him in many different ways.

How do you know him? How did you know him, in that difficult time? Knowing what you know now, look back, look back at that difficult place in your life. Where was he then? What small, insignificant, crucial, unexpected place did he inhabit?

When you go through such a time in the future, he will be there too. Only then you can look for him, instead of fearing you are all alone.

So do that unusual thing; that unexpected thing in the world today. Look for a moment at the bad places in your life, and treasure them. Don't just treasure the good – or the rich and powerful – places in your life. Look at the bad ones – the poor and insignificant and painful ones that everyone else would probably ignore with all the force of will they can muster!

Look at it instead. In it there is a gift.

The gift is that God redeemed you from it. God redeemed you in it. God made it into something special.

From something sour he made something sweet. From something useless, he made something useful.

From someone useless he made someone useful.

What a wonderful God. He made you as a gift to the world – a gift! A powerful, wonderful gift.

Your beauty can enhance their lives.

That is God's message to us. That is our message to the world.

Listen, we say. You. You with the power and money or might. Listen, O coastlands. Listen, O sophisticated, cosmopolitan citizens and cities. That is what Isaiah cries and it is what we cry.

God made us poor and insignificant ones, and he made you too, O powerful ones we say. God treasures poor and insignificant ones and treasures you too, even when the bottom falls out of the market and you lose your house or your money. God – in Jesus who came to us and you – is still with us and you. That is what we learned in our suffering – the constant presence of God in every crisis. That is why we fear no crisis.

That is the message the world needs. And we are the ones to give it to them – for we are of insignificant size, at St. Paul's, and we don't have enough money, but we do have enough love.

The world never has enough money and it always needs more love.

But we have to tell it to them. We have to announce it to them. Or they will never know it is there.

We, especially, in this church here at St. Paul's On-the-Hill have to announce it for we make our natural home, by and large, with good, sensible people who think they have no need of God – on the outside – but do – on the inside. And we speak their language and share their environment.

We can bring them to Christ as Andrew brought Peter.

There's a scary thought. Bring a friend to Jesus. Its called Friendship Evangelism, and its been around from that day to this. And its the way powerful Peter became a powerful prophet of Christ because a friend – his shy, retiring brother Andrew – brought him.

But Andrew did not say: 'you gotta be saved.' He did not say, 'you're gonna die and go to hell unless you believe.' He said, “We have found the Messiah.” We have found the answer to our prayers, we have found the one who will release us from pain and brokenness.

We have found someone who will speak to us in our suffering and release us from its grip. And suffering is something we all know. It is something we all share – rich or poor. So surely we all need to know the one who speaks to us in it, and releases us from it, however we call upon him or however we relate to him.

But Peter would not have known Jesus unless Andrew brought it up.

We Episcopalians do not believe so much in heaven and hell. We try, but our hearts are not in it. We find it hard to say to someone: 'believe, or you're going to hell.' That's a powerful incentive to witness to a neighbor, and we don't have it. We do not think a loving God would be so brutal as to punish nonbelief with eternal damnation.

But we do know that there might be a heaven or a hell right now. We do know that there might be a heaven or a hell in a person's life right now. And we do know that when Jesus – or the brightness of God, or the Love of God is in a person's life right now, perhaps brought there by our presence as a friend, then they are in heaven. And if God is not in their lives, and there is only brokenness and pain, well, that's a pretty good description of hell.

God needs to be there right now, however that person talks of him, however that person knows him.

Tomorrow we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. And so tomorrow we celebrate the victory of a lot of people, and of this whole country, over a living hell, a hell that inhabited this society for 300 years and more perhaps, and ground down many, many, many people into painful dust.

And yet somehow they endured. Why did they endure? Because they had heaven in their hearts. They had no power or money or might, but they had heaven and the God of heaven in their hearts.

Those with power or money or might failed, and lost their place in history. Those with heaven in their hearts prevailed, and can now share that heaven with everyone else.

“Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died; yet, with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to a place for which our parents sighed? From the hymn “Lift every voice and sing.”

I don't know what stony road you have trod. Yet I ask you to remember it.

“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears (your silent tears), thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; thou who hast by thy might led us into the light; keep us forever in the path we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee; lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget thee; shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand, true to our God, true to our native land.”

If you remember the stony road, if you remember the weary feet, you will have something useful to share with someone who endures a similarly stony road, with similarly weary feet. You will be able to share – that there was Someone who brought you thus far on the way, Someone on whom you could lean in those dark days, Someone to whom you could turn in those dark nights. You were not alone. Neither are you now.

And you look back, and those dark days were not wasted, lost, insignificant and to be avoided.

They were but a proving ground, a place to get to know the Lord, by whatever private and intimate Name you call him, so you can carry his Name and his Love, to others who still so desperately need him.