UCC Church of Charlotte

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Sermon for May 10, 2009
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Sunday, May 10, 2009 1:00:43 PM
From:
Phil Hobson   
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To:
Phil Hobson 


Abiding
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.
    
Love is one of those terrible words.  It means so many different
things.  “I love that new television show” and “Jesus loves us” had
better be two different kinds of love.  I am not going to lay down my
life to get two more episodes of a sitcom.  And I am thankful Jesus’
love for us is far more than whether or not we can keep his attention
during our time slot on sweeps week.
    
Love can be sentimental and sappy and romantic.  It can be expressed
in roses, or poetry, or macaroni art on the refrigerator on Mother’s
Day.  And these are good and necessary.
    
Love is also the force by which the world was created.  It is the
radical and generative acts of compassion lived out in the donating of
a kidney; or the sacrifice of a police officer in the line of duty to
keep other people safe; or the acceptance of someone, just as they
are, not as we would have them be, or the mentoring of someone into a
new way of being.
    
Jesus says if we have this love in us, then we are in him, and he is
in us.  This is the abiding love that heals the sick, binds up the
brokenhearted, preaches good news to the poor, recovery of sight to
the blind, release of the captives, hope for the depressed, freedom
for the oppressed.  In other words, to have this love in us is to be
able to offer people Good News.  This is the love that clothes the
naked, visits the sick and the imprisoned, and cares for the least of
these in our midst.
    
St. Martin of Tours lived about 300 years after Jesus.  He was a Roman
soldier and a catechumenate.  That is the five dollar word for someone
who was in the process of becoming a Christian and going to be
baptized.  The story goes that he was riding along one day, and saw a
beggar with barely enough clothes to cover himself.  Impulsively he
took out his sword, and cut his own riding cloak in two.  He took the
part he cut off and wrapped it around the beggar.  The other part he
wore as a cape.  In Latin, a cape is called a cappa.  That night in
his dreams he saw a vision of Christ, wrapped in the half-cloak.
        
    “That which you do for the least of these, you do for me...”
    
Upon his death, the church where St. Martin’s cape was kept was called
the cappela.  We know this word today as chapel.  We use it to mean a
small church or small prayer room.  But originally it meant the church
of the cape.  The custodians of the cape were called capellanus.  This
word has changed a bit too, over the centuries.  It comes from the
Latin, through French, and winds up in English as “chaplain.”  So a
chaplain is someone who literally or metaphorically wraps a cape
around someone in need of covering.  Maybe it is a literal blanket, or
some clothes, or a prayer shawl, or a stuffed animal for a child.
Maybe it is a listening ear, or a kind word, or someone to sit with,
or some food when people are hungry.
    
A few weeks back, some of you signed up to help cover pastoral calls
during my sabbatical.  Some of you already know very well how to sit
with someone, how to listen, how to simply be there.  I have seen you
do this for each other in the hospital and at home.  I have
experienced it when you have done it for me and Mary.  Some of you
have much experience with this as Victim’s Advocates for the county,
as hospice volunteers, as nurses and social workers and colleagues and
friends and so many other ways in the lives of those around us.
    
While you were hearing from the members of the church in Battle Creek
and their experiences with sabbatical, I was in Indy, about to start
two days of chaplain training.  16 hours of class time, thirty-some
pages of notes, and a notebook of study material later, I want to
share with you the essence of what they taught us.  Don’t worry, we
won’t take 16 hours to do this.
    
Fire departments have their own language, their own culture, their own
specialized equipment and trained responses and all sorts of other
stuff.  So I was expecting to learn some of how to navigate all of
that stuff.  But the essence and core of what we learned about
chaplaincy surprised me.  Not because it was strange and new, but
because it was so familiar.
    
In order to sit with someone, visit with someone, be with them in the
hospital or at home or at the scene of an accident or over coffee, you
need to have within you the heart of a servant.
    
The heart of a servant means going in not with our own agenda, or
knowing what we are going to say, or how we are going to fix people or
change the world or heal everybody.  Having the heart of a servant
means letting God’s love abide in us.  To love one another
non-judgmentally, to remember that we have two ears and one mouth, and
they probably ought to be used in similar proportion.
    
In order to sit with someone pastorally, we also need to put three
things on, to wear three things, as if they were garments:

    Kindness.
    Compassion.
    Forgiveness.
    
Putting on kindness and compassion and forgiveness means meeting
people where they are, just as they are, open to what they might yet
be, but not forcing our vision of that upon them.
    
We know too well the opposites of these three: judgmentalism,
criticism, trying to change others to be in our image rather than the
image of God in which they were created.
    
We know of well-meaning but misguided attempts to fix others.  If we
are honest, we have enough difficulty fixing ourselves, much less our
neighbor or our loved one.  And it is ourselves we need to work on
first.
    
We know of harsh words or actions of cruelty or neglect that take
years to recover from.
    
Visiting as a ministry of this church, means we are sent not with our
own agenda, but with Christ’s.  Not with our own mission, but with
God’s.  If we are going to live this out, we need the heart of a
servant within us, to let God’s love abide in us, and to put on
kindness, compassion, and forgiveness.
    
When we list the staff of the church, we list: ministers - all of us.
And now I add a job description to your list: chaplain of the church.
    
Because all it means is to have within us the heart of a servant, and
to put on kindness, compassion and forgiveness.  To sit and listen.
To use our ears and our mouth in the proportion they were given to us:
twice as much listening as speaking.
    
All it means is to be a praying people, and to continue to live into
our mission statement that most of you can repeat by heart.
    
All it means is to let the love of God wrap around us and abide in us,
so that we might cut our cloaks, and wrap them around those in need.
    
Thanks be to God.  Amen.