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By God’s Grace…
Brothers and sisters, I want to call your attention to the good news that I preached to you, which you also received and in which you stand. You are being saved through it if you hold on to the message I preached to you, unless somehow you believed it for nothing. I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once—most of them are still alive to this day, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me, as if I were born at the wrong time. I’m the least important of the apostles. I don’t deserve to be called an apostle, because I harassed God’s church. I am what I am by God’s grace, and God’s grace hasn’t been for nothing. In fact, I have worked harder than all the others—that is, it wasn’t me but the grace of God that is with me. So then, whether you heard the message from me or them, this is what we preach and this is what you have believed.
THE MODERN LESSON “I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
I know I’ve already shared with the fact that way back in the spring of 2002, I had the privilege of spending 10 days in a monastery near Snowmass, Colorado. The cost of the retreat was paid for by a generous woman in my congregation who surprised me with her offer – she was interested in getting me to know more about centering prayer. Centering prayer is something we’ve done here at Epiphany a couple of times, and it’s a quiet prayer focusing on the divine in silence, while using a chosen word to remind us, in the midst of many distracting thoughts, that we are here to be present with God, and not to worry about our kids, our bills, our whatever. The monastery where this centering prayer retreat was being held was in a beautiful valley not far from Aspen, and it was a run by an even more beautiful set of Benedictine monks-good people who were providing a space to gather for those interested in deepening their prayer life. As you can imagine, those 10 days were a time of intense prayer—or at least it was time of intense prayer for me. We gathered together for almost 5 hours of silent prayer every day, starting at 5:30 AM, and ending around 9 PM or so, with meditative walks after each session of prayer. It was a great experience, and it was definitely one of those religious highs, hopefully something may have experienced yourself, where you feel incredibly grounded in God, and therefore you feel just incredibly grounded in yourself. By the end of this retreat, I had this ambitious plan to rejuvenate my spiritual life, with more prayer, more Bible study, more focus on God, more everything. In fact, if there was a way to jack up the spirituality quotient of any given spiritual discipline, I was going to do it—I was going to be a spiritual superman. Super Christian, Super Spiritual Guy, I was going to do it and I was going to finally get all those loose spiritual ends of my life tied up and or at least pulling in the same direction. I know its hard to believe but Pastors also struggle with their spirituals lives – we too have our times in the desert, trying to find our felt connections to God, and the Spirit. However, this retreat was going to be the start of something new, a new day in my life, especially spiritually—me and God were going to be closer, best friends, the dynamic duo, right?
And then, and then I arrived back home to Oklahoma City, back to what seemed like the real world, which for me was the focus on weekly worship, pastoral care, meetings, and meetings about past meetings, and all the attendant stuff that most people don’t see their pastors doing on a daily basis. My plan for a rebirth in my spiritual life because of a set of new spiritual practices didn’t materialize – and I don’t think I kept a regular practice of any of things I had planned on doing, even the centering prayer, though that type of prayer has profoundly affected me, and comes in and out of my life very often I mean, you just get lost in the real world, oddly enough, you get lost in the ordinariness of it all, those simple things like paying your bills, and making it work on time, and dealing with the family, the kids, the partner. I mean, we know that experience, don’t we? Its what happened to a lot of us when we were younger, when we came back from church camp, on fire, ready to change ourselves and the world…and then it just happened…or I should say, nothing really happened…life went on and the Bible was left unread, and prayer remains stale and the same old stuff happened, just on a different day. That reversion to the means just happens when you aren’t wonderfully stuck up in the mountains, at a monastery where the sole work of the people gathered there is to pray. You know, I must admit that I got discouraged that this self-transformation didn’t happen, and that I didn’t seem to have the ability to be better or do better. Why wasn’t I getting any better at this stuff – after all, I am a professional religious guy, people pay me to be spiritual, so to speak, and yet I felt, at times, like a real failure, that whatever change of heart and mind and spirit that was going on wasn’t happening as quickly as I wanted it to, and I didn’t seem to have the discipline to always help bring it about. The Modern Lesson from today’s bulletin addresses that dilemma, that struggle to be better person and yet not quite seemingly getting there. The poet actually speaks as if he and his ideal self are two different beings – he watches his imagined better self practice the virtues his “real” self cannot actually practice in his real life:
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
Yet, over and over again, during those times of disappointment in myself for not being better, I find myself reminded that, in fact, God is at work in my life, despite my best efforts to thwart her efforts to meddle with my plans. Being intentional in our spiritual work is a good and needed thing, and must never be discarded – but whatever plans for self-improvement we have that don’t quite work out, God is still at work in our lives, still doing a thing within us, still changing us slowly and quietly, all of which comes from that long obedience in the same direction, the doing of what we can do for our spirits, our souls, day in and day out. If we think we’re going to get in the way of God’s work within us, with all of our efforts to self-sabotage that work, wittingly or unwittingly, we are going to find that we can’t get in the way of what God is doing within us.
The apostle Paul, in the New Testament passage we heard a few minutes ago, seems to be pointing us in that direction as well, this idea that God will do what God needs to do in our lives, on God’s timing, and not necessarily on our timing. Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth was written to a church in turmoil in the city of Corinth. It should be remembered that something like 90% of the New Testament letters are written responses to churches and Christians who were in the midst of some sort of controversy or craziness. In this letter, Paul has spent time telling them about spiritual gifts, and reminding them about what really matters, which is love for each other, amidst all the painful disagreements. Paul then finally writes what we just heard this morning—he begins to write to them about resurrection of the Christ, and about the larger resurrection of the dead—for him, both of those realities are what make life worth living, a reminder to the church at Corinth that the end of the story, the end of every story and any story, the end of the story is life, it is resurrection, and not death; the end of it all is hope, not hopelessness. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the church, once said, something to the effect “that “this is not the end…but it is the road…”
But what I love is that moment where Paul is trying to get them to acknowledge him as someone worthy of being listened to—“listen,” he seems to be saying, “I may not be as close to the events of Christ’s resurrection as others, there were others who gave witness to Jesus before me, and God knows I’ve persecuted the church early on, so I admit I lack a lot of the moral authority that others may have…” Paul is being very humble here, I think, because he knows that they know he was once on the other side, with those folks who were pretty hostile to the growing church. But then he writes this line, something that just stood out when I first read it: I am what I am by God’s grace, and God’s grace hasn’t been for nothing. How incredible—“grace has done its work in me,” he seems to be saying, “though it took its time, and will take even more time in the future, but it was a grace that has done what it was supposed to do, at least for this very moment, and it surely was not a grace that was thrown away, because God knew what he was doing.” Paul simply reminds them at Corinth that he is where he is supposed to be, at this moment, that he is who he is, in that moment, because that is who grace has shaped and molded and crafted him to be. It may not be where he needs to be tomorrow, he may not be the man he is meant to be tomorrow, a greater person of faith. In fact, grace may shape him differently tomorrow, or it may smooth out the edges that need to be smoothed out, but at least for this very moment, writing on some ancient parchment thousands of years ago, he can say to them, honestly and truthfully, this is who God’s grace has shaped me to be, at least for this day – and tomorrow God grace with surely shape me to be the person I need to be for tomorrow. I may not be where I need to be, but I am where I am supposed to be, at least for this very brief moment—the grace given to him, to us, the grace found in our past, that grace God has given to him and us has not been for nothing. Grace is never for nothing, and the grace that slowly shaped us to be who we are today has a purpose – and that purpose is for the present, though we rarely discover that truth until that moment, until the now, when we see where God had given grace in the past so we can handle this challenges, the blessings of this moment.
My goodness, though, this slow working grace that happens despite all the things I do to block it, or all the failed plans to be more spiritual, it sure takes a long time, too long for my taste. I may be what I need to be for this moment, I may be aware that I am what I am by God’s grace, but, well, I wish I was more than I at am this moment. Grace works on its own time, of course. It did for Paul—grace had to work long and hard on him—it takes a lot of grace to get from stoning Christians like Stephen when he was younger, when he was persecuting the church, to the point of being the greatest missionary the church has ever known. Grace took its time with Paul, and grace takes it time with us, but it always gets there, it always gets to the place where it is supposed to be, to the nook and crannies of our lives, even those places where we don’t want it to get to. I suppose the key to being changed, is not so much “a doing of something”—I mean after all, grace is not given to you and I because of anything, of something we do—it is a complete gift, so much so that we don’t even need to recognize the gift we’ve been given. The giver of this gift has no need for us to acknowledge it—no thank you cards are required, or expected, or even needed. And that also means that we’re not going to get double grace if we work double hard on our spiritual lives—Paul said he worked hardier because he was not like those early disciples who knew Jesus first hand, but it was, in fact, the free gift of grace inside him that worked harder in him, not he himself. If anything, our Christian faith reminds us that our stories as people of faith are not stories of what we have done, but, rather, they ought to be stories about what God has done in us, and through us, despite our best efforts to get in the way.
So, maybe the one thing we are asked to do, I believe, is not much of anything, it is not really a doing. No, friends, maybe, it is not the working hard on our spiritual lives that will change us; it is not our determination that will give us the change we are desperately want in our lives. That work of transformation is God’s fierce and gentle work in us, work that will last a lifetime, work that continue even into eternity. The work of transformation of us is God’s job, and letting go of the lists of things we are determined to change is perhaps the only thing asked of us, or at least that is what I think we are asked by God. Now, Paul does say that he tried harder, because he felt himself to be a nobody compared to the disciples who had direct contact with Jesus while he was here on earth – but he says that it wasn’t his trying harder that gave him what he has now, the spirituality he now possesses, but it was God’s grace within him that has done it, that has changed him into the person he has become. Like Paul, I’m not saying give up all your efforts to deepen your relationship with God or becoming a better or more just person – in fact, keep doing, keep working on it, but let’s be gentle with ourselves when it doesn’t quite work out, because, in the end, God will get her way with us, and we will grow into wisdom, courage, and hope, however imperfectly.
In my best moments, this gives me hope, and perhaps it gives you hope as well. We are not where we want to be, or hoped to be, but we are where God’s grace has brought us – I am what I am by God’s grace. I wish I was a better at so many things, more grounded in works of compassion and justice. I wish I was more committed to so many things, doing better, being better, but I am not where I want to be. But where I am right now, where we are right now, is not where we were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I know that truth when I sift through my over 37 years of being consciously Christian, of realizing that God’s grace really has done a work within me, that I am more thoughtful, more kind, more generous, more hopeful, and more just and open to God’s work in the world. I understand my racism so much better, I understand my sexism so much better, I understand my classism better, I even understand my own homophobia better, because God’s grace keeps opening up my heart more, bit by bit, time after time. Think of what you have left behind, the ways you’ve grown over the years, the injustices you now understand, the work you are now doing to fight those injustices, however much, however little. Even if we just half-way open our lives to God, God will slip through the doors, and change us, and change the world around us, slowly and in small amounts, of course. Nothing is harder for God or for us than changing the human heart, absolutely nothing, especially the changing of our own stubborn hearts, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that such transformation takes time, and is slow and tedious, and takes years, even for God. So, when we feel as if we’re not the people we had hoped to be, or even needed to be, I ask you to be gentle with yourself, to remember that God is still doing something within us. Yes, we wish it was faster or more complete, but who we are right now, all the progress we’ve made, big or small, over the years, it was no easy thing, because our hearts are not easy to change. And yet, they have changed, and they will continue to change, because grace won’t give up on us, even when we want to give up on ourselves. Amen.
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By Kevin McLemoreBrothers and sisters, I want to call your attention to the good news that I preached to you, which you also received and in which you stand. You are being saved through it if you hold on to the message I preached to you, unless somehow you believed it for nothing. I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once—most of them are still alive to this day, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me, as if I were born at the wrong time. I’m the least important of the apostles. I don’t deserve to be called an apostle, because I harassed God’s church. I am what I am by God’s grace, and God’s grace hasn’t been for nothing. In fact, I have worked harder than all the others—that is, it wasn’t me but the grace of God that is with me. So then, whether you heard the message from me or them, this is what we preach and this is what you have believed.
THE MODERN LESSON “I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
I know I’ve already shared with the fact that way back in the spring of 2002, I had the privilege of spending 10 days in a monastery near Snowmass, Colorado. The cost of the retreat was paid for by a generous woman in my congregation who surprised me with her offer – she was interested in getting me to know more about centering prayer. Centering prayer is something we’ve done here at Epiphany a couple of times, and it’s a quiet prayer focusing on the divine in silence, while using a chosen word to remind us, in the midst of many distracting thoughts, that we are here to be present with God, and not to worry about our kids, our bills, our whatever. The monastery where this centering prayer retreat was being held was in a beautiful valley not far from Aspen, and it was a run by an even more beautiful set of Benedictine monks-good people who were providing a space to gather for those interested in deepening their prayer life. As you can imagine, those 10 days were a time of intense prayer—or at least it was time of intense prayer for me. We gathered together for almost 5 hours of silent prayer every day, starting at 5:30 AM, and ending around 9 PM or so, with meditative walks after each session of prayer. It was a great experience, and it was definitely one of those religious highs, hopefully something may have experienced yourself, where you feel incredibly grounded in God, and therefore you feel just incredibly grounded in yourself. By the end of this retreat, I had this ambitious plan to rejuvenate my spiritual life, with more prayer, more Bible study, more focus on God, more everything. In fact, if there was a way to jack up the spirituality quotient of any given spiritual discipline, I was going to do it—I was going to be a spiritual superman. Super Christian, Super Spiritual Guy, I was going to do it and I was going to finally get all those loose spiritual ends of my life tied up and or at least pulling in the same direction. I know its hard to believe but Pastors also struggle with their spirituals lives – we too have our times in the desert, trying to find our felt connections to God, and the Spirit. However, this retreat was going to be the start of something new, a new day in my life, especially spiritually—me and God were going to be closer, best friends, the dynamic duo, right?
And then, and then I arrived back home to Oklahoma City, back to what seemed like the real world, which for me was the focus on weekly worship, pastoral care, meetings, and meetings about past meetings, and all the attendant stuff that most people don’t see their pastors doing on a daily basis. My plan for a rebirth in my spiritual life because of a set of new spiritual practices didn’t materialize – and I don’t think I kept a regular practice of any of things I had planned on doing, even the centering prayer, though that type of prayer has profoundly affected me, and comes in and out of my life very often I mean, you just get lost in the real world, oddly enough, you get lost in the ordinariness of it all, those simple things like paying your bills, and making it work on time, and dealing with the family, the kids, the partner. I mean, we know that experience, don’t we? Its what happened to a lot of us when we were younger, when we came back from church camp, on fire, ready to change ourselves and the world…and then it just happened…or I should say, nothing really happened…life went on and the Bible was left unread, and prayer remains stale and the same old stuff happened, just on a different day. That reversion to the means just happens when you aren’t wonderfully stuck up in the mountains, at a monastery where the sole work of the people gathered there is to pray. You know, I must admit that I got discouraged that this self-transformation didn’t happen, and that I didn’t seem to have the ability to be better or do better. Why wasn’t I getting any better at this stuff – after all, I am a professional religious guy, people pay me to be spiritual, so to speak, and yet I felt, at times, like a real failure, that whatever change of heart and mind and spirit that was going on wasn’t happening as quickly as I wanted it to, and I didn’t seem to have the discipline to always help bring it about. The Modern Lesson from today’s bulletin addresses that dilemma, that struggle to be better person and yet not quite seemingly getting there. The poet actually speaks as if he and his ideal self are two different beings – he watches his imagined better self practice the virtues his “real” self cannot actually practice in his real life:
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
Yet, over and over again, during those times of disappointment in myself for not being better, I find myself reminded that, in fact, God is at work in my life, despite my best efforts to thwart her efforts to meddle with my plans. Being intentional in our spiritual work is a good and needed thing, and must never be discarded – but whatever plans for self-improvement we have that don’t quite work out, God is still at work in our lives, still doing a thing within us, still changing us slowly and quietly, all of which comes from that long obedience in the same direction, the doing of what we can do for our spirits, our souls, day in and day out. If we think we’re going to get in the way of God’s work within us, with all of our efforts to self-sabotage that work, wittingly or unwittingly, we are going to find that we can’t get in the way of what God is doing within us.
The apostle Paul, in the New Testament passage we heard a few minutes ago, seems to be pointing us in that direction as well, this idea that God will do what God needs to do in our lives, on God’s timing, and not necessarily on our timing. Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth was written to a church in turmoil in the city of Corinth. It should be remembered that something like 90% of the New Testament letters are written responses to churches and Christians who were in the midst of some sort of controversy or craziness. In this letter, Paul has spent time telling them about spiritual gifts, and reminding them about what really matters, which is love for each other, amidst all the painful disagreements. Paul then finally writes what we just heard this morning—he begins to write to them about resurrection of the Christ, and about the larger resurrection of the dead—for him, both of those realities are what make life worth living, a reminder to the church at Corinth that the end of the story, the end of every story and any story, the end of the story is life, it is resurrection, and not death; the end of it all is hope, not hopelessness. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the church, once said, something to the effect “that “this is not the end…but it is the road…”
But what I love is that moment where Paul is trying to get them to acknowledge him as someone worthy of being listened to—“listen,” he seems to be saying, “I may not be as close to the events of Christ’s resurrection as others, there were others who gave witness to Jesus before me, and God knows I’ve persecuted the church early on, so I admit I lack a lot of the moral authority that others may have…” Paul is being very humble here, I think, because he knows that they know he was once on the other side, with those folks who were pretty hostile to the growing church. But then he writes this line, something that just stood out when I first read it: I am what I am by God’s grace, and God’s grace hasn’t been for nothing. How incredible—“grace has done its work in me,” he seems to be saying, “though it took its time, and will take even more time in the future, but it was a grace that has done what it was supposed to do, at least for this very moment, and it surely was not a grace that was thrown away, because God knew what he was doing.” Paul simply reminds them at Corinth that he is where he is supposed to be, at this moment, that he is who he is, in that moment, because that is who grace has shaped and molded and crafted him to be. It may not be where he needs to be tomorrow, he may not be the man he is meant to be tomorrow, a greater person of faith. In fact, grace may shape him differently tomorrow, or it may smooth out the edges that need to be smoothed out, but at least for this very moment, writing on some ancient parchment thousands of years ago, he can say to them, honestly and truthfully, this is who God’s grace has shaped me to be, at least for this day – and tomorrow God grace with surely shape me to be the person I need to be for tomorrow. I may not be where I need to be, but I am where I am supposed to be, at least for this very brief moment—the grace given to him, to us, the grace found in our past, that grace God has given to him and us has not been for nothing. Grace is never for nothing, and the grace that slowly shaped us to be who we are today has a purpose – and that purpose is for the present, though we rarely discover that truth until that moment, until the now, when we see where God had given grace in the past so we can handle this challenges, the blessings of this moment.
My goodness, though, this slow working grace that happens despite all the things I do to block it, or all the failed plans to be more spiritual, it sure takes a long time, too long for my taste. I may be what I need to be for this moment, I may be aware that I am what I am by God’s grace, but, well, I wish I was more than I at am this moment. Grace works on its own time, of course. It did for Paul—grace had to work long and hard on him—it takes a lot of grace to get from stoning Christians like Stephen when he was younger, when he was persecuting the church, to the point of being the greatest missionary the church has ever known. Grace took its time with Paul, and grace takes it time with us, but it always gets there, it always gets to the place where it is supposed to be, to the nook and crannies of our lives, even those places where we don’t want it to get to. I suppose the key to being changed, is not so much “a doing of something”—I mean after all, grace is not given to you and I because of anything, of something we do—it is a complete gift, so much so that we don’t even need to recognize the gift we’ve been given. The giver of this gift has no need for us to acknowledge it—no thank you cards are required, or expected, or even needed. And that also means that we’re not going to get double grace if we work double hard on our spiritual lives—Paul said he worked hardier because he was not like those early disciples who knew Jesus first hand, but it was, in fact, the free gift of grace inside him that worked harder in him, not he himself. If anything, our Christian faith reminds us that our stories as people of faith are not stories of what we have done, but, rather, they ought to be stories about what God has done in us, and through us, despite our best efforts to get in the way.
So, maybe the one thing we are asked to do, I believe, is not much of anything, it is not really a doing. No, friends, maybe, it is not the working hard on our spiritual lives that will change us; it is not our determination that will give us the change we are desperately want in our lives. That work of transformation is God’s fierce and gentle work in us, work that will last a lifetime, work that continue even into eternity. The work of transformation of us is God’s job, and letting go of the lists of things we are determined to change is perhaps the only thing asked of us, or at least that is what I think we are asked by God. Now, Paul does say that he tried harder, because he felt himself to be a nobody compared to the disciples who had direct contact with Jesus while he was here on earth – but he says that it wasn’t his trying harder that gave him what he has now, the spirituality he now possesses, but it was God’s grace within him that has done it, that has changed him into the person he has become. Like Paul, I’m not saying give up all your efforts to deepen your relationship with God or becoming a better or more just person – in fact, keep doing, keep working on it, but let’s be gentle with ourselves when it doesn’t quite work out, because, in the end, God will get her way with us, and we will grow into wisdom, courage, and hope, however imperfectly.
In my best moments, this gives me hope, and perhaps it gives you hope as well. We are not where we want to be, or hoped to be, but we are where God’s grace has brought us – I am what I am by God’s grace. I wish I was a better at so many things, more grounded in works of compassion and justice. I wish I was more committed to so many things, doing better, being better, but I am not where I want to be. But where I am right now, where we are right now, is not where we were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I know that truth when I sift through my over 37 years of being consciously Christian, of realizing that God’s grace really has done a work within me, that I am more thoughtful, more kind, more generous, more hopeful, and more just and open to God’s work in the world. I understand my racism so much better, I understand my sexism so much better, I understand my classism better, I even understand my own homophobia better, because God’s grace keeps opening up my heart more, bit by bit, time after time. Think of what you have left behind, the ways you’ve grown over the years, the injustices you now understand, the work you are now doing to fight those injustices, however much, however little. Even if we just half-way open our lives to God, God will slip through the doors, and change us, and change the world around us, slowly and in small amounts, of course. Nothing is harder for God or for us than changing the human heart, absolutely nothing, especially the changing of our own stubborn hearts, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that such transformation takes time, and is slow and tedious, and takes years, even for God. So, when we feel as if we’re not the people we had hoped to be, or even needed to be, I ask you to be gentle with yourself, to remember that God is still doing something within us. Yes, we wish it was faster or more complete, but who we are right now, all the progress we’ve made, big or small, over the years, it was no easy thing, because our hearts are not easy to change. And yet, they have changed, and they will continue to change, because grace won’t give up on us, even when we want to give up on ourselves. Amen.