SLOW DOWN AND BE KNOWN
Dr. Stephen D. Jones
Second Baptist Church, St. Louis
December 30, 2007
Text: Isaiah 61:1-6
Be known. You have
to allow yourself to be known. You can lock others out. You can keep them at a
safe distance. We all do this to some extent. It’s a way of protecting
ourselves. The more closed off we are, the less vulnerable. And usually, it is
the hurt of the past that causes us to shut down and close off.
Be known. It is a
choice.
A year or so ago, I
officiated at the funeral of a man whom I truly got to know in his dying. He
chose to reveal himself to me in ways he had not to others, even his family. And
upon his death, I recall sharing some stories about their father or husband that
they themselves had never heard. It grieved them that I, as an outsider, had
been let into his confidence, but I also shared stories they desperately wanted
to hear.
When you look at my
resume, you really know very little about me. You can see the positions I have
filled, the places I’ve lived, the education I’ve earned, but you learn little
about me.
If we aren’t known
to each other, we don’t really matter to each other. We are expendable. I can be
careless about you if I don’t know you. On the other hand, if I truly know you,
I tend to care about you and respond to you.
And yet we live in
an anonymous society. I happen to love little hardware stores. I never know how
to describe what it is I am looking for when I go into a hardware store. I’m
looking for some kind of a little “gizmo.” So, when I go into one of the big box
hardware and lumber stores, I get lost wandering those massive aisles trying to
find my ill-described item. I’m such an amateur at fix-it projects. I’ve found
that it’s usually different in a family-owned hardware store. The staff has
usually worked there for eons. They know every shelf, every aisle, every
short-cut solution to my problem. And those hardware stores are going out of
business because they cannot compete with the low prices of the big box
stores. I just learned from my young neighbor last week that we have a family
hardware store in our neighborhood and I’m just itching to find a reason to go
there. Eventually, I will get to know them because I suspect they will become my
home improvement advisors.
But my neighbor
and me are likely dinosaurs because the wave of the future is the huge
mega-sized anonymous stores.
And that is a
parable on our society. We like mega-sized department stores, mega-sized grocery
stores, mega-sized schools, mega-sized athletic events and mega-sized
churches. We like them because we can remain anonymous, private, and withheld if
we so choose. The problem with visiting Second Baptist Church is that you stick
out as a visitor. You can’t hide among 80 people! You can’t walk in, sit down,
check it out and leave without personal engagement. Someone will ask you your
name or where you live. Someone will engage you personally. And you would think:
Wow! That’s fantastic! That is how it should be. But, in point of fact, today,
our society is becoming more individualistic, less communal, and more
anonymous. And people tend to stay away from places where they have to make
themselves known.
As I look out the
side window of my house, I am probably ten feet from my neighbor’s house. I have
never seen anyone come or go from that house. I see lights on at night, but the
shades are completely drawn. I have never seen the garage open or close, or a
door open or close, or a window shade open or close. Who is my neighbor? I don’t
have the slightest idea, man or woman, young or old, black or white, gay or
straight, single or partnered, I have no idea who lives there. And
unfortunately, that describes a common reality in modern urban society. We live
side by side but we don’t know one another.
My wife has been
chiding me for not yet walking down the street five doors and introducing myself
to the parish priest who lives there. I had all these grandiose plans to get to
know him and befriend him and I have yet to knock on his door. Something there
is afoot in our society that causes us to be reticent when it comes to getting
to know one another.
A really loving
person is not someone who thrusts themselves on to others, but someone who is
willing to be known, someone who communicates, “If you want to get to know me, I
am available, I am willing, I am ready.” That is rare, but it is also an example
of hospitality and compassion.
To slow down and be
known by others is, I believe, the call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it is
found in the very message of the season of Epiphany when we emphasize God’s
revelation.
There are world
religions that teach that God is utter mystery, nothing but mystery. God is the
Unknowable. Christianity is unique as a Revealed Religion. Revelation plays a
unique role as Jesus becomes the Revelation of God.
Jesus reveals
God. That’s about the best three-word explanation of Christian theology. Jesus
reveals God. Note that Jesus doesn’t replace God. Jesus doesn’t usurp
God. Jesus isn’t identical to God. But Jesus reveals God. Jesus is a window to
God. In the Bible, revelation is God’s initiative. We don’t learn of God as much
by our own search as by God’s self-revelation.
Those who know God
best aren’t the spiritual geniuses who can design their way to God, but the
receptive ones who can receive God’s revelation.
The Bible uses a
number of words for this central concept: revelation, uncover, disclose, make
manifest, make known, embody, incarnate, Emmanuel.
One scholar has
said, “The Hebrew and Christian religions are both described as ‘revealed
religions,’ in the sense that they both claim that they are what they are
because God has himself taken the initiative and revealed himself rather than
because man, by his own searching, has discovered the truth” Vol. 4, p. 55,
Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. And the same could be said for Islam.
As the revelation
of God, Jesus opens the door and helps us see the reality of God clearer. No
other religion makes such a claim, and it is this claim by Christians that meets
the most strenuous objection in other religions. Jews and Muslims alike reject
the idea that Jesus is God’s primary revelation.
Christian
theologian Karl Barth made the famous assertion that “God is wholly other.” And
for many of us we consider God “out there,” beyond the known universe, the most
traditional thinking that God is “up in heaven.” Every time the weather turns
miserable, someone asks if I can “talk to the Man Upstairs.” The more we know
about the universe, the deeper we peer into space, the further and more remote
God becomes.
A kindergarten
teacher was walking around the room observing his classroom while the children
were drawing free-style at their desks. As he got to one little girl who was
working diligently, he asked her about her drawing. The little kindergartner
replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what
God looks like.” Without missing a beat, the little girl said, “Well, they will
when I’m done.”
Catholic monk
Thomas Merton approached this from a different vantage. Merton said, “Life is
this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God
is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It
is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it
sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in
everything—in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very
obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without
Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it” (from an
audiotape of Merton by David McConnell, 1965).
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning wrote,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush alive with God.
Only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”
Aurora Leigh, book 7, Lines
821-24, originally published in 1857, p. 487, Ohio University Press)
Marcus Borg writes,
“A couple of years ago I overhead the meeting of the worship committee in an
Episcopal church. They were talking about the need to introduce more inclusive
language into the Sunday services. All agreed that the exclusive use of male
pronouns for God needed to be changed, but they were perplexed about how to do
it. Suggestions to replace ‘he’ and ‘she’ or to alternate ‘he’ and ‘she’ were
rejected as inappropriate or awkward. Then someone said, ‘Well, whatever we do,
we can’t use ‘it,’ for whatever God is, God is not an ‘it.’ A thought suddenly
occurred to me: the problem isn’t really whether to use ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘it,’;
rather, the problem is using third-person language for God. When do we use
third-person language to talk about somebody? When she or he isn’t
there. Third-person language implies absence. But if we take seriously that God
is present, the most appropriate language for God is second-person language—God
as ‘You.’ God is ‘the you’ in our midst, who knows us already and who yearns to
be known by us” (p. 49-50, The God We Never Knew).
Evangelical scholar
N.T. Wright says, “I do not think Jesus ‘knew he was God’ in the same sense that
one knows one is tired or happy, male or female. He did not sit back and say to
himself, ‘Well, I never! I’m the second person of the Trinity!’ Rather, as part
of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in
confrontation, agonized over in. . .doubt, and implemented in action, Jesus
believed he had to do and be. . .that which according to scripture only YHWH
himself could do and be” (p. 166, The Meaning of Jesus, Two Visions).
In other words,
Jesus followed his call from God and the outcome of his life, death and
resurrection is that he revealed God’s truest self to humankind. Jesus wanted to
be known. He didn’t want to be pigeon-holed or stereotyped and often he was
illusive with those desiring such outcomes. But he revealed himself to Mary and
Martha and Lazarus in Bethany, to the Samaritan woman at the well, to Zacchaeus
the tax collector, to the Syro-Phoenician woman who sought healing for her
daughter, to his inner disciples, and to his hometown friends in Nazareth when
he picked the text from Isaiah and revealed his mission in life, “to bring good
news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of God’s favor. . .:
(Isaiah 61:1-5)
If we approach you,
O God as wanting to be known, as choosing to disclose yourself to us, as
revealing your truest nature in Jesus Christ, then it follows that we also are
called to live a disclosed life, not a closed-up life, a revealed life, a life
that others can know. That is a godly life: a revealed life. This isn’t a
“show-y,” look-how-holy-I-am approach, but a life unafraid for others to see the
meaning and the relationship that is godly. We are not called to live in secrecy
or shrouded in cover-up, but to live our lives openly and to reveal ourselves to
others around us in appropriate and compelling ways.
You, God have made
yourself known. And you ask us to make ourselves known to you and to others.
In my most recent
pastoral article in the New Outlook, I observed how beautiful we have
made this sanctuary at Christmastime. Any who enter this room, fully decorated
for Christmas, would be struck by its beauty. But you have to come in to see
it. Outside, on the six acres around us, save for two trees and two angels and
two wreathes, one would not know it was Christmas. We didn’t decorate for the
world. We kept the beauty to ourselves. You had to come to us to see it.
As we go through
our 175th Anniversary, it will be important for us to use this year
to announce to the world our good news, our ‘take’ on the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. If we devote the year to privately celebrating among ourselves, holding
tightly our remarkable history, we will have failed.
The problem with
the wider church today is precisely this: we’re great at privacy. We’re great at
congregational fellowship. Every church says the same thing: we are a large
extended family. It is true of Second Baptist Church, and it’s true of nearly
all our neighboring churches. Even large churches strive to create small
congregations within them.
What we fail to do
as a church is turn outward. And more than anything else, that is why I have
come to be among you as your pastor: to help us turn outward. We have an
incredible fellowship within this church. Jan and I have been enamored by the
ways you love one another and the way you have loved us. We’ve been impressed by
the fun times this congregation enjoys. We have been impressed by how well you
get along and how healthy you are in terms of communication and respect for all
voices. This church works well as a small democracy.
Where we need help,
where we need to work, is in turning outward. Most people who drive by our
church, or any other church for that matter, think of that church like they
would a private club, largely closed-off from society. I’m sure if people
thought about it they know they would be welcome if they “showed up” at our door
or the door of any other church. But why would they “show up?” What reason would
they have? What would provoke them to drive onto our property and enter this
Sanctuary of the Beatitudes?
The primary way
that will happen is if they know us before they come. Let me say that again: the
primary reason visitors will come to our church is if they know us before they
come. Very few will show up with no prior knowledge or contact. They can know of
us through personal relationship with one of us from another setting, or they
can know us by reputation. They can know us by the public life we lead as a
congregation in this city and metropolis. They can know us because they learn
about our compassion in the world, our public voice to build bridges rather than
walls. They can know us because of something unique we do, something unique we
represent.
That is why our
website is one of our most important tools: because web-savvy people can “visit”
and learn of us without our knowing it.
I fully understand
as a pastor that I have not been called here to be the private chaplain of this
congregation. I cherish being with you in the hospital, walking with you through
life’s challenging and joyful transitions. But that is only part of what I have
been called to do. If I stop there, I have failed. I have been called to help
you turn outward, to help my voice lift up your public voice, as we once again
become known in ecumenical and interfaith relations, in peace and justice
issues, in issues that block St. Louis from becoming God’s Beloved Community.
Churches today have
tended to withhold the Good News instead of proclaim it. Just because we don’t
like the way that the Good News has often been proclaimed by others does not
mean that we should be silent. We must find our public voice. We must find our
way of showing compassion for the world.
If I have
confidence in anything, it is that we can express our public voice together. And
as we do so, that will make all the difference.
As God has revealed
God’s own self, so will we reveal ourselves and the communal values and good
news that we represent to the surrounding world.
Just as Epiphany
follows Christmas in the church’s liturgical calendar, in Greek, the word,
Epiphany means “appearance” or “manifestation” and is the season to celebrate
the revelation of God in the person of Jesus. Epiphany celebrates when God “went
public” in the story of nativity, disclosing God’s loving nature for all to
see. We are awed by the story of nativity not only for the human characters in
the story, Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the Wise Sages from the East, but also
for God’s role in the story, through angels and angelic hosts and God’s
orchestrating stars and astrologers, all so that God could be disclosed to us.
I remember well my
first sermons preached in this pulpit just last Summer. I didn’t know you and
you didn’t know me and as I was forming my first impressions of you, I was
keenly aware you were forming your first impressions of me. The most difficult
preaching is to preach to people whom you don’t know. The best preaching isn’t
done on the television. The best preaching is done in local congregations where
pastor and people know one another well, where they have revealed themselves to
each other, and in so doing, the preaching becomes a richer articulation of
God’s self-disclosure.
This is the way it
is supposed to be: God has first revealed Godself to us. What good news: God
wants to be known! And, as you have revealed yourself to us, O God, so are we to
reveal ourselves to one another. We are to enter into each others’ lives. We are
to enter into the lives of others around us, even strangers, even next-door
neighbors, even that hard-to-get-to-know colleague.
In this Christmas
season, let us slow down to know and be known just as God has done in Jesus
Christ. Amen.
