“BE BOLD! BE AN
INVITER!”
Dr. Stephen D.
Jones
Second Baptist Church, St. Louis, MO
January 13, 2008
Text: Mark 1:16-20
You are a person of
spiritual power! You may not realize it. Most of us don’t. You may not engage
it. Most of us don’t. But you are a spiritual person; not because you are in
worship this morning, but because you are a human being. You have the power to
interact with the universe on a spiritual, meaning-seeking basis. You have the
power to develop your own unique spirituality. You have the power to engage
others on a spiritual level. And you have the power to relate to God
spiritually. You have a spiritual consciousness, a way of interacting with the
world and with yourself. You have a spiritual dialogue going on within yourself
every day of your life, unless, of course, you shut it down.
Our spirituality is
one way of connecting with the universe. It isn’t the only way. You can connect
physically, superficially, scientifically, quantitatively, culturally, or
intellectually. Spirituality is the deepest connection to yourself, to others
and to God.
Spirituality is
power. Spirituality is more than physical power, brute strength, mechanical
power, atomic power, nuclear power or romantic power. Jesus said, “If you have
the faith of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move,’ and it will
move! Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20f). That is spiritual
power.
Jesus was speaking
in allegory. Spiritual power doesn’t cause the Rocky Mountains to change places
with the Allegheny Mountains, but it can and does move mountains of guilt,
mountains of shame, mountains of arrogance, mountains of bigotry, mountains of
grief, mountains of fear.
I once went to a
community organizing training event and one of the trainers, Greg Galluzo, said,
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be so brilliant, so able, so talented, so lovely,
so fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be!
You are a child of God!
Your playing ‘small’ doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that other people won’t feel
insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It’s not just in some
of us, but in all of us.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to
do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence liberates others.” (Greg
Galluzo, National Gamaliel Foundation Clergy Gathering,
Chicago, May, 2001)
Greg is right. Most
of us play small. We shrink down so as not to be noticed. So as not to stand
out. So as not to make big mistakes. I did that so often in the classroom. When
I didn’t want to be called on, I looked down, looked away. We think we can
handle small mistakes, barely noticeable to others. Of course, by not risking
much, we don’t gain much either. And that’s the price we’re willing to pay. We
play small so that the stakes of our lives become almost trivial. We live in
small marriages and we pursue small careers and if we dream at all, they are
small dreams. We give up our voice so as not to speak before others. We give up
our place, so as not to appear before others. We give up authentic relationships
so that others will not know us as we are. We shrink back and hide behind
pretense and façade, and we fear others “finding out” about us. Sometimes we
fear that they will find out something we have done or thought or sought that is
bad. But just as often, we fear that they will discover our goodness, our
strengths, our giftedness, our resources, our personal power. If they discover
that I can sing, they won’t let up until I join the choir, or worse, sing a
solo. If they discover my calling, they might expect a great deal from me.
In my first
pastorate, I was a Christian education specialist for two congregations and for
a campus ministry at the university of Colorado. I really didn’t enjoy
preaching, and didn’t see myself as a preacher. I believed my worship professor
in seminary who taught, “Preaching won’t be around in another ten years. It’s
archaic. It’s out of date.” I would have far rather interacted with people in
small groups. I didn’t even call myself pastor. I gave myself the title,
“Enabler.” But my pastoral colleague went on a three-month sabbatical and it
fell to me to preach twelve Sundays in a row. I probably hadn’t preached twelve
times in my life by that point.
I began preaching
every Sunday, and people began responding in ways I hadn’t anticipated. For the
first time, I sensed the power of preaching in people’s lives. One friend, Sid,
responded almost at the beginning of the summer to my preaching. He moved from
the back row of the sanctuary, where he had always sat, to the front row. To
this day, if I went back to preach at that church, and Sid was there, he would
uncharacteristically move to the front pew.
Sid and others were
inviting me to claim my gifts, to claim a role, to be a preacher, a pastor. They
were inviting me to exercise public gifts and take risks from the pulpit. They
were challenging me to proclaim my faith more widely, more broadly, more boldly.
I recall about the third sermon of the summer, I wasn’t sure I liked what was
happening. People were responding to the sermons I was preaching more than I
wanted. I just wanted to get through the 12 sermons and get back to my ministry
as it was. To my life as it was. And they weren’t going to let it alone.
They were my
Inviters. If they hadn’t invited me, I doubt that I would be your pastor today.
Who have been your Inviters?
Sometimes, it seems
like our lives are lived inside closed rooms. My daughter during one summer took
care of a special needs child. To keep him from wandering away, the inside door
handle of his room is one you can turn and turn, twirl if you like, but it won’t
open the door. Only someone on the outside can turn the handle and open the
door. Our lives are like that. There are some doors we can open on our own. But
many of the closed doors in our lives require others to at least turn the
handle. We try to turn the handle on our own and it just turns and turns.
There are inviters.
Maybe some teachers in your life. Maybe some pastors. Maybe some friends. Maybe
some mentors. Maybe some authors. Maybe a poet. Maybe some singers. Maybe a
parent. Maybe a child.
Inviters turn the
handle and open the closed doors of our lives and they make all the difference.
Inviters don’t force us to do anything. They make things possible. They offer
new horizons, but they don’t occupy them for us. They may challenge, but they
rarely shove. If they push too hard, too long, they overtake us, they overwhelm
us. And they are no longer inviters.
We are not called
to be crusaders. We are called to be inviters. The world has too many crusaders
– people who know what’s best for others and force their way upon them.
For a majority of
people in this church, we must overcome a hesitancy to speak openly about our
faith. We tend to view faith as a private matter, an individualistic pursuit.
Some here were raised in a crusading church, where people were in your faces
crowding you to make decisions that were not your own. The message was the same,
week after week, that there are three steps to following Jesus, or four laws, or
one plan. And if you accept it you have eternal life in paradise and if you
reject it you will face eternity in hell.
For some of us, it
never seemed quite that simple, nor did faith seem quite that scripted. There
were more nuances to faith, more questions that deserved our attention, and the
three steps, the four laws, the one plan, the pyramid of neatly stacked
doctrines didn’t quite connect with us.
Evangelicals invite
others to follow Jesus and the more progressive crowd, like most of us, don’t.
We let it be. We let you be. We don’t get in your face. And we allow you to work
out your faith without interference. We stay out of your path. The last thing
we would do is invite you to deeper faith, to spirituality. That’s too
intrusive, too pushy, too presumptive.
Yet, in rebelling
against those who try to push others to say it their way, do it their way, we do
not have to go to such a “hands off” extreme. Many of us, including myself, have
over-reacted. And we’ve left people in closed-up dark places unable to turn the
handle of the door.
You are a person
with spiritual power. And spiritually, you can connect with others around you.
Spiritually, you can see things within them that they often cannot see.
As a preacher of
the Gospel, I boldly invite you to deeper faith in Jesus Christ this morning. I
don’t want to push you into my spirituality. I invite you into yours. I invite
you to take the next step of faith to which God leads and calls.
But I am much more
bold here in this pulpit than I am in daily living. I stumble and become just as
tongue-tied. Yet, if only the people who do the inviting are the hard-selling
crusaders, who invites people like you and me to deeper expressions of
spirituality? The crusaders can’t reach us. Who can?
I am convinced
there is a large number of people out there, all around us, waiting for someone
like us to issue a gentle invitation to faith, the kind of faith we practice
here at Second Baptist Church.There are people anxious to experience faith in a
church respectful of their questions. There are people anxious to search
spiritually in an environment that is open and not closed off. There are people
anxious to explore spirituality in a church accepting of their differences.
There are people anxious to meet Christ in a church where gender equality is
taken for granted. There are people anxious to meet Christ in an environment of
soul liberty. There are people anxious to walk beside you and me on our faith
walks if only we will invite them.
But you likely
won’t invite them until you become convinced that you are a person of spiritual
power and that your spirituality is worthy of their spirituality. Many of us
diminish our spirituality, we have low spiritual esteem.
On many Sundays, in
this sanctuary, one or more new persons come here because of their spiritual
search. By the way we meet and greet them, we can connect with them spiritually.
They rarely come for institutional reasons. They come for spiritual reasons.
They don’t come for membership cards. They come to explore and deepen their
faith.
In each of our
lives, there are people watching us. There are people who are close to us who
are waiting for an invitation to explore their spirituality. There are people
close to us who desire a spiritual dialogue. There are people around us who are
waiting for us to turn the handle and open the door and help them out of the
closed-off places of their lives.
Jesus was an
inviter. If he did anything at all, he invited people to become spiritually
powerful. He invited them into the life of the Spirit. He invited them to
explore faith in new and fresh ways. He didn’t pursue people. He didn’t crusade
people. He invited them. It is what he did with Simon and Andrew. It is what he
did with James and John. Walking along the seashore, he interrupted their daily
routines and he invited them to follow him into a deeper spiritual walk. And you
know what, they dropped their nets and followed him.
Your relatives,
your neighbors, your colleagues at work, your long-time friends, many of them
live in closed-up and dark rooms. But they are spiritual persons and they have
spiritual power at their disposal.
I can hear you say
back to me, “But I don’t have it all together. I’m no faith role model. I’m just
a normal, average church member.” That is when it is time to go back to where we
began, “You are a person of spiritual power.”
We don’t offer
complete answers to people. We aren’t paradigms of Finished Faith. We, too, are
people on the journey. But we are people on the journey capable of having
spiritual conversations with others and capable of inviting others to a
spiritual walk with us. The invitation isn’t, “Come and be like me.” The
invitation is, “Come and join me as we walk together, discover together, pray
together and grow in the Spirit together.” You can even say, “I know a place
where people engage each other spiritually, week in and week out.”
You and I are
called to be inviters. We are called to turn the handle so that others can open
the door and in so doing, discover God in their lives.
“It
only takes a spark to get a fire going
And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing
That’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it
You spread this love to everyone, you want to pass it on.”
(from
“Pass it on,” by Kurt Kaiser, 1969)
Who, around you, is
waiting for your invitation?
Be Bold! Be an
inviter! Amen.
