Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · February 11, 2007
Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
Lord, you are the source of all compassion! For when we, your people, suffer in darkness, you bring forth light and life. The warmth of your love for us melts away fear and sadness. Be with us this hour, we pray, as we lift up, celebrate, and receive your gifts of caring compassion. Amen.
Scripture
Genesis 1:24-2:24
Made For Each Other
Rick Frost
Did you hear it? Did you hear it in the Scripture today? We were made for each other. That’s right. A lot of people don’t know that. We were made for each other. We can’t help it. Our Scripture says it’s the way we were made. God made us to live in relationships. It seems that God, in God’s wisdom, designed us humans to find our purpose in life – the meaning in our lives – not simply in ourselves, but in one another. In the sharing and the meaningful purposes of relating to our spiritual Creator, the purposes and meaning that come from being in relationships in a family, a neighborhood, a workplace, a community, a nation, even the entire planet. We all were made for each other.
Now, the sequel to that is, as everyone in this room knows, making relationships work, not to mention flourish, is often remarkably difficult. It is sometimes more difficult than many of us had ever imagined.
In our story, in your story, in my story, the story that is ours that goes all the way back to Genesis, all the way to the very beginning, the point was and still is that the Creator loved the world that the Creator made. The Creator looked at all the Creator had made and said, “It is good. It is very, very good.” The Creator wanted to look after it in the best possible way. To that end, the Creator placed within the created order, what the scholars like to call, a “looking-after creature.” Isn’t that a wonderful image? “A looking-after creature.”
It is a creature that would demonstrate, who would show, who would model the creation. It is a creature, which the Creator would go to work developing and making it flourish and enabling it to fulfill its purpose here in the universe. This “look-after creature” is more accurately, the family of creatures, what we call the human family, the human race. We have a job. Our job is to model, to demonstrate, to embody this interrelatedness, this mutual and fruitful knowing, this trusting, and loving, and caring for each other, which was and still is the Creator’s intention for the Creator’s creation. Wow!
Did you know that? That’s a huge task. That’s a big job. But more importantly, it’s an irresistible, enthralling, gripping definition of who we are. It’s a vision of who we are, and whose we are, and why you and I are here. My guess is they didn’t tell you that in public school. Wow!
Our failure to see that vision, our failure to know that vision, our failure to align ourselves with that vision of God’s intention for God’s creation, all the way back from the very beginning and to this very day is, quite frankly I believe, the root reason for all essential injustices that occur in this world.
It’s the root reason for the disconnect between the Spirit of the Living God and the people who inhabit this planet. It’s the root reason for the spiritual bankruptcy of our time and place, for the impoverished political agenda of this era, for the distressing, broken, disastrous moral values that plague any civilized spirit seeking to lift itself above what is barbaric.
I want you to go home with one thought today. Just one. One thought, one notion, one principle.
I went to see “Camelot” the other night. Some of you did, too. King Arthur propositioned we are made for God. That’s the bottom line. Thus, we are made for each other. Every single one of us. It’s a relationship with God first, and a relationship with others in our lives. That’s the bottom line. It’s what we Christians do. It’s part of our DNA. It’s why we have these face-to-face communities we call churches. It’s all about the caring. It’s all about Christian caring. It’s all about the distinctive caring that takes place.
Caring does not flow down from God through the ordained clergy to the people. It never has. I don’t know where that idea came from. It’s completely non-biblical. No. The caring, the power of the Spirit of the Living God, the power of the presence of the love of Jesus Christ is the power that causes care to flow among the people and out beyond just this community into the community beyond our walls. Folks, the Spirit of the Living Christ calls every single one of you and empowers every single one of you to extend Christian caring to one another and to your neighbor.
Yes, we have Stephen Ministers. Yes, they do a wonderful job. Yes, they are carefully and skillfully trained and equipped. They do a very distinctive, unique caring. I implore you. If you believe the Spirit of the Living Christ might be calling you into that ministry, and you think you have gifts for it, and you’re willing to explore that possibility with Jim and others, please do so.
But please hear this. Because you are a Christian, you are, according to Scripture, a minister. Because you believe and seek to follow Christ, you are, according to the Bible, a priest. That means that you, every single one of you, are called and empowered to give Christian, compassionate care to others. The Bible says that you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people who belong to God. It’s talking about you. Just read 1 Peter 2.
Folks, compassionate, Christian care goes on among us, and around us, and inside us, and outside this church all the time. In house, that’s what we strive to do. In a society that is reeling and ruthless, and hungry for community, and hungry to belong, and hungry to be connected with people who share the same values, the same beliefs, the same commitments, compassionate, Christian caring is what we do.
It doesn’t matter whether you are young or old, or whether you’re weak or strong, or whether you are weak or strong, or whether you are sick or healthy. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, spiritually mature or just getting started and sipping on spiritual milk. It’s what we do. Perfect? No. Absolutely not. Do we get it right every time? No way. But that’s what we strive to do.
It’s Andy Huss, 15, sitting on the front row of a mortuary chapel with his friend, John Thomas, who is also 15, as Friday we grieved the loss, and celebrated the life, and laid to rest John’s grandmother, Mary. It’s where he wanted to be with his friend. Compassionate, Christian caring.
It’s Susie fighting a fierce battle with cancer, a fight we are all earnestly praying God will empower her to win. It’s Susie, who calls up some friends that need some encouragement and she takes them out to lunch. My goodness!
It’s Ethel, a relatively newcomer here. She’s a retired nurse who walks into my office one day and asks if she can have a list of the names of the people who live in assisted living here in the community. “Can I go visit them?” she asked. And I said, “No, Ethel. You haven’t been to seminary yet.” NO! That is not what I said. I just want you to know that. “Of course, Ethel. God bless you,” and I fall at her feet to touch just the hem of her garment. She does, and God does bless her, and she goes, and she visits, and she prays with, and the people can’t wait for her next visit.
The wonderful caring in the name of Christ. The phone calls you make. The cards you create, buy, and send. It is the ministry of the casserole that we all know about, sharing with a grieving family, a disrupted group of people. It’s the prayer requests that flow in, pour in, and the quiet behind the scenes gifts of money that are offered to some in difficult times. You never know about that, but it happens.
It happens every day, 365 days a year. Now, those are the ordinary things, those things that happen every day. Then there are those extraordinary things, those ministries of compassionate, Christian caring that go on and on, the years of supporting, encouraging, and enabling refugee families escaping from other cultures, who come from different religions than ours. There is caring for persons who are struggling with AIDS, cooking and serving meals at the homeless place – the Loaves and Fishes center downtown. There is putting together the biggest garage sale in this city for the building of a Habitat House. Many of you are involved in that. That’s just for openers. The list is long, perhaps familiar to many. Compassionate, Christian caring. It’s what we do.
Let me tell you about one that you may not have heard of before.
I mean… What do you do? What do you do on your first son’s 17th birthday? A son, who, quite frankly, has been in two drug rehab programs. He outwardly values nothing other than his music and his friends. He has agreed in writing to live in your house if he remains drug free. And you just found him smoking marijuana in his bedroom once again.
He obviously doesn’t care that you care. What do you do? Well, if you are these parents, you organize a ritual of passage. I bet I could have gone all day and no one would have guessed that. A ritual of passage, that’s right. You would invite six or seven adults, all of whom have had some significant role to play in the life of your son. There are neighbors, Sunday School teachers, family members, to come to your home on a Sunday afternoon, to sit in a circle. You light a candle on the table and put your son, who has no idea what’s about to happen, in a seat of honor.
You explain to him that you’ve invited these six or seven people to come and celebrate his 17th birthday, which is today, by telling face-to-face, in the presence of all, things they perceive to be so positive about this person, their hopes for his future, and offer statements of encouragement to him for his 17th year, in writing, just in case he might want to refer to them at some later date.
The ritual begins this way. You tie a piece of yarn loosely to your wrist and to your son’s wrist. Then you offer him a pair of scissors, and you ask him to cut the ties of authority that have held him for 17 years, as a symbol of his and your acknowledgement of his freedom to choose his next steps in life. Then all of the adults, including you, the parents, share verbally with this boy, in front of everybody, the things you have come prepared to offer.
The words of encouragement are touching. They’re moving. They’re positive. They cause laughter. They cause tears. They express genuine love for this one that they’ve watched grow up. They express sincere hope for this one’s future. Through it all, the 17-year-old lad never cracks a smile, and never utters a word. Oh, he allows a few to give him a hug. He maybe shakes a hand or two. Then the ritual is over.
It’s time for dinner. But more importantly, of course, it’s time for this prodigal son to make some decisions – some hard decisions that he is going to have to live with in terms of the consequences for the rest of his life, while you, in the meantime, hope and pray that he will come to himself before he chooses to go off into the far country. Christian care giving, folks.
It’s tough sometimes. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it causes you to laugh. Sometimes it makes you feel good. Sometimes it makes you cry your eyes out.
Christian care giving. And we do it, because we were made that way. We were made for each other. It’s been that way from the beginning. It is that way today. It will be that way forever.
God, in God’s wisdom, made us to live in relationships. Making relationships work, as all of us know, can be remarkably difficult. It really helps when we learn that we are the care-givers. It’s God, and God alone, who is the cure-giver. When you know that, it frees you up to really care. You don’t have to fix it. Most of the time you can’t. But you can care.
I’m going to ask you to look this week. Be looking this week. Who is God going to place in front of every single one of us here today who needs our care? Can we give it?
And we all say together… “Amen.”
Loving God, you create us in your image, to reflect your nature. You bless us to be responsible and loving. Thank you for giving us each to the other, as we journey this road of life together. Bless us, O God; make us more like you, and we will say together, “It is good!” Amen.
