Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Sermon--If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me (John 10:31–42)

If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me.

This begs the question, what am I doing?

Calling attention to our actions can feel treacherous.  It is easy to think, “Well sure Jesus, of course YOU want everyone to look at your actions—you’ve been lauded by the Church as THE moral exemplar!”

Still, Jesus heals on the Sabbath, an action that was rebuked….
He spoke with people that he wasn’t supposed to speak to…
He lost his temper at the temple…
And he struggled with his calling at Gethsemane. 

He may be our moral exemplar, but he calls us to look at his actions, even though his actions were controversial, and put him at odds with society’s norms.

I’ve often thought about how seminary communities are basically a sociological phenomena.  How on earth do we end up coexisting even semi peacefully when almost everyone here wants to be a leader?  How do we balance power and authority, identity, and zealous belief in God without consistently losing it on each other?

I ask this because in today’s Gospel, when Jesus proclaims his true identity, he is almost stoned for blasphemy, as if his identity is a lie.  Talk about having a hard time claiming your pastoral identity.  I can’t imagine who I would be right now if every time I started to tell my call story, I looked up and all my classmates were holding stones. 

Jesus had to proclaim his authority amongst people who only seem to care about power.  And power and authority are set at odds with one another.  I’d go so far as to say that we live in a power hungry society, and that our calling as disciples is to show that there is power in weakness, because our weakness is redeemed.

Very truly I tell you, the hardest thing I’ve done in seminary is claim my identity as a deacon and future priest.  It isn’t a huge a secret anymore that my GOE scores devastated me.  As a person who has been in school since five, I’ve spent most of my life placing my identity in letter grades and percentages.

I felt defined, and the definition wasn’t anything I was happy with.

The day after finding out my scores, I received a call from my field ed parish.  All the clergy were gone, except me.  A parishioner’s mother was very ill, near death, and the family wanted communion.  Dragging myself out of the hole of bad grades and pity that only I had dug for myself, I set out to the hospital, with my communion kit.

And that’s when I REALLY became a deacon.  I may not be able to always write a perfect essay, but God has given me the strength to go into a hospital and love a family and pray for the dying and deliver the body and blood of Christ. 

And in reality, that’s actually what I want to do.  What I REALLY want to do is serve Christ.  And what I really want to feel bad about is when I serve myself rather than God.  Because my identity isn’t so much tied up into my words anymore—the words in my essays. 

My identity is wrapped up in what I’m doing. 

My identity is wrapped up in my worship,
my prayer,
my relationships with all of you,
my relationship with the Episcopal Church,
the people in hospitals who need communion,
the programs in the Church that I’m called to give my time to,
the people on the street that need food,
the people on the street that need company,
and the time I set aside for getting to know myself better as I’m formed.

This is all warm and fuzzy to me, until I look up and picture people with stones in their hands.  Because that’s what Jesus faced when he claimed his identity, and his relationship with God. 

In proclaiming our own identity, we are called out of ourselves.  To know ourselves, we must enter the world.  Jesus could not be God’s Son in Heaven alone.  Jesus was sent, such that by entering the world, he could know himself and know God.

Stephen Colbert, of The Colbert Report, is a Roman Catholic and one of his quotes has been going around, and I can’t stop thinking about it. 

He says, “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”

I love this quote, because it gives us a choice.  It doesn’t say: “Go do this.”  Instead it says, look at your actions and recognize their implications.  It says—What are you doing?  What are your concerns?  Are you willing to make Jesus into someone like you, rather than making yourself into someone like Jesus?  What is your identity? 

Part of understanding our own identity, is exiting ourselves long enough to let the rest of world in.  We’ve either got to DO the things we profess, or we’ve got to admit that we don’t want to do it.  The Jews weren’t going to stone Jesus for his good works.  His good works were fine.  It was the power and authority that caused concern.

“If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” 

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”

If we’re not living into the Gospel, then I don’t know if we offer the world the sort of truth that anyone will ever believe in. 

But if we do live into the Gospel, even though we struggle with the “stuff” of the Church—infant baptism, gay marriage, universal healthcare, immaculate conception, works righteousness, and many more—

Even though we struggle with the “stuff” of the church, the actions of living into the Gospel are something to believe in.  And in seeing us, doing the works of the Father, others may know and understand that Christ is in us, and we are in Christ.

So claim your identity as a child of God. 
Let your works be holy. 
Pray. 
Love one another. 
Feed the hungry, whatever their hunger might be. 
Don’t pick up stones. 
Love yourself. 
Do the works of God, so that others may believe.

Amen.

My final sermon in Christ Chapel, as a seminarian.  From now on, any sermons there will be as a visitor... :)