3
Lent; Yr. C, February 17, 2013
Exodus
3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-90
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
On Friday at Sutherland High School, where my
wife Nancy teaches, there was an assembly for the students. The boys and girls were separated. Nancy went to the girls’ presentation. It was about body image and eating
disorders. The presenter had suffered
with anorexia as a high school student herself.
She showed the girls a video of young girls, eight, nine and ten years
old saying things like: Am I too fat? Am I pretty? The presenter asked the girls how they would
answer these questions if the girl in the video had been their younger
sister. One girl raised her hand and
said, “I’d tell her she was perfect.”
The presenter said, “That’s what you should say to everyone you
love. That’s what you should say to yourself.”
She’s
absolutely right.
In
my experience, too often we judge our own worthiness on the way we see
ourselves in comparison to others. We
look at people we think are successful, or smart, or artistic, or beautiful, or
athletic and we compare ourselves to them.
That’s
how I learned that I wasn’t
very artistic in elementary school. It
wasn’t
because I had a teacher who told me so.
It was because I looked around at everyone else’s work, and mine never seemed to
measure up to the standard of others.
Mine always looked less polished, less balanced, less like the model
that was presented. So I concluded that
I wasn’t
very “artistic”.
I
held onto that assessment of my ability for a long time, until I began
teaching. Then I had a room with walls
that were lined with bulletin boards and I was expected to fill them with
something appealing. I cringed as I
thought of the idea of having to “design” something attractive on my own. “It’s not my strong point”, I complained in my head as my
stomach tied itself up in knots. I was a
math and science teacher. I didn’t do the cut and color and paste
stuff. But there I was, standing in the
middle of a room with empty walls. I
wasn’t
even sure how to begin, but I did …
because in several days, that room was going to have students in it. It couldn’t be empty. Who am
I to do this, I thought? Well, here I am, like it or not.
Maybe
it was the same for Moses. God needed
someone to be his voice in conversation with pharaoh in Egypt. Moses let himself be drawn to a burning bush,
and in that God selected him to be that voice.
Moses is stunned. Moses knew he wasn’t good enough. Who am
I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Moses knows he doesn’t have any authority with the
people. He says, “If I come to the Israelites and say
to them, ‘The
God of your ancestors has sent me to you’,
and they ask me, “What
is his name?”
what shall I say to them?” God says, I am who I am. Tell them, “I
am has sent me to you.” That sounds crazy to us. What do you mean “I am who I am”?
Couldn’t
we all say that? I don’t think so … because I’m not sure we really know who we
are! I know I didn’t.
In fact, in many ways I know I still don’t.
To
my complete surprise, that first teaching experience taught me that I am
actually quite creative. I actually
enjoyed standing in front of those empty boards once I got past the terror of
it. I liked imagining
possibilities. I liked figuring out how
to put what I imagined in my head onto that flat surface. I didn’t
become an artist that year, but I discovered that what I had come to accept
about myself just wasn’t
true. Who would have guessed? I was a very creative person AND I enjoyed
bringing things alive with paper and tape and color and shapes! The message I had been hearing in my head all
those years wasn’t
really true. Instead of “You’re terrible at art”, I started to hear something like “Maybe I’m not so bad at this kind of thing.”
Most
of us don’t
realize that deep down inside we are more than we know. We don’t
believe that we have been made worthy through Jesus. Sure, sometimes we drive one another
crazy. Sometimes we make poor
choices. Sometimes we act
selfishly. We have gifts and talents
that we ignore, or that we’re
even afraid to discover. But through
Christ, we are made worthy in spite of, and because of, all of it. Humanity is flawed and loved. We are filled with foibles and cherished
beyond our wildest dreams. Jesus was the
embodiment of that truth.
God
tells Moses, I am the one who knows who I am.
I know myself inside and out. I
am the one who accepts myself for who I am.
I need no cover ups, no white washing, no hint of make up. I am perfectly comfortable with myself. What you see is what you get. What I say is truth. What I speak becomes reality. That’s
powerful stuff. How many of us can say, “I am perfectly comfortable with who I
am”? Clearly, Moses could not, nor could many of
our other Biblical heroes when they are called to act. But God doesn’t let Moses, or us, off the hook that
easily, because God knows us as well as God knows God’s self. We have nothing to hide, because nothing can
be hidden. God knows that there is more
to Moses than Moses knows himself. So
God pushes him to accept his call. God
knows us better than we can know ourselves.
God calls us out too, often long after we expect something to happen.
God
plants us in a place, a place where we have the possibility of flourishing, even
if our fruits are not always immediately apparent. Many people have achieved their dreams later [in] life. [In truth] Success
stories can be achieved at any age.
As we live longer and longer, the ages between 50 and 80 is becoming a
time for reinventing ourselves, pursuing our dreams and coming into our own
terms of self understanding. Around the age of 50, people are discovering a
renewed creativity. Empowered by greater
life experiences, an inner freedom, and better confidence, many people are able
to blossom. The years have enabled them to turn their long delayed seeds of
ideas into a garden of dreams.[1]
At least that’s what a blogger on hubpages.com
suggests.
The author goes on to give examples. Harlan David Sanders was 65 years old when he
started Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ray Kroc
was 52 years old when he bought a hamburger stand from the MacDonald brothers
in San Bernadino, CA and started what is now a worldwide franchise. Golda Meir was 70 years old when she became
the 4th prime minister of Israel, and their first woman head of state. In 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected president
of South Africa at the age of 74. At 51
years old Julia Child gained television fame with her own cooking show.
At 69, she co-founded the American Institute of Wine and Food. In 1984, at the age of 72, she completed the
last of a series of six cooking videos.[2] Sometimes our best gifts take time to mature,
and they require a lifetime of spiritual tilling and lots of encouragement in
order to produce fruit.
God
waits on us. God gives us that extra
year, or two or twenty … because God knows our full potential. Our challenge is to be as patient with
ourselves as God is with us. Our
challenge is to accept ourselves for the imperfect beings that we are, and to
learn to live in peace with that, while striving to walk “the way of Christ”
more faithfully each day. The only real
way we can be “perfect” is to be perfectly our own unique self. Are you pretty enough? Are you smart enough? Are you talented enough? Are you brave enough? Are you good enough? God answers us with a resounding “YES. Yes”, God says, “you are perfect, perfectly
you … which is exactly the way I created
you.”
So
do not fear. Give yourself a break. Let God’s love free you to love yourself and
to try things that are calling you into new places. As our brother St. Paul said, we all eat the same spiritual food and the
same spiritual drink. We are all
nourished by the same God. We have the
bread and the wine to share every week at this table, and we have one
another. God is faithful. That is enough.
Amen.
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