Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Spiritual Health: Setting Aside the Distractions”

Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Psalm 146; 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 7:11-17

Every Sunday morning for six years, I sat just behind him and to his right.  At about 11:30 am the choir would sing their last proud note, and the congregation would respond with either a reverent silence or a praiseful unison shout of ‘amen.’  And then he would waltz into the pulpit with his black folder in hand.  He’d thank the choir for another lovely anthem while he pulled his sermon out of the black folder.  And then he’d launch into preaching with this minister watching on from a few feet southeast.

I heard Steve Lucas preach a lot of sermons, and I learned a great deal from those sermons—even the ones I thought were boring or far too long.  I’d learned a lot about preaching from observing my pastor growing up, but from Steve I learned a lot more about how to set aside distractions and really listen for the Word of God in the message being presented.

But just like with any preacher, not everyone cared for Steve’s preaching style.  And some of them let him know about it.  Steve once preached a sermon where he slammed the Texas State Legislature for passing ridiculous legislation that dealt crushing blows to education in Texas—legislation that further divided the rich kids from the poor kids; the haves from the have-nots.  It was a bold and eloquent sermon, one that I felt confident that our Lord would be pleased with.  But later that week, Steve got a note in his box written on one of the church’s card stock post cards that said, “Sermons have no business preaching on a mixture of church and state issues.”  Of course, the note was anonymous.

Another time, Steve preached a sermon that focused on current events in our world and how they relate to biblical teachings.  He began that sermon by taking a copy of the morning’s paper and reading aloud some of the headlines.  The headlines, of course, had to do with anything from political corruption to violence in the Middle East to issues surrounding insufficient healthcare coverage.  It was a blatant, poignant reminder of the reality of our world, and it was an effective attention-getter for holding that reality in contrast with the kingdom of God and how Jesus described it.  But I heard some folks later saying, “How about Steve reading the paper from the pulpit?  That was a little weird.”

And Steve was not known for being brief.  His average length of sermon was at least 25 minutes, and I never heard the man preach for less than 20.  He was raked over the coals on that issue for his entire tenure at that church.

Steve might have preached some lackluster sermons, but he preached some brilliant ones, too.  As I sat behind him every Sunday for those six years, I couldn’t help but to think of what people might be learning or how someone’s life might be changing or even how our community and our world might be changing because of his sermons.  But distractions seemed to hold the spirit of those messages back.  Steve wasn’t distracted, the congregation was.

If that person who wrote the anonymous note about the church and state faux pas had been less focused on their style preferences in Steve’s preaching and more intent on hearing a Word about our God of justice and mercy, they might have learned something.  If the people who were snickering at Steve doing something as unconventional as reading a newspaper from a pulpit had bothered to listen to what that illustration said about what our world prioritizes and glorifies, they might have remembered to prioritize Jesus and glorify God.  And if everyone who complained about Steve’s longwinded preaching had taken the time to hear those exhaustive words that he preached, not only would the time have gone by quicker, but their lives might have encountered the Holy Spirit, too.

My friend Steve Lucas, who now pastors a UCC church in Bellevue, Washington, is just an example to point out how we in the church quibble over our preferences before we’ll seek out the authentic Word of God.  I’ve been in churches where folks are uncomfortable with children bringing in the cross to place on the altar at the start of worship because they get their little fingerprints all over the cross.  And it’s so hard to pay attention to a good sermon when you’re fixating on those greasy little fingerprints, don’t you know.

I’ve been to churches where what the pastor wears in the pulpit is more important than what he says: “I wish he’d wear a suit instead of a robe,” some say.  And in those churches, of course, it has to be a ‘he’ preaching or people might tune out.  I am so blessed to be at this church where the only criticism I get about this robe is that I should take it off in the summer time so I won’t be so hot.  I would do that right now, but then you’d see how much I’m sweating underneath this parka.

We church folk waste our time quibbling over folks like Steve and little things like children’s fingerprints and a preacher's dress code because we want to worship a perfect God.  And our desire to worship a perfect God springs from our inability to face the fact that we are not perfect.  That’s nothing more than a distraction.

Listen to some of Psalm 146 again: God remains faithful forever.  God upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.  God sets the prisoners free.  God gives sight to the blind.  God lifts up those who are bowed down.  God loves the righteous.  God watches over the alien.  God sustains the fatherless and the widow.  And on and on this God of life goes.  The essence of God is life.  God is a life-giver.  Because you live, God loves you.  And because God loves you, God doesn’t want you to ever die.

God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven means that God’s will is for everything on earth to live as it lives in heaven.  And anything contradictory to that is a distraction.  Anything that takes away life is a distraction from this life-giving God that we worship.  Anything that takes life away from our mental health, from our willpower, from our creative passion or from our certainty that we are loved by God is a distraction.  And distractions, in this respect, have no business in the church.

When the woman’s son falls ill in the story from 1 Kings, her first reaction is a distraction.  She says to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God?  Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”  Do you think God wants you to come to church so you can be reminded of your sins?  Do you think God wants for God’s messengers—like the prophet Elijah—to be reminders of how messed up we are?

No, God is a life-giving God.  Elijah knew that.  Elijah doesn’t waste time with distractions.  He doesn’t even acknowledge the woman’s question, he just says, “Give me your son,” and he takes him to an upper room, calls on the Lord and he heals her son—brings him back to life.  Then the woman says, “Now I know that you are a man of God.”  What’s unfortunate is that it took a miracle for her to see the glory of God when all she had to do was stop wasting time on distractions; the sins she was talking about that she obviously couldn’t let go of—the things that kept her from God and intent on confronting some innocent prophet named Elijah.

Distractions keep us from God, and half the time we’re the ones who make our own distractions.  The result is that we have a view of God that is incomplete.  If you are so distracted by your own shortcomings that you somehow think God will only forgive some of your sins, then you will have the same outlook on other people.  God won’t forgive me, so why should I forgive you?

If you think that God doesn’t like something about you, then you’re going to look at others suspiciously all the time.  We aren’t perfect, so we want to worship a perfect God, but we get distracted by our frustration with worlds imperfections so much that we never get so much as a taste of the perfectly Divine God.  And when we taste the Divine, then we realize that God looks at all the imperfections of this diverse world and calls them good.

Being distracted is a detriment to our spiritual health.  Jesus, when he raised the man from the dead in that little town of Nain, he wasn’t distracted by the fact that the man was in a casket.  The holiness code of that time insisted that a casket or a coffin was unclean and you shouldn’t touch it, but Jesus wasn’t focused on that creedal distraction when he put his hand on that casket.  Jesus was focused on God who lifts up those who are bowed down, God who loves the righteous, God who sustains the widow, God who remains faithful forever.  Jesus wasn’t distracted when he put his hand on that unclean casket and raised a man from the dead.  And that miracle is recorded in the Gospel of Luke so that we will not forget how important it is for us to set aside our distractions so that we can be spiritually healthy.

Now, we don’t have a prophet Elijah or a miracle-working Jesus around to grab us by the shoulders and shake out our distractions.  So, we in the church have spiritual disciplines that constantly call us back to the table of covenant.  Our spiritual disciplines are the means by which we shake out our distractions and stay focused on the life-giving God.

Today we have an important congregational meeting.  All of our congregational meetings are important, but today is our Annual Meeting where we look at the life of our church over the course of this past year and how we plan to move forward from this point.  As a spiritual discipline, I want to remind us of the vision and mission statements of Friends Congregational Church: “Our vision is to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.  Our mission is to seek a deeper spirituality, and to help transform God’s world, one act of love at a time.”

These statements are this church family’s way of articulating our relationship with God and our desire to stay true to that relationship.  So, anything that goes against our vision and mission statements are distractions.  And distractions keep us from spiritual health at Friends.  As we look to the future of this church and our roles in it, if we are distracted, there is no end to what we can’t do.  But if we are healthy, there is no end to what we can do in the name of Christ.

Now, these are our spiritual disciplines.  This is how we say that we are keeping our eye on the ball.  But the timeless spiritual discipline, the timeless reminder, for all churches in all times comes from the words of Jesus.  He preached these words in a sermon on a hill to thousands of people over 2,000 years ago.  The sermon was unconventional, it was unorthodox, it was really long, and, if you read it, you might think it was pretty boring.  But he preached God’s truth when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.”

Steve Lucas, my friend, taught me a lot of things.  He taught me about preaching.  He taught me a lot about church.  But the greatest lesson he taught me was during the last sermon that he preached.  He stood before the congregation, a congregation that he wrestled with and been blessed by, and he started his sermon simply be saying, "I am a sinner.  I am imperfect.  And that's good.  All of us are imperfect.  And that is so very good." 

Let us in community keep our eyes on the ball.  Let us stay together and seek first the kingdom of God, and all of God's righteousness, and there is nothing that we can't do.

Blessings and peace.  Amen.