November 12, 13, 2005
26^th Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

To quote the A team—I love it when a plan comes together.  I love it when things come together in the liturgy in a way that heightens and deepens our understanding of the Gospel for the day. 

Whether you fully recognized it as such or not, the liturgical movement piece you just witnessed and participated in, was a response to the challenge in the Parable of the Talents. 

The dancers started out paralyzed, fearful, inert, unable to do more than bury themselves, which is the equivalent of burying their talent.  Then, upon hearing the words of Ana Hernandez’s beautiful song, Open My Heart, we realized that along with the fear that paralyzed was the prayer, God, help me!  And so with God’s help we began to try to stand, began to think about breaking out of our prison of fear and indecision, began to think that we might have something to offer to the world.  We encouraged each other, so that when faint hearted and wanting to pull back, another’s courage beckoned us forth.  Then, we came out, most of us, to stay, some of us to go back into the safety zone and then out, and we explored  our ability to move freely, to touch one another, to look fully into another’s eyes, to give our strength to one another in a celebration of life.

Then, using our talent, we beckoned you to stand up and join us in a movement prayer—Pray with your heart, pray with your hands, be a light!

Love with your heart, love with your hands, be a light!
Heal with your heart, heal with your hands, be a light!
Dance with your heart, dance with your hands, be a light!

We have all been invited to give up our fearful selves, our ego-driven selves, and take the Body of Christ’s courage to be a light to the world.  To take the risk to fall on our faces, literally in the case of the dancers, and figuratively for all the rest of us.  To be fools for Christ, perhaps, but to be for Christ nonetheless.

But it’s not only the movement piece today.  In a few minutes we will commission Mary Lee Meehleder as Missioner of Racial Justice and Interfaith Understanding.  She will be our minister in the community of Cedar Rapids and Christ Church to call us beyond ourselves to our brothers and sisters that are out there, and not in here, at least on most Sunday mornings.  She will call us to the task of connection and love to those who are not seen in our lives, to those who could be even feared in certain circumstances and misunderstood in others.  This is a bold and courageous ministry, and it is undertaken because Mary Lee felt a stirring in her heart and did not bury it.  She came to the clergy and said, “I feel called to a ministry of some sort that I need help discerning.”  She risked herself; we could have patted her on the head and told her to just keep praying.  But we realized that the Holy Spirit was at work and needed to be honored.  So we set up a Discernment Team for her.  And about a year and a half later, Mary Lee is ready to be commissioned to a bold and important work.  Thanks be to God that she did not bury her talent!

The third thing that is coming together today is the offering of our pledges for the upcoming year.  We have been asked to prayerfully expand our gift of money; to discern where God is calling us to share in the ministry of Christ Church and to put ourselves forward, body and soul.  I hope you have been bold.  I hope you have realized that there are no ex-tithers, and the more you give to God, the more there is in your life.  You put your talents out there, both your gifts of money and your gifts of service, and God blesses them and you and this community and the world. 

If you have not yet brought back your pledge card and talent forms, we will bless them wherever they are—on the kitchen table at home, in a drawer in your desk.  But do remember to get them in, soon.  And here is something I want to challenge you to do.  Increase your pledge 1% from what it was last year.  Then figure out what a total of  10%, the tithe would be.  Commit yourself to give half of that beyond the parish, like to the Millennium Development goals, to Episcopal Relief and Development, to the American Cancer Society—wherever you discern God’s will is being done beyond Christ Church.  Then, figure out, if you are not fully at 5% of your income to CEC, what is the monetary difference between your current percentage and the 5% figure?  See if you can give that as a “silent” pledge this year.  Make it between you and God.  If you truly can’t make it, or if you choose to make it for special Christ Church projects, that’s fine.  But make that your personal risk zone.  Give beyond your comfort level.  Be a true steward.

That is, a person who realizes that all we have and all we are are from God.  It’s not ours to hold on to; only to figure out how to pass on.

It’s not just about our money.  That may be the easiest part of it, because we can sit down with a calculator and figure that out.  It’s the inner self that is niggling at us to become expressed outwardly that is our greatest challenge.  Often there is a correlation between our reluctance to express our gifts and a less than satisfactory relationship with God.  You hold back one place, and everything is held back.  If you stick your neck out, you know you need God to help you and God is there for you.

We have recently paid tribute to a great woman who died at age 92, Rosa Parks, the woman who will be forever known as the woman who refused to give her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus, which broke a segregation law of Montgomery.   We have been led to think that just one day she said, ‘You know, I have had enough.  I am going to stay in my seat and start the Civil Rights movement.”    

And so while we have admired her courage, we have not been able to see in her the deep work that happened long before she made this decision.  God does not just one day make a saint.  God works with us for years to help us become who we are meant to be.

Rosa Parks had been active in the NAACP for twelve years and served as its secretary.

The summer before she was arrested she attended a ten day training session in civil rights organizing where she met an older generation of civil rights activists.  Without the work of those who had gone before her, she would never have taken her stand, or if she had, it would not have had the impact it did.

We tend to idealize our heroes and saints.  We make them people unlike us so we don’t have to work to be like them.   We think they never wonder if their decisions are right, if they have the stamina, if they can pay the price.  We think they couldn’t be ordinary human beings like us. 

But they are all more like us than not.  They have just done things that hopefully we are also doing.  They are taking small steps of faithfulness— like letting our views be known to our legislators and church leaders, like being willing to speak out on things that affect our children and grandchildren, like the right of the army to come to our high schools and recruit young people about to graduate like telling someone that a racist or sexist remark or joke is offensive, not funny, like deciding to down scale your standard of living so that others may have more of a share of your money, like buying a more modest fuel efficient car.

I have had this conversation with my daughter who would like us to remodel our kitchen.  “It’s so 70’s, Mom.”  But the cost of remodeling a kitchen can do a lot of good for people who would be very happy to have any kitchen, or clean water, or food to cook.

Our small witnesses of faithfulness can lead us to the big steps eventually, like Rosa Parks.  But even if we make an effort and it seems to make no difference, our courage, our witness may inspire someone else to take a step that will make a difference.  Rosa Parks was encouraged to go to her first NAACP meeting by her husband.  Who convinced him it was important?  We will never know.  But someone did, and history was re-written by the succession of small steps that turned into a giant leap.

I would like to end by quoting Marianne Williamson:

“We realize the huge calling of history at this time.  We have been called to a collective genius, and each of us is being prepared to play our part.  Our world needs spiritual giants, and it takes not ego but humility to sign up for the effort.  Many of our problems arose because we chose to play small, thinking there we would find safety.  But we were born with wings, and we are meant to spread them.  Anything less will hurt us, will deny love to ourselves and others, and will mean that we end our lives not having flown the flight of spiritual glory.”

The next time you feel afraid to take a risk, check out to see if it is your ego that is in the way, and go beyond it to your deepest self, where the Christ in you is speaking to you, and encouraging you.  And if it is of Christ, then go for it.  Ask for the support of your brothers and sisters in Christ, and go forward with courage.  Don’t shrink back.  That is not faith.  That is not living from the heart, which is our organ of courage.  Live from your heart center and take the risk.  If you fall, we’ll be there to help you get up.

I am indebted to Sojourners online article about Rosa Parks for some of the material related to her.

Barbara Schlachter