Tag: Henri Nouwen

Mercy Triumphs Judgment

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year BLeave a comment

Nouwen

James 2:1-17

Inclusion. Acceptance. Mercy. Kindness. Compassion. Love. We know that God wants it. We know that this is God’s will for the world.

Exclusion. Discrimination. Prejudice. Meanness. Indifference. Hate.  We know that God disdains it. We know this is not what God wills for this world.

And we know that if we do not live like we believe that mercy always triumphs judgment, then we do not live like we really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. We do not live like we believe in the one who lived and died extending mercy to the poor and the marginalized.

We know we are not perfect. We know we are going to make mistakes in this life. Therefore, to please our God, to live as believers in our glorious Lord and Savior, if we are going to err, we have decided to to err on the side of mercy. To please our Creator, we have decided to err on the side of grace. We have chosen to err on the the side of love.

But do we know whythis pleases our God so much? Do we know whyJesus lived and died showing us that mercy always triumphs judgment? Do we know why he directed his ministry toward those who were in the most need of mercy?

I believe one word in our scripture lesson reveals the answer. It is in verse 5.

”Listen, my belovedbrothers and sisters…”

Did you hear it?  Beloved. We are God’s “beloved.” God loves us. God loves us; and therefore, God wants what is best for us. God loves us and wants us to live lives that are full, whole and blessed. As the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed: “For thus says the Lord, …surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

And what is that plan? What is God’s plan to bless us?

The plan is what Jesus called the greatest commandment: that we love our neighbors as ourselves; and as the prophets, as Jesus and as the apostles like James teach us, that we love especially our poor neighbors.

Because as much as we might be tempted to believe it, as much sense as it might make to our flawed minds, James says, our hopeful future is not found by showing prejudicial treatment, extending a prejudicial welcome to our rich neighbors.

If we want to experience the promise of the Kingdom that God, if we want to experience life as God intended it, if we want to be blessed, then we need to love those that God has chosen to be heirs of that blessed Kingdom.

If we want to be blessed, we need to welcome and accept, include, those our culture disses. You know the dissed: the disenfranchised, the disrespected, the disqualified, the disheartened, the disdained, the disowned, and the disabled. For God uses those the world disses to bless us, to give us a future with hope.

This is the reason I no longer believe in using the word “disability” to describe persons who are living with blindness, deafness, quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, or other syndromes.

Consider the definition of “dis” in our English dictionary: to “have a primitive, negative or reversing force.” Discredit. Disengage. Disavow. Disappoint. Distrust.

Therefore, when we call a person disabled, it is like we are saying that they have an inherently negative ability to bless us, to make our lives better, to contribute to society, to have a positive impact on our word, to build up the body of Christ, to give us a future with hope.

This is why we have historically and literally pushed them to the margins. We have institutionalized them, separated them, ostracized them. Nazi Germany euthanized them.

And by excluding them from our lives, we’ve missed our loving God’s plan to bless us.

Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite Christian writers, was a priest, an esteemed writer and brilliant teacher in prestigious universities like Harvard and Yale.

However, he says that it was a desire to follow his Lord which prompted him to leave the Ivy League to spend the rest of his life serving as a chaplain to a wonderful community of people with different emotional, mental and physical abilities in Toronto.

In one of his many books, Nouwen tells a story about Trevor, a man in that community who was dealing with such severe mental and emotional challenges that he had to be sent to a psychiatric facility for another evaluation. As the chaplain, Henri wanted to visit him, so he had his secretary call the hospital and make an appointment.

When the higher-ups in that hospital discovered that it was the infamous Henri Nouwen, the renowned author and teacher from Yale and Harvard University who was coming, they asked if they could set up a special lunch with him in the “Golden Room”—this special meeting room at the hospital. They said that if Nouwen could come and say a few words, they would like to invite some of their most respected doctors and some esteemed clergy from the community to the special luncheon.

Nouwen thought to himself, “Oh Trevor has never missed a meal! He would love that!” So he agreed.

When he arrived, they took him to the Golden Room, but Trevor was nowhere to be seen. Troubled, he asked where Trevor was.

“Oh,” said an administrator, “Trevor cannot have lunch here. Patients and staff are not allowed to have lunch together. It’s too risky. Besides, no patient has ever had lunch in the “Golden Room.”

By nature, Henri was not a confrontational person. He was meek and very gentle. However, guided by the Spirit of the God who has chosen those the world has dissed to inherit and share the Kingdom of God, the thought came to his mind: “Include Trevor. Whatever you do, you mustinclude Trevor. Trevor needs to be here.”

So, Henri swallowed hard, he turned to the administrator and said, “But the whole purpose of my coming here today was to have lunch with Trevor. So, if Trevor is not allowed to attend the lunch, I will not attend either.”

Well, the thought of missing an opportunity for a lunch with the great Henri Nouwen was too much for them to bare, so they quickly found a way for Trevor to attend.

When they all finally gathered together, what the administrators had feared came to fruition. At one point during the lunch, while Henri was talking to the person at his right, he didn’t notice that Trevor, who was seated to his left, had stood up, lifting his glass of Coca-Cola in the air.

“A toast! I will now offer a toast,” Trevor said to the group.

The administrators were embarrassed, but had this look like “we knew this was a bad idea.” Everybody in the room got quiet and very nervous. What in the world was Trevor going to say?

Then Trevor, this deeply challenged man in a room full of PhDs and clergy, started to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass. If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass…”

No one knew what to do. It was all so awkward. Here was a man with a level of challenge and brokenness, they could not begin to understand, yet he was beaming! He was absolutely thrilled to be there. He was so happy!”

So they started to sing. Softly at first, and then louder and louder until all of the doctors and all of the clergymen and Henri Nouwen were practically shouting, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass.”

Henri went on to give a talk at the luncheon, I am certain his words were brilliant, as they always were, but the moment everyone remembered, the moment that blessed them the most, the moment God spoke most clearly, was through the person they all would have said was the least likely to speak for God.[i]

In his first sermon Jesus preached it. “Blessed are the merciful.” Blessed are those who believe and live as if they know mercy triumphs judgment.

This is the reason I no longer use the word “disabled” to describe persons with different abilities.

However, I still believe in using the word “disabled.”

But, it’s not the palsy, the syndrome, or the genetic anomaly that is disabling.

It is the exclusion that disables. It is the fear and the judgment and the prejudice that disables. It’s the constant stares, the negative remarks, the looking away, the shunning and the indifference that are disabling.

We are disabled when we disable others.

Our ability is “dissed” when we are unable to see the holy worth, the divine light, and the image of God in another. Our ability is “dissed” when we are unable to recognize the many gifts and different abilities that another has been given by our loving God to bless our lives and make this world amazing.

The good news is that our God loves us and wants to bless us, not diss us. God loves us and wants us to live full lives with meaning and joy. God loves us and wants us to have a future with a hope. And God has a plan to accomplish this divine will.

This is why the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus implore us over and over again to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, especially those who we characterized as poor, poor in cash, poor in health, poor in status, and poor in ability. This is why God commands us to live lives of inclusion, acceptance, kindness, and compassion, knowing that mercy always triumphs judgment.  Let us pray together.

O God, help us to do your will. Help us to live lives of inclusion. acceptance. Fill us with your mercy, kindness, compassion and love. Help us to live lives blessed by your love.  Amen.

After we sing our hymn of communion, all are invited to share a meal from this table, especially those our culture dissess. We will eat and drink and be blessed and transformed together.

Commissioning and Benediction

Go now and find those the culture disenfranchises, disrespects, disqualifies, disheartens, disdains, disowns, discredits, disengages, disavows, disappoints, distrusts and disables.

Go find them and love them.

See the the holy worth, the divine light, and the image of God in them. Recognize the many gifts and different abilities that they have been given by our loving God to bless our lives and make this world amazing.

[i]John Ortberg, in the sermon, “Guide.” Preachingtoday.com.

A Message to Graduates: How Low Can You Go?

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year B1 Comment

Carson Graduation

Luke 14:7-11 NRSV

Today, all over this country, high school and college graduates are beacons of hope in a dark world! It has been said that they belong to a generation that is “up and coming.” They refuse to be silent. They are passionate, relentless, determined youth with high ideals and high ambitions to change the world! I look at how they are courageously standing up and speaking out, inspiring us to be a better a better people, and I ask, “My God, how highcan they go?”

They were probably taught at a very early age that up highis where it is at, and no doubt, they spent the first eighteen years of their lives trying to grow up, graduate highschool and then possibly pursue an even highereducation. All so they move upa little higherin this world, keep climbing to make sure they are always upward bound: upfor a promotion so they can move upthe ladder. For up, up high is how our society measures success.

Up high, we are told, is where we will find our life, a life that is full, complete, satisfied, and abundant.Up highis where we are able rub elbows with others who also shaped up, grownupand moved up.Up high is where we find what we call the “in” crowd. They are the “up” and the “in” as opposed to the “down” and the “out.”

So, we set goals that are high. We seek to make high marks, achieve high grades, meet high expectations.

The message of nearly every motivational speaker or life coach in America today is all about how to shape upand move up, aim high and soar high.

After all, who in their right mind would want to move in the opposite direction? Who wants to change directions from up high to down low?  As the late Henri Nouwen one of my favorite preachers, has said: “Downward mobility [in our society] is not only discouraged, but even considered unwise, unhealthy or downright stupid.”

Can I get an “Amen?” Come on now, really? Who in their right mind would want to lower themselves? What mind must you have to want to humble yourself, move to and sit at the lowest seat at the table, lower yourself to the ground to wash another’s feet, descend down the economic ladder to relate to people who are poor, be with and love people who are down and out?

I think we know what mind.

When God chose to reveal to the world a life that is full, abundant and eternal, God’s will for all people, God chose a life of downward mobility. God emptied God’s self, poured God’s self out, humbled God’s self, lowered God’s self and came down. Down to meet us where we are, down to earth as a lowly baby, born in a lowly stable, laid down in a feeding troth to worshipped by down and out shepherds.

The scriptures do say that Jesus grew upward in stature; however, the gospel writers continually paint a portrait Jesus’ life as one of downward mobility. He is continually bending himself to the ground, getting his hands dirty, to touch the places in people that most need touching.

While his disciples seemed to always focus on privilege and honor and upward mobility, chastising little children who needed to shape up and grow up before they could come to Jesus, Jesus argued that the Kingdom of God actually belonged to such children.

While his disciples argued about who was going to be promoted, who was going to graduate to be the first in the Kingdom, Jesus frustrated them (and if we are honest, frustrated us) by doing things like moving downto sit at the lowest seat at the table, bending downto wash their feet, stooping downto welcome small children, crouching downto forgive a sinner, reaching downto serve people who are poor, lowering himself downto accept people who had been cast out of their community. He was always always getting down, to touch the leper, heal the sick, and raise the dead.

While others exercised worldly power to graduate and move up, climb up, and advance, Jesus exercised a strange and peculiar power that always propelled him in the opposite direction. It is not a power that rules but is a power that serves. It is not a power that takes but is a power that gives. It is not a power that seizes but is a power that suffers. It is not a power that dominates but is a power that dies.

And nearing the culmination of his downward life, to save the world, Jesus went to highest seats of power in the capital city of Jerusalem, not on a white stallion with an elite army of high ranking soldiers, but riding a borrowed donkey with a handful of ragtag students who never graduated from anything. The whole scene of Jesus riding that donkey, in the words of Henri Nouwen, looks “downright stupid.”

This is the narrow and seemingly foolish way of downward mobility, the descending way of Jesus toward the poor, toward the suffering, the marginalized, the prisoners, the refugees, the undocumented, the lonely, the hungry, the dying, the tortured, the homeless—toward all who thirst and hunger justice and compassion.

And what do they have to offer? Those who are down and out in our world cannot offer success, popularity, riches, or worldly power, but they do offer the way to life, full, complete, abundant and eternal.[i]

So today, as we recognize and pray for our graduates, as our hearts are filled with hope, and we ask, “My God, how high can these young men and women, these future leaders of the world go?” We are also asking, with perhaps even greater hope for the world and the Kingdom of God, “My God, how lowcan they go? How low can these young men and women, these future leaders of the world, these future leaders of the church go? How lowcan they go to fulfill the divine purposes that God has for each of their lives?

My hope is that each graduate who is being recognized in churches all across are country today is in church not to help them move up to be with the “in” crowd,” or there to find something in worship that will make them more successful, more affluent, climb a little higher. I hope they are not even in church looking to be uplifted or to be more upbeat or for some kind of upstart to get this new chapter in their life headed on an upswing.

My hope is that they are in worship because they have chosen to move in the opposite direction.

My hope is that they want to find ways to climb down, to get low, to lose themselves, to die to themselves and live for Christ. For they have heard, and they have believed Jesus when he said: “Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-28).

Spencer Allen, Jamie Pape, Jason Pryor and Kourtney Williamson, although it sounds good to be a part of the up and cominggeneration, my hope is that you will be a generation that is always down and going. May you always go down, get low, sacrificially and selflessly. And then go out bending yourselves down to the ground if you have to, to touch the places in people that most need touching. May you go out and stoop down to welcome and accept and serve all children: children who are sick, children with different abilities. May you go out and crouch down to care for the sick and the elderly. May you go out and reach down to serve the poor, lower yourselves down to accept people who are marginalized, and may you get low, get down on your knees to pray for people who are grieving and the lost.

And, there, as low as you can go, may you truly find your life, your purpose in this world, one that is full, complete, satisfied, abundant and eternal. Amen.

INVITATION TO COMMUNION

Each Sunday, we gather around a table to get our minds right. To open our minds, focus and refocus our minds, even blow our minds wide open if we have to, to let the same mind be in us that was in

in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8).

Commissioning and Benediction

Go out bending yourselves down to the ground if you have to, to touch the places in people that most need touching. Go out and stoop down to welcome and accept and care for all children, to love on those in hospitals and nursing homes. Go out and reach down to serve the poor, lower yourselves down to accept the outcast and the marginalized, and may you get low, get down on your knees to pray for the grieving and the lost.

And, there, as low as you can go, may you truly find your life, your purpose in this world, one that is full, complete, satisfied, abundant and eternal. Amen.

[i]The sermon is inspired by this paraphrase from Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 138-139.

First Love

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn EasterLeave a comment

first-love-logofinal2

John 21:1-19 NRSV

I want us to take a close look this morning at Jesus. Look at him as he appears with wounds in his glorified, resurrected body to a few friends after Easter.  Look at him.  He had come into the world with a message through words and deeds of God’s unending, unlimited, unwavering and unconditional love for the world. But the world did not want anything to do with that message. Therefore, he was tortured, crucified and sealed in a tomb. He came to give us the best that God had to give, the gift of God’s self, and the world reciprocated that gift with the very worst the world had to give, the cross. Jesus came offering love, unbounded, unending, and we nailed it to a tree. Jesus came offering grace, free, extravagant, and it was too much for us. So, we killed him.

But there he was, standing before friends with scars on his hands and feet and in his side. Standing there rejected; standing there wounded simply asking, “Do you love me?”  And he keeps asking, “Do you love me?”  “Do you love me?  Three times he asks.  “Do you love me?”

I believe there is another way of phrasing this simple question. The rejected, wounded Jesus is standing there asking: “Do you really know how much I love you?”

Because if you and I really knew how much Jesus loves us, we would certainly love him. If we really knew the heart of God which was revealed through the love of Christ Jesus, loving this Jesus would be our only response.

John the evangelist calls this love revealed through Christ “God’s first love.”  “Let us love,” he says, “because God first loved us.” God is love and only love. So, let us love because this God has loved us freely and unconditionally from the very beginning.  The Psalmist sings that it was “in love that God created our inmost self and knit us together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).

Henri Nouwen once said that this first love is often difficult for us human creatures to comprehend. For the love with which we are most familiar is “second love.” This is the love we experience in our human relationships.  It is the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement and support that we receive from our parents, spouses, church members and friends. Nouwen says that this second love is only a broken reflection of the first love. The second love is a love which often leaves us doubting that love, frustrated by that love, angry and resentful.

All of us who experience human love know just how limited, broken and very fragile it is. Nouwen says that “behind the many expressions of this second love, there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence and even hatred. Contemporary movies and plays portray the ambiguities and ambivalences of human relationships,” and there are no friendships; there are no marriages, and there are no communities, even communities of faith, in which the “strains and stresses of the second love are not keenly felt.” With human relationships there is always the chance of “abandonment, betrayal, rejection, rupture, and loss.”  “These are all the shadow side of the second love.”

The good news of the gospel is that the second love is “only a broken reflection of the first love, and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows.”

Jesus is standing there, rejected and wounded and resurrected and glorified as the incarnation of the shadow-free first love of God.  Look at him. Jesus is standing there offering from his very heart streams of living water. Listen to him. Jesus is standing there crying out with a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me!  Let anyone who believes in me come and drink” (John 8:37). “Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.  Shoulder my yoke and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Jesus is standing there rejected and wounded, yet resurrected and glorified asking, “Do you love me?” “Do you have any idea how much I love you? I love you with a perfect love, a shadow free first love.  I love you without limits, without conditions. I love you without end.”

Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

I believe when we really know how much God truly loves us, our natural response is feeding the sheep of God: nourishing them physically and spiritually; tending the lambs of God: meeting their needs, educating them, fighting for the lost, the last and the least, protecting them from all those who wish to do them harm, those wolves who often clothe themselves with righteousness, who hide under garments of “family values” or “religious freedom.”

Look at Jesus, standing there in all his glory, yet wounded and broken and rejected, standing there with the loving heart of God. Our response to this Jesus can be none other but to bring healing, reconciliation, new life, justice and hope wherever we go. Our only response should be to say to the world with our whole being: “You are loved, unreservedly, unconditionally, eternally. There is no reason to be afraid, for God loved you first. God loved you before you loved God or even knew God. In love, God created your inmost self and knit you together in your mother’s womb. And God loves you even when your rejected and crucified that love.”

However, because we are more familiar with the second love, with fragmented human love, our natural response is often to love expecting something in return, therefore we have this awful and evil tendency to judge and to discriminate.

I believe this is why we are seeing so much hate in our world today: We have forgotten the first love. I believe the church and our country is in the state that it is in today because we have taken our eyes off of the crucified, risen Lord is standing before us all, asking, “Do you love me?”

After asking three times if we know how much God love us, and after telling us how to respond three times, Jesus said: “In all truth I tell you:  When you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.”

This is a radical response, a radical understanding of maturity, for it is the exact opposite of the world’s understanding of maturity, the exact antithesis of American values. But God’s first love is a radically different from the world’s second love and any human value.

The world says: “When you were young, you were dependent and could not go where you wanted, but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way and control your own destiny.”

Jesus’ vision of maturity is the exact opposite. It is the ability and the willingness to be led to those places where you would rather not go.

Here, as he has said before, Jesus is saying that we must become child-like. We must allow someone else to fasten our belts. We must place all of our being into the hands of God and allow God to lead us even into unknown, undesirable and painful places.

Look at Jesus, standing there rejected and wounded, yet resurrected and glorified. Look at him as he appears with wounds in his glorified, resurrected body to a few friends after Easter Sunday.  Look at him. He is standing there.  Listen to him. He is asking, “Do you love me?  Do you love me?  Do you love me?

How Low Can You Go?

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Non-Lectionary, UncategorizedLeave a comment

bac service

 Luke 14:7-11 NRSV

Looking around this room tonight fills me with so much hope for our world. For I look around and see a generation that is up and coming. I look around and see a room full of energetic youth with high ambitions. I look around and ask, “My God, how high can they go? How high can these young men and women, these future leaders of the world, go?

You were probably taught at a very early age that up high is where it is at, and no doubt you spent the first eighteen years of your lives trying to grow up, graduate high school and then possibly pursue an even higher education. All so you move up a little higher in this world. And after all of your graduations, you will work hard to make sure you are always upward bound: up for a promotion so you can move up the ladder. For up, up highis how our society measures success.

Up high, we are told, is where we will find our life, a life that is full, complete, satisfied, and abundant. Up high is where we are able rub elbows with others who also shaped up, grown up and moved up. Up high is where we find what we call the “in” crowd. They are the “up” and the “in” as opposed to the “down” and the “out.”

So we set goals that are high. We seek to make high marks, achieve high grades, meet high expectations.

The message of nearly every motivational speaker or life coach in America today is all about how to shape up and move up, aim high and soar high.

After all, who in their right mind would want to move in the opposite direction? Who wants to change directions from up high to down low? As the late Henri Nouwen one of my favorite preachers, has said: “Downward mobility [in our society] is not only discouraged, but even considered unwise, unhealthy or downright stupid.”

Can I get an “Amen?” Come on now, really? Who in their right mind would want to lower themselves? What mind must you have to want to humble yourself, move to and sit at the lowest seat at the table, lower yourself to the ground to wash another’s feet, descend down the economic ladder to relate to the poor, be with and love the down and out?

What kind of mind? As Adam Greene read a few moments ago, the mind of Christ.

When God chose to reveal to the world a life that is full, abundant and eternal, God’s will for all people, God chose a life of downward mobility. God emptied God’s self, poured God’s self out, humbled God’s self, lowered God’s self and came down. Down to meet us where we are, down to earth as a lowly baby, born in a lowly stable, laid down in a feeding troth to worshipped by down and out shepherds.

The scriptures do say that Jesus grew upward in stature; however, the gospel writers continually paint a portrait Jesus’ life as one of downward mobility. He is continually bending himself to the ground, getting his hands dirty, to touch the places in people that most need touching.

While his disciples seemed to always focus on privilege and honor and upward mobility, chastising little children who needed to shape up and grow up before they could come to Jesus, Jesus argued that the Kingdom of God actually belonged to such children.

While his disciples argued about who was going to be promoted, who was going to graduate to be the first in the Kingdom, Jesus frustrated them (and if we are honest, frustrated us) by doing things like moving down to sit at the lowest seat at the table, bending down to wash their feet, stooping down to welcome small children, crouching down to forgive a sinner, reaching down to serve the poor, lowering himself down to accept the outcast, touch the leper, heal the sick, and raise the dead.

While others exercised worldly power to graduate and move up, climb up, and advance, Jesus exercised a strange and peculiar power that always propelled him in the opposite direction. It is not a power that rules but is a power that serves. It is not a power that takes but is a power that gives. It is not a power that seizes but is a power that suffers. It is not a power that dominates but is a power that dies.

And nearing the culmination of his downward life, to save the world, Jesus went to highest seats of power in the capital city of Jerusalem, not on a white stallion with an elite army of high ranking soldiers, but riding a borrowed donkey with a handful of ragtag students who never even got a GED. The whole scene of Jesus riding that donkey, in the words of Henri Nouwen, looks “downright stupid.”

This is the narrow and seemingly foolish way of downward mobility, the descending way of Jesus toward the poor, toward the suffering, the marginalized, the prisoners, the refugees, the undocumented, the lonely, the hungry, the dying, the tortured, the homeless–toward all who thirst and hunger justice and compassion.

And what do they have to offer? Those who are down and out in our world cannot offer success, popularity, riches, or worldly power, but they do offer the way to life, full, complete, abundant and eternal.[i]

So tonight, filled with hope for the world as I look around this room asking, “My God, how high can these young men and women, these future leaders of the world go?” I am also asking with even greater hope for the world and the Kingdom of God, “My God, how low can they go? How low can these young men and women, these future leaders of the world, these future leaders of the church go? How low can they go to fulfill the divine purposes that you have for each of their lives?

My hope is that you are here tonight, not to ask God to help you move up to be with the “in” crowd. Not to find something here in worship that will make you more successful, more affluent, climb a little higher. I hope you are not even here looking to be uplifted or to be more upbeat or for some kind of upstart to get this new chapter in our life headed on an upswing. My hope is that you are here in worship tonight because you have chosen to move in the opposite direction.

My hope is that you will always want to continually go down, get low, lose yourselves, die to yourselves, to live for Christ. For you have heard, and you have believed Jesus when he said: “Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-28).

Although it sounds good to be a part of the up and coming generation, my hope is that you will be a generation that is always down and going. May you always go down, get low, sacrificially and selflessly. And then go out bending yourselves down to the ground if you have to, to touch the places in people that most need touching. May you go out and stoop down to welcome and accept all children, to love on those in hospitals and nursing homes. May you go out and reach down to serve the poor, lower yourselves down to accept the outcast and the marginalized, and may you get low, get down on your knees to pray for the grieving and the lost.

And, there, as low as you can go, may you truly find your life, your purpose in this world, one that is full, complete, satisfied, abundant and eternal.

 

[i] The sermon is inspired by this paraphrase from Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 138-139.