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John Fisk I like to go out to breakfast. How about you?
Ever since I went to Mexico I always have salsa with my scrambled eggs. “Huevos rancheros”, it’s called. In the Globe Calendar this week there was a story
about eating breakfast from many different countries, right here in the Boston area. Mexican, Jamaican, Guatemalan, Puerto Rico,
Indian, Japanese restaurants were some of the choices.
The story was called “Widening Horizons” and coincidentally that was my
sermon title for today also. Probably
increased travel and familiarity with the cuisine of different countries is bringing the
world closer together today more than anything else.
My father is not keen on what he calls “foreign food”. I tell him it’s his loss, although he does
like pizza! As I explained two weeks ago, the season
of Epiphany is about the revealing of God’s secret that the gospel of Jesus Christ is
for Gentiles as well as Jews. It’s
about expanding horizons so that the whole world is included in God’s family. This expansion involves a change of attitude on
the part of those who are presently insiders. We
who are the insiders need to look with God’s eyes towards those who are not yet
included. The Church harbors large pockets of
resistance to God’s plan of expansion. Joanna
Adams is a Presbyterian minister who runs a homeless shelter at a downtown church in
Atlanta. She was interviewed by a sort of
religious Rush Limbaugh on a Christian radio station in Atlanta. “We take in homeless people,” she told
him. “But what’s that got to do
with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he asked? “We
try to show Christian compassion,” she replied.
“You didn’t hear my question. What
has this to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” he insisted. Joanna explained, “We try to take
care of not only their physical needs but spiritual needs too.” He just repeated himself in a bombastic way. “What has this got to do with the Gospel of
Jesus Christ?” Then finally she said,
“You just have to be there to know what I am talking about. You’ve just got to experience it for
yourself!” This guy was blind
– he certainly needed his horizons to be opened up and to let God teach him something
new and to get involved. In Isaiah 49:1-7 we hear another of the
poems about the servant of God. The servant
can be an individual as well as the people of God as a community. In verse 1 the Servant tells the peoples of the
world, “Listen to me for the LORD called me before I was born”. So it is the mission of the servant Israel to
spread God’s message to the world. There
is no narrow nationalistic attitude here. It’s
“an expand-your-horizons attitude”. The
Servant even knows that God called him before he was born – God’s plan is
eternal, beyond the bounds of our own lifetime. Julian
of Norwich even says humankind was a twinkle in the eye of God right from the beginning of
the universe. It’s a glorious mission, expanding
horizons to the glory of God. If the
Servant is obedient and praising, he and she will be caught up into the eternal purposes
of God. But the first reaction is a lack of
faith and a lot of self-pity. “I have
labored in vain. I have spent my strength for
nothing.” We’ve all been there! A sense of failure and disappointment is
common amongst Christians in the Church. A
pastor once explained why he liked to spend time every week fixing lawnmowers and do other
small engine repairs. He doesn't do it for
the money. He doesn't do it because he has
time on his hands. He does it because in his
words, "It's good to see something work right. Even
if I can't fix anyone or anything at my church, I can at least fix a lawnmower". In any situation where we have to deal with
people, there are many opportunities for frustration. We have all known disappointments like
this. Like Isaiah we say "I have labored
in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing".
Or so it seems. But read the
rest of the verse. The Servant hangs in there
and is willing to admit that he may not know the full picture. “Yet surely my cause is with the LORD”,
he says. The Servant recognizes that
God’s horizons are vast – that’s where we need to put our faith, when we
are down. When we see failure around us in our jobs, families, community
and church, we should look again with the eyes of a bigger faith and see what God is doing
amidst the failures of human life. That is
where God works best. After all the Cross of
Jesus is not at first sight a symbol of success. But
with the eyes of a deeper faith, we see the greatest story ever told in that Cross. Some of you teach school and work for the
dignity of children in a world that tries to strip it away.
Some of you work in business and strive for fairness and integrity in a world which
double deals, like the way the Enron Co. deceived its shareholders and employees. Some of you are in medicine and work for the
health of our people in the face of overwhelming situations. Some of you are in law and work for justice in an
unjust society. All of you will get up
tomorrow morning and go out and try to make the world a better place. And it can be discouraging. Remember your cause is with the Lord and you are
part of a much bigger picture. Even though the servant complains in v.4,
God takes no notice. With a great sense of
irony in v. 6 God says, "It is too light a thing that my servant should confine his
mission to the nation of Israel. That is too
small a mission. I will give you as a light
to the nations; that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth". The servant complains that he has been a failure
with Israel and God says that is too light a thing, too small a mission. The mission field will now be to the world! Is your faith big enough? Are your horizons widening? God says to us, "it is too light a thing to
confine yourself to your own circle - I want you to expand your horizon and reach further. I want my salvation to reach to the ends of the
earth." James Fowler at Emory
University has studied faith among people of different religions. He has come up with a framework to describe how
faith develops over the years of a person's life. And
he finds that it holds true across different religions.
He defines faith as a way of knowing and interpreting the world, which is one valid
way to describe faith. He describes faith
development as follows: children begin with an intuitive way of knowing about God - kids
can have the most remarkable things to say about God when they are very young. And they can be very creative and imaginative in
their faith. Then older children have a more
literal understanding of religion. They will
ponder deeply how on earth Noah could have gotten every animal, bird, insect into an ark
without missing some. They will read the
story in a literal sense instead of seeing the story of the ark as a folktale with a deep
spiritual meaning. In their teenage years the
authority of faith belongs to a group or an institution.
The church as an institution exercises a powerful conformist influence over their
attitudes: I believe it because my church or pastor or youth leader says so. Adult faith emerges when persons begin to
think for themselves and make decisions based on the authority of scripture and church
teachings but also on the authority of their own experience of God in their life. Their faith may challenge the accepted faith of
their parents in some respects. The most important thing for young adults is that it is
their faith and not someone else's and that they base their life on what they believe. As persons continue to grow in their faith they
become more aware of the need for inclusive community wherein the walls that separate
human beings are broken down and bridges are built. The
further one goes on this journey the more one is committed to the living out of
inclusiveness in it world-wide meaning of justice, love and compassion. Fowler points to people like Martin Luther
King Jr., Ghandi, Desmond Tutu as examples of those who express this vision of inclusive
community. Isn't that what Isaiah is saying in
ch.49:6? It is too light a thing that you
should confine your attention to your own circle. I
will send you as a light to bring salvation or wholeness and healing to the ends of the
earth. Martin Luther King lived as a young boy
in Atlanta, Georgia, and his best friends were Bill and Jim whose parents owned a
neighborhood store. The friends were
inseparable and played together all the time. But
when he was 7 years old Martin was told by Bill and Jim's mother that they could not play
together anymore. Martin went home in tears
and asked his own mother what had happened. His
mother explained it was because Martin was black and his friends were white. That experience stayed with Martin all his life
and helped him to know that God was calling him to do something to change that situation. Martin lived and died with a powerful vision of a
world that included people instead of excluding them.
He lived and died to see that salvation, wholeness and healing, might come to all
the earth and all its peoples. At the 25th anniversary of the
march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the mayor of Selma was on the anniversary
platform along with George Wallace, the former governor, now in a wheelchair. The mayor spoke to the crowd with these words,
“25 years ago Governor Wallace and I were wrong.
We were wrong. We thought this was
outside agitation – we did not know that it was the coming of justice.” The mayor’s faith had grown during those
years to include Rev. King’s vision of inclusive community. “It is too light a thing to confine
your attention to your own circle. I will
send you as a light to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” That is God’s purpose for his servants. Keep widening the circle. Keep including people in God’s love. Never give up.
You will be caught up into the higher purposes of God. There is no higher calling.
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