God Who Is Personal, Not Perfect
“Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out a hand and touched the person with leprosy, and said, ‘I am willing. Be cleansed!’” — Mark 1:41
As you may know, once a month on Sunday I do a service of worship at Chenango Valley Home at Three in the afternoon. I will do one today. I never do the same sermon I do here. In fact, I always use a lectionary reading I did not look at for the morning service.
Why? Every once in a while, someone from the home is both here in this church for the morning service and there in the afternoon for the service at the Home.
Additionally, each month, one member of our music team— they rotate— comes with me to Chenango Valley Home to provide music. Now, if you’ve ever been at Chenango Valley Home you know the layout, but if you don’t know it, there is a room akin to a living room on the main floor. A piano available in that space and that’s where the service is held.
When Tom Rasely comes to the afternoon service (as he will today), he brings his guitar. As I am sure you also know, Tom is not only a master on the instrument and can play nearly anything on it, he also makes anything he plays sound good— or as the folks in the music business like to say— sound sweet.
Having said our musicians come over to Chenango Valley Home, I need to give a “shout out” to our parishioner, Clea Stanard, now a resident at the home. For many years she played piano for the service.
A number of local clergy do the same thing: provide a service once a month at Chenango Valley Home on Sunday afternoon. Now, I hope this does not sound like I’m bragging, but the staff at Chenango Valley Home tells me more residents attend the service I lead than the service anyone else leads.
I am well convinced our musicians being there helps the attendance level. Frankly, I am well convinced, since Bonnie comes to the service too, that helps the attendance. And she gets to listen to two sermons one Sunday a month that way. (She will probably say she listens to way more than two, but I’m, not going there right now!)
In any case, I also try to make the service— and maybe this has an effect on the attendance— I also try to make the service there feel like (pardon the expression) real church. I know— where two or three are gathered is real church. But what I try do is to bring with me some accoutrements, some trappings of a service held in our meeting house, this building.
So, besides a preacher and a musician, there is a bulletin. This is the one from today. [The pastor hold up a copy of the one which will be used today, first the front side, then the back.]
I use— as you may be able to see from where your sitting— fairly large print so all the people can follow. And I always put the full readings I am using in the bulletin. As you can also see, I also put a picture on the back. It is always a picture keyed to one of the readings. These pictures are available as a free download at the Vanderbilt Divinity School Library website, so it’s pretty easy to do.
With the picture, I also print an explanation of what the picture is about. The picture I used today is one of a stained glass window. The glass is at the Star of the Sea Painted Church in Kalaupapa, Hawaii. It depicts Father Damien deVeuster (who is commonly know just as Father Damien) and Mother Marianne Cope. Both served the colony of lepers on the island.
Hansen’s disease is the proper term for leprosy. It is believed to have spread to Hawaii from China in the 1840s. It spread rapidly and a cure was unknown at that time. Hence, this precipitated the urgent need for complete and total isolation of those who contracted the disease.
Kalaupapa is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific ocean and cut off from the rest of the island on the fourth side by 1600-foot cliffs. In 1866, the first leprosy victims were shipped there. The colony existed for 7 years before Damien arrived. At that point, this site was void of all amenities. There were no buildings, no shelters. No potable water was available.
When Damien arrived he did more than simply be a minister of faith. He built homes, churches, wells, coffins. He arranged for medical services and funding from Honolulu. In short, he did what was needed. Having contracted the disease, Damien died in 1889.
Mother Marianne, the other person pictured in the window, was the Superior General at St. Joseph’s Hospital, in Syracuse, from 1870 to 1877. It was, believe it or not, the first public hospital in Syracuse. In 1883, after a time as head of her order, Marianne left for missionary work in the Hawaiian Islands.
There she became involved with treating those who had leprosy. But she did not get to Kalaupapa until 1888, both to care for Father Damien who was dying, and who was already known internationally for his heroic care of the leper colony— and to assume his role in work among the afflicted. She died of natural causes in 1918. (Slight pause.)
And these words are from the work know as Mark: “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out a hand and touched the person with leprosy, and said, ‘I am willing. Be cleansed!’” (Slight pause.)
In his book on the history of Christianity, British historian Diarmaid MacCulloch makes this claim: the god, the supreme deity who emerges from Greek philosophy, is all perfect and, therefore, not just immune to change, but devoid of the passion which denotes change. On the other hand, the God of the Hebrews— Yahweh— is personal, tangible, intimate.
This is a God who walks in the garden of Eden. This God of emotions and intimacy, he says, is one reason the constant experience of the Jews— that of being marginalized by the empires which surrounded them— Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and finally Rome— did not kill their faith. They understood that God was not simply all powerful but that God was passionate and concerned with them and that, no matter what happened, God stood with them.
And, indeed, there was never a more vivid and personal expression of what the intimacy God offers looks like than what we find in the Gospels. Jesus feels. Jesus weeps. Jesus gets angry. Jesus counsels. Jesus makes friends.
Jesus even tells jokes. (You need to understand that when you read the Gospels in the original language there are jokes, mostly puns, which simply cannot be translated.) Jesus makes jokes.
In short, Jesus is intimate and the Jesus expressed in the Gospels is expressed in an intimate way. And then, of course, Jesus dies— the most telling intimacy of all. (Slight pause.)
Even with the death of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, our Christian understanding is that Jesus, who is the Christ and is inseparable from the Christ, lives. Our Christian understanding is that Jesus is resurrected and is with us. And our Christian understanding is that God, the Spirit, and Jesus, the Christ, and Yahweh, God— the God we Christians label as Trinity— three persons one God, inseparable— this God stands with us at all times and in all places and in all circumstances. This God is personal and this God personally with us... in an act of love. (Slight pause.)
About 95% of the population actually carries an immunity from Hansen’s disease. And today Hansen’s disease is treatable. Still, one might ask what would call a Father Damien and Mother Maryanne to work with those who had the disease when there was no cure available and it was seen as highly contagious? (Slight pause.)
I want to suggest that they understood God is personal. Jesus is personal. The Spirit is personal. I want to suggest they understood that Yahweh, God, stands with us at all times and in all places and in all circumstances, that Jesus, the Christ, stands with us at all times and in all places and in all circumstances, that the Paraclete, the Spirit, stands with us at all times and in all places and in all circumstances. (Slight pause.)
You see, God reaches out to us. And it is personal. And God calls us to reach out to others. And it is personal. (Slight pause.)
The Israelites understood this: God may be my personal God. And perhaps that makes God personal.
But God is the God of all people. And that is what makes it really personal. Why? Because God is concerned with all people. Hence, we are called to be concerned with all people. (Slight pause.)
You’ve heard me say this hundreds of times: this love God, love neighbor slogan that you hear me repeat time and time again is not meant to be a snappy aphorism, a snappy advertising slogan. Love God, love neighbor is personal. And when we love God and love neighbor we become empowered and are personally empowered by God to act in a personal way with God and with one another. Amen.
02/12/2012
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “Last week I said that a lot of people say ‘Well, it’s just me and Jesus’ or ‘It’s just me and God.’ And that think that’s what makes it personal. Not true. What makes it personal is that God is the God of all people and calls us to be with one another in times of joy, in times of pain— all the time.”
BENEDICTION: Let us trust God to provide all we really need. God knows us, loves us and blesses us in Jesus, the Christ. Let us love one another as Christ has loved us. And may the peace of Christ, which surpasses understanding, keep our minds and hearts in the companionship and will of the Holy Spirit, this day and forever more. Amen.
Diarmaid MacCulloch. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Pg. 2.
Cannot God be both personal and perfect at the same time? Perfection is not the absence of the passion which denotes change, as Diarmaid MacCulloch claims. Rather, perfection (in my opinion) is the embodiment of love, mercy, and grace. God has a passion for change- His passion is to change the hearts of all His children. The God of the Hebrews IS personal, tangible, and intimate. But He is also perfect.
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