The Coach
Luke 3: 1-9
February 11, 2007
We were robbed! We were robbed! $10,000 worth of stuff just gone! Stuff we use to have a vibrant, exciting, meaningful worship service. Someone came into our space and took our stuff and we’re left violated and empty right? Not really.
The stuff isn’t ours it’s God’s. Everything we do here is about connecting to God. All the stuff we put in the budget is about pointing to God. If we don’t have toilet paper, people don’t feel welcomed or prepared for. As people of God we need to be hospitable. The toilet paper is God’s. Microphones and Sound equipment are Gods. We use them to tell God’s story, to share the Good news, but they are not the embodiment of the Good news. We use the stuff to point to God, but no one can take God or the Spirit away. That’s what John was always shouting about. This isn’t about the stuff. This isn’t about losing position. This isn’t about being violated through stuff. The stuff is inside us. It’s the Presence of the Holy One. It’s the unique call and gift sets we each carry. And, for John it’s what we’re doing in our living to carry that out.
I love John the Baptist! He must have been quite the character. The most amazing words are put into his mouth. He must have felt so alone, or filled with the Spirit to do this kind of coaching, this kind of work. He always seems to know he is third fiddle: First God, than the one who is coming and finally himself, trying to get the team ready and snapped into shape. John, John was a coach. And, coaches aren’t always nice. I was talking about this at the Conference in Ontario. When we have something as important to do as connect people to God who feel their connection has been interrupted. We need some coaching. My experience of coaching comes from time spent on competitive swim teams from the age of 9 through college. My coaches rarely had things to say that were praising. Instead they were constantly looking at our starts, our strokes, our turns trying to help us become the best at our game we could be. It took constant redirection, skill and strength training. And, after a lot of work, it resulted in success by sometimes one hundredth of a second. But, that work felt good, because we each could feel the success in our own hard work, we could see that hundredth of a second. Being your pastor, I take a lot of my training from John the Baptist. I think it is often the work of coaching. I think that we need to talk about ways in our living that are weak, things we want to strengthen our connection to God, tools we can use to do that and the results we will see to know we are stronger, more in the image of the Creator than ourselves or worse, our world.
Someone or Someones came into our church and took stuff. Can you imagine what has happened to his/her/their hearts? To take things that we use to point to God? What must a life be like to consider this an option? Isn’t that sort of desperation sad? It makes me weap for them. It makes me so angry at us. Why is it that we can’t work harder to have a world where people don’t have to take in order to have? Why do we spend so much time building up ourselves instead of building up one another. It is a shame. As Joan Arnold would say, “stealing is Lose-lose” Because that person who took a rock and broke the bathroom window, that hardened a piece of his/her heart. That person who then proceeded to dismantle and take the things we use to tell the story of the Holy, his heart was hardened again.
And we, we can also become hard hearted. We can say we’ll put up bars and barricade the world out visually, dauntingly. We can say we’ll get attack dogs and build a fence. Some have even said, we’ll get guns and come here…No.
We do need to be good stewards of our resources, and we’ve been foolishly naiive and optimistic until now. However, to believe in the goodwill of another is exactly what God does, God calls us to believe in one another, to love one another, for we each are created in God’s image and God calls us blessed, blessed indeed. And this means, even the thief is blessed indeed. John reminds us today, shouting out, this is not the work of God, thievery. Living a life that takes from others and wounding others is not the work of God. And, it will harden your heart which hurts your living. And, John shouts out to us, hating antoher, trying to bring harm to another, getting even with another, that is not our work. We are the people preparing the way. We are the people that will make the living more bareable and easy, because of our commitment to the unconditional love of God.
Sometimes we often think this book is irrelevant, archaic. But, it’s so powerful these stories. Can we know who this thief is, embrace him, call him brother, invite him to table and say, you first, you are the least of these, and this is for you. This meal of acceptance of love, of hope. And we pray, that as you feel this love, your hard heartedness will fall away and your life will bear much fruit. A life that gives more than it takes away. Because God loves you, and you are enough in God’s eyes. Peter denied Jesus and was sitting at the table, Judas betrayed Jesus and he was sitting at the table, we in all our shortcomings and weakness, we and these thieves, they are welcome to be among us and sit at this table. For the feast, the gospel, the love of God has not bounds.
We are the fruit of the trees. If we are bitter, if we are infected, if we are harming the rest of the grove, the one who owns the orchard will cut us down, for we are no good for the rest. Some say this is about hell fire. I don’t think our God is punishing this way. I do think there is a hell. But, we create it. Sometimes hell is in having to live in this world we’ve created with the decisions we’ve made. And, when we die, and we go into the next realm, and that life review is flashing before our lives, it’s seeing how we denied people these simple moments of forgiveness, acceptance, peace and love. This is John’s word. We all are called. Our living makes a difference. Our skills make a difference. God is watching, trying to engage, trying to call to us all the time. What are we doing with that. Because it matters. This is no longer a story of prophets. This is now a story of disciples. And if we are to call ourselves disciples of this movement, we have to pay attention to the vulnerability of honesty and truth. When we hurt, it is our work to heal. When we take it is our work to return. When we profit it is our work to share with all we know.