Sermon for the 202nd Convention Holy Eucharist

Dr. Lisa Kimball
Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church
Augusta, GA
Lessons – “For the Ministry II”
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Psalm 63:1-8
Ephesians 4:11-16
Matthew 9:35-38

Speak God, for this servant is listening.

A writer and theologian who had an enormous impact on my understanding of faith and on my growth as a Christian during my college years (and ever since) was Carl Frederick Buechner (1922-2022). Buechner, as he was fondly known by backyard readers, academics, and Pulitzer prize winners, had a gift for being utterly and authentically himself. Whether in his poetry, fiction, or theological writing Buechner always communicated his reverence for the mystery of God and his utter delight and humility at the enterprise of being fully human.

I will never forget Buechner’s definition of doubt:

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

In a collection of essays and other writings The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction, Buechner published his Commencement address from Dartmouth. It is an unsuspectingly brilliant theological reflection on the Wizard of Oz.

In this meditation, Buechner asks the students to consider connections between the moral of the Wizard of Oz story and their own threshold moment: finishing a life-stage and beginning another, most probably with uncertainty, anxiety or even dread. 

He explained that in Oz, it is only a gold path on which one is safe. And the end of that path is an emerald city which we know, with the passage of time and from much literary criticism, the author Baum intended to represent as green cash/currency. There is a friend group, a motley crew of four vastly diverse people: Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow who set out to find the Wizard who, according to legend, could grant wishes.

They set out, trusting only in unproven stories (flimsy as they were. After all, no Wizard had ever stopped the power of the local wicked witch and her flying monkeys) and in promises that gold would lead them to the currency of power in the Emerald City. One can only guess that the Dartmouth students were already seeing the connection between Oz and the American Dream.

The dominant culture of Oz was too much in love with stories of powerful wizards to listen for experiences of true liberation and salvation.

The four reach Oz only to discover that the wizard is just a man. He cannot give the gifts that they seek at that moment, and he buys time to cover the lie of his reputation by sending them on an impossible mission to face the witch on their own. So, they take matters into their own hands and face the witch with no wizard power or presence. Ultimately, their own strength, their care for one another, their sacrificial love and sheer grit defeat the witch. And when they return to the wizard for a reward, they learn that he can do absolutely nothing for their deepest longings.

But he does finally come clean and explain the things that humans CAN do for one another. He gives them symbolic gifts so that the world will understand their inherent and God-given gifts. And the four heroes take pride in these symbols, as all of us do of diplomas, medals, collars, and certificates. They are signposts of sacred gifts and opportunities from God.

In this post-pandemic church, that was already shrinking in size and joy and imagination, we are in a strange land. We are in a decidedly post-christian America. Even more, the sociologists tell us what we see, which is that any voluntary associations with weekly attendance are collapsing. The Rotary Club, the Bowling league and the Bingo groups have the same shrinkage as the church. We are not in Kansas anymore.

And it is tempting to look for colorful lies and unproven stories. It is tempting both to seek human wizards and to pretend to be human wizards. Everyone wants the anxiety of church to ease and so we chase the posts, the people and the strategic plans that lay out gold paths to places of promised prosperity.

But the wizard was right about one thing: only God gives the gifts. The only power worth seeking in life is the resurrection power of the Triune God. In God, we find salvation for our souls AND paths along still waters of baptism to eternal life in this world.

We must face the witches of the world. But four is better than one in Oz, and community is the nature of the Body of Christ. When we go together, we come together as Jesus in the world.

We find this truth throughout today’s lessons – lessons identified in the BCP “For Ministry.”

Who knows how old Eli actually was when Samuel barged into his bedroom (three times no less) but we know he was a high priest and judge of Israel, a revered sage, an elder who had so many things he could have told Samuel – just as your diocesan staff could choose to “tell” you how to run your parish – but Eli understood that if instead he could teach Samuel how to listen to God it would be a source of formation forever.

And what is formation? According to Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, it is the process of building up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith becoming mature – fully who God created us to be in Christ. It is a lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep process by which each of our bodies learns to receive the gifts God has given us so that we can be knit together in love for the sake of God’s mission.

And this theme echoes right up to the Gospel … it is God who gives the gift and God who holds the manual for the gifts and for the mission. Or in the language of our Convention theme, it is God who kindles our hearts and awakens our hope. 

This gospel is often read at ordinations and I find that odd. How it often gets read and preached is that there are not enough (read: ordained) laborers for all the work there is to do. But that is not my understanding of this text. It is instead a statement of fact. There will never be enough workers for the work to be done because the work to be done is, in fact, the work of the coming of the Kingdom of God and that cannot be accomplished by any number of human beings. That has already been and is being accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus began his ministry in the temple, reading the words of Isaiah from a scroll, that he was coming and had arrived to usher in the Kingdom of God.

We live in a world that is an Emerald City, an internet circus, a global marketplace with promises of a wizard who will help us with our deepest longings.

An anxious, post-Covid church too often marked by exhaustion, burnout, retirement, shrinkage, and grief situated in a world ravaged by greed, fear, and hatred has headed toward the Emerald City’s oppressive lie that we can buy our way out of this crisis or work harder to achieve the gifts we need. The clear message of today’s Gospel is that it is impossible for any number of laborers to do the work of bringing the Kingdom if they are not listening to their shepherd. Control and busyness are not marks of Christian maturity.

What IS possible is that we learn to depend on each other, to mean it when we say, “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”

I find it befuddling when we interpret this Gospel account through a lens of scarcity in liturgies that should be – as all Eucharists are – celebrations of God’s abundance … there is always enough grace and there are always enough gifts in the community right now to do all that God has called us to do. We bore witness to that truth in the video testimony from the good people of St. George and St. Thomas this morning.

Having been one of the writers of the Way of Love curriculum, I remember the original vision of offering verbs that reflect the pattern of life of the early church, the rhythm of the catechumenate that prepared people for baptism. The vision of the Way of Love was not to give the Church a new set of ideas or plans, it was an attempt to call people back to ancient spiritual practices so that when we Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, and Rest we will become people whose lives ooze the love, mercy, and justice of Jesus Christ. There is no other way, no other wizard.

As Aslan said to Jill in The Silver Chair in the face of her crippling thirst, “there is no other stream.”

As baptized leaders in the Church you and I are called to build up the Body of Christ by preparing people to receive and use the gifts God wants to give. And that always happens in community – messy, strange, inconvenient, awkward as it can be – Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, or the Fellowship of the Ring, The Three Musketeers, the Rebel Alliance. When we confront our fears and our adversaries honestly and together, we can discern the gifts God is already kindling among us, and our hope WILL be awakened.

“Speak God for your servants are listening.”