January 8, 2012
Texts:
2 Cor. 4:7 -12, 16 -18
John 1:6-8
I have a Book of Hours by Elizabeth Yates (well worn) that has quotes, meditations and prayers for every hour of the day. I have sworn that I would only read the hr. of the day, when I was actually in that hour. And so I wondered if I would ever get to read this little book during the hrs. of 4am and 5am….Then one day, I was awake at 4am and I read this:
“The future glory of the Resurrection begins in this life, as a hidden seed planted in the ground, as a spring of living water raised from a deep well.
This inner present vitality, Jesus taught is connected with the future glory, not in some nominal or conventional fashion….It is organically one with it. The new life begins now, right here in the midst of this changing and transient life.” John LaFarge
The future glory of the Resurrection begins in this life….In a way that’s what we celebrate during this Epiphany season. That the transcendent light of God, flashes forth among us, in startling revelations. In these moments we are given sight, as clear asa clear blue mountain lake. It’s utter clarity, we have, for a moment or two…And the revelation? The revelation may last but a moment, but enough to see that the hint of the kingdom in our individual lives, or our communal life, is Christ. The transcendent light of Christ comes immanent. In us, and around us….
But our lesson from 2 Cor. begins where we are – “We have this treasure in clay pots…” What I have always found so moving about these words… is that it describes me. I am a clay pot, breakable, sometimes cracked, sometimes leaky. Are you, too? A clay pot?... This acceptance of our fragile humanness – (whatever is mine and whatever is yours) – is it anxiety, envy, impatience, fear, selfishness? -Whatever it is, it makes us know – we are clay pots.
But the clay pots that we are, are not only involved with other individuals. We are clay pots as we try to live out Jesus’ message in the world; that is in our communal realities. Is part of what makes your clay pot seem breakable the struggle you are having in your ministry to keep it funded in this tight economy? Is part of what makes your clay pot chipped, (as if it's being chipped away at), your work dealing with intransigent and reckless powers and principalities (the oil companies, Congress, state governments), who do not seem to be about to budge on the Tar Sands Pipeline. (And I’ll add their unwillingness to budge on fracking). Is your clay pot overwhelmed (even though as a social worker you’re not supposed to be overwhelmed, right?) by the slowness (like molasses) of the system and the lack of enough Section 8 housing? It keeps so many of your clients, individuals and families waiting, sometimes for 2 years, to find a home. Is your clay pot empty, powerless and so sad, as the woman you suspect is facing domestic violence keeps coming to the hospital with injuries, but will not name her batterer? As you and I seek to follow Jesus, how often we find our own clay pots fragile, seemingly not enough. For Paul, as he writes this passage, he was probably reflecting back on the anguish he endured watching his fledgling congregation in I Corinthians utterly turn away from God. Such pain, watching one you love turn their back on God and your teaching’s to them. He was also probably referring to persecutions he experienced when he was thrown out of cities, beaten, thrown in jail. We do not know exactly. But he uses these words—afflicted, perplexed, crushed, struck down—to describe the pains of such experiences. As we take up our crosses – fighting for change in difficult conditions, or struggling in a relationship to become a true partner – we too face the pains of our experiences – afflicted, perplexed, crushed, struck down. As our passage says, “carrying in the body the death of Jesus.”
But there are two parts to those sentences about his death. It says this. We are “carrying in the body the death of Jesus, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY BE ALSO MADE VISIBLE IN OUR BODIES.” And again he says, “For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus sake, SO THATTHE LIFE OF JESUS MAY BE MADE VISIBLE IN OUR MORTAL FLESH.” So that the treasure in our clay pots (that is Jesus and his Resurrection life, giving us new life) might become visible in us. Paul describes this as it happens in the flesh. He says we are afflicted in every way BUT NOT CRUSHED, perplexed BUT NOT DRIVEN TO DESPAIR, persecuted BUT NOT FORSAKEN, struck down BUT NOT DESTROYED. And again Paul says, we have this treasure in clay pots, SO THAT IT MAY BE MADE CLEAR THAT THIS EXTRAORDINARY POWER BELONGS TO GOD, AND NOT TO US.”God is the giver of new life, the resurrection power that comes into our clay pot changing us. God is the one who reveals to us those moments of clarity when we suddenly know which way to go, what to do. Into our clay pots, which were meant to hold things, comes this treasure, Christ and Christ’s transforming power!
I’d like to share with you a story that happened in Dr ML King’s life, an epiphany, an experience of the resurrection power of Jesus, come to find its place and to be held firmly by him in his clay pot.
It was 1956 in Montgomery Alabama early in the mass boycott of buses, by African Americans of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Dr MLK, new to Montgomery, new as a father, had been pressed into service to be the president and spokesperson of this movement. He had assumed the boycott would only be a few weeks. But the white citizenry was uncompromising. The mayor announced no more negotiations would take place. He ordered the car pools, some of which had formed to carry people to and from work, broken up. And he ordered that MIA persons driving be tailed and harassed by the police. In the midst of this, King found himself in a position he did not want to be in. He didn’t want to be its leader, he had never wanted to be as he said “its focal point”. In addition– he and Coretta had been receiving ugly threatening phone calls – threatening harm if he did not stop.
On the first day that the harassment of MIA motorists began King was the first to be arrested. He was put in a filthy jail until bail could be posted. Much later that night out of jail, coming home, he answered the phone as he got in the door. It was another threatening phone call. The words of this one were "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.”King went up to bed disturbed and fearful. An hour later, at midnight, still very upset and fearful he says, “I was ready to give up.” He went down into the kitchen. He sat down at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee, and he thought about his peaceful growing up life. He thought of his new daughter and wife and his fear for their safety. He thought too, of his father whom he’d talked over things within his life. And King wrote “You can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta,…you can’t call on Mama. You’ve got to call on something your Daddy used to tell you about. That power that can make a way out of no way. And I bowed my head over that cup of coffee. And I discovered that religion had to become real for me.”
Martin prayed about his fear, his desire to leave leadership and then it happened. He wrote "It happened as if I could hear an inner voice saying Martin Luther stand up for righteousness, truth, justice. I heard the voice of Jesus saying to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me alone, never to leave me alone.”
When Martin Luther King got up from that kitchen table, he did so, changed. He had a new strength and purpose. The power of Christ had changed his fear into courage, doubt into clarity. King was to refer throughout his life to these moments. It was a reference point through which he could remember Jesus would never, never leave him. And through it he remembered the power that had not been his own which had given him new life to go on.
“We have this treasure in clay pots, so that it may be made clear that the extraordinary power belongs to God and not to us.”
King’s story was what I call a core story. My guess is that many of us have a particular epiphany story of revelation that has come into your clay pot and transformed your weakness into strength, your selfishness into generosity, your anxiety into peace. Your story is something you can go back to….In the days when God seems silent, in the years when you feel far away from God, or in the times when things are happening that you do not understand – the core story – becomes a touchstone for life. A touchstone revealing how your clay pots held a treasure within them; how this treasure, Christ, flooded your life with light; how you and your clay pot were transformed into the human persons you were meant to be.
I have a core story too, which happened long ago, but is still important to me, that I’d like to share with you. It was a cold drizzling February morning. I was working at the Luther Place Night Shelter. And it was my job to get the women up for breakfast, time to use the bathroom facilities, time to gather their belongings – and at 7 o’clock I was to have them leave, go out. I hated this part of the job. I thought of how cars and buses would be slish-slurring their dirty snow on the women, how they would be looked at with rude stares, rubbing raw their already low self-esteem, and of how they would be looking for a warm place to get out of the rain, until they got kicked out. And thinking of these things, I was depressed. Later on in the day I was walking along and my mood had not lifted. I wondered if I could go back to the shelter that night. I was walking along a street with tin cans and old newspapers littering the street and boarded up homes. And then, all of a sudden, I came upon one house which was not boarded up. And in the window was a shade, and it was partially up. And around a small yard was a wrought iron fence. And inside the wrought iron fence was a bird bath. And in the bird bath was some left over snow and water…..And playing so lightly and freely, in the water, were two sparrows…. It seemed so beautiful to me… that I just stood there…and drank it in….And when I turned to go away I did so with a new mind and new spirit. Because you see, I knew I had been met by the Holy Spirit in that sight. And I knew I was going to be alright, and the women that day were going to be in God’s hands and they would be alright. And I knew that I could go back to the shelter that night. This is my core story which I go back to and which is important to me.
Such a revelation can happen on a cold Jan.’s night gazing at a star, or it can happen with sudden peace coming out of nowhere on a troubled day. This revelation is God’s Word made flesh. In us, it is the true light come into the world to enlighten all people’s, it is the mystery of our transcendent God made immanent among us. For this then, this morning, let us thank God. For as I read in the beginning, “The future glory of the Resurrection begins, in THIS life….”
Amen.