"Are We Asking the Right Questions"
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Aug. 19, 2012
St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church
I want to begin my sermon today by acknowledging that in our presence this morning is the Moderator of The United Church of Canada, the Right Rev. Dr. Gary Paterson and his spouse, Rev. Tim Stevenson.
Moderator, to have you with us this morning is an honor. Rev. Gary, colleague, pastor and friend, we are crawling out of our skin with excitement for you and for the United Church. Gary, if it was intimidating to preach with you in the room before today, well, you've raised the bar once again.
The Old Testament lesson was assigned for today long before the Moderator election and long before our Rev. Gary went off to Israel and heard this crazy call of God to step out and do something outrageous. Why would a person put their name for Moderator when they have such a great church here in Vancouver, the 3rd most liveable city in the world? Why would you willingly apply for a job that moves you to Toronto? (I apologize to all Torontonians present today; I really hold nothing against a city I never visited it just fit the rhetoric.)
A lot of us here in this room today have a lot of questions. I'm guessing the Right Reverend Gary Paterson and his spouse Rev. Tim Stevenson have quite a few. But only 40 other people have walked the path they now walk so they don't have a large circle where they can ask questions and have them answered.
But those of us who will be left behind, so to speak, have questions. We have had moments of amazement, and quite honestly, moments of sadness the past 72 hours. When our Scripture text speaks of David sleeping with his ancestors (yes, one of those Scriptures that makes for great locker room humor), and when our Scripture speaks of Solomon taking the throne of his father, it implies that there were people who were in the kingdom, whose lives were affected by the changing of the guard.
Tim Scorer, who I often say to him that he has no idea who he is (because he walks alongside some of the greatest theologians and scholars of our day and translates their work for us common folk) worked with Walter Brueggemann for the publication of a study based on the work Embracing the Prophets. I like what Brueggemann has to say about today's text:
"We have some interpretive options with this text."
1. "-We can take the narrative at face value as is often done in the church, the story of a successful young king." If we take this story at face value, it is like a Hallmark made-for-tv movie starring Meredith Baxter Birney. And we can quickly draw out of this story a nice suggestion that goes something like this: May God bless the hearts of those who pray for money; aren't we grand that we pray for wisdom.
2. "We can take the whole as a belated fabrication that wants to legitimate a new mode of public power." If we understand this story as a redaction by the Deuteronomistic editors who went to work writing down Israel's story, then we can understand that they wanted to show a cause and effect...that IF you stay close to God and follow God's commandments and do what God says, then God will bless you, give you a long life, and make your evangelical, prosperity-gospel loving smile bright and shiny. Certainly, there is a sugar coating to today's story, in the same way that when someone dies the person automatically becomes a saint who never said or did one wrong thing by what you might hear at their funeral.
3. "We can read the text ironically so that the high sounds of modesty, steadfast love, wisdom, and discernment mock and contradict the actual performance of monarchy." And there's a bit of honesty to this interpretation. The lectionary actually calls for the extended text to be read: 1 Kings 2:10 - 3:14. The part that we left out today between the narration of David sleeping and Solomon asking for wisdom when he could have asked for the world, is a messy little story where Solomon kills no less than three people and banishes a fourth. And speaking of Solomon, history has given him the gift of being the one who was so wise. He is credited with writing a significant portion of the wisdom literature. The same evangelicals who would go for interpretation No. 1 will probably also gloss over the fact that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Brueggemann summed his three interpretive options saying, "Either way, we now read the text in the midst of our own preoccupation with “our next leader." I had no idea that Walter Brueggemann considered himself a member of our congregation. Oh wait, he was speaking of the next leader as being either Obama or Romney.
We now read the text in the midst of our own preoccupation with questions like:
What will this church be like without Rev. Gary?
Will we survive the absence of this person for three years?
Will the person sitting next to me in the pew still like this church when the face up-front is different?
In response to Brueggemann's comments about reading this text while being preoccupied with who will be the next leader of the United States, another theologian (who also has no connection to our congregation but based on his words you would think he is pew 5, writes:
(Timothy F. Simpson, Political Theology, 2012.) "Thoughtfully presented, pastors can use this sermon to give their parishioners something bracing from this text that will help them, not to choose the right candidate, but to have the proper view of the one that they do choose, seeing him or her as a full person, in all dimensions, rather than with blinders, through the ever-present advertising filter."
What he is saying is that God works through any of us. Even those who don't get their act together, which is every single one of us. Every single person is in need of the grace of God and every single person receives that grace of God because we serve a God who gives grace first and asks questions later, questions like, "Do you know that you are a beloved child?" "Do you know that you have a call on your life that is more than you can imagine?" "Do you know that you are not alone, no matter how lonely this life might feel at this very moment?"
We will get some things wrong (hopefully not as wrong as killing 3 and banishing 1), and we will stray from the path. But that doesn't mean that at any single moment God is not there more willing to hear than we might be to pray. And at any moment, no matter who we are or where we've come from or what we've done or not done, God's ready to hear our prayer for wisdom and grant it.
It might be easy to ask the questions that lead to this idea of whether or not we can find the right person to replace Gary. Let's face it. You don't replace a Gary Paterson. If that were the case, God would have created two of him. We give thanks for who he has been to us and for us and with us the past years, who he will be for the United Church and still for us as he stays our Lead Minister, and who he will be with us in 3 years when his term concludes.
We pray for wisdom asking God to help us to ask the questions that lead to wisdom. We pray for the wisdom to ask the kinds of questions that will lead us to the kind of ministry the Moderator described the past 3 days.
May we ask questions that shape our identity to find the Christ within our walls.
May we ask questions that so shape us that we seek the Christ outside our walls.
May we ask questions that allow us to set aside our fears and open us to all that really exists, which is love. And if we can fill ourselves with that love, if we can practice that kind of love...you know that love....the kind that is patient, kind, gentle, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, the love that does not insist on its own way but rejoices in the truth....the kind of love that believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things endures all things...
If we focus on this love, our questions will assure our hearts and minds that Love never ends; that this church won't end--we may very well radically change, but that's because God is working amongst us friends, and not because Gary is gone.
And now, it is my great honor to introduce to you the Moderator of The United Church of Canada, the Right Reverend Dr. Gary Paterson.
Pastoral Prayer written and given by Caroline Penhale
Holy One,
We are so grateful for the work of the commissioners to the 41st General Council. We give thanks to You for all those who gathered and served so generously and well. We give thanks for their faithful public witness. in these next few weeks, we ask for moments of rest and renewal for each of them.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We give thanks for the freedom to discern, debate in an effort to bring greater justice to the World. We pray that the decisions and statements made at General Council help contribute to Your peace and justice. As we live into the resolutions of this General Council, we pray for an extra measure of Grace in our relations with our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. Help us to contribute to the mending of the world.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
With give thanks for Gary, our pastor, and now the pastor to the national United Church. We are grateful, delighted and proud that he has faithfully answered your call and we ask for your blessing of wisdom, grace, and love to enfold Gary and his family as he lives out this call.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
Many, many people in this community prayed for Gary and his family, as he stood for election as Moderator. Gracious God, we give You thanks for answering our prayers. May this community continue to feel Your presence and turn to you in prayer as we discern the way forward and respond to your holy invitations.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We give thanks for the way in which the entire staff of St. Andrew's Wesley have led and nurtured us through this process and will continue to lead and nurture this community in the days and months ahead. May the staff be held in your loving care and may we all know in our bones that all shall be well in Your abiding presence and love.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We pray for those of us in need in some way this morning: either through mental of physical illness, through grief and loss or in facing some other challenge. We ask that you bring healing, comfort, and peace and resilience to each one. We thank you that you are always with us in times of sorrow and in time of joy and celebration. We are never alone.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
Please join me in a moment in silence to offer your own prayers of thanks and need.
and now will you pray with me the Lord's Prayer as printed in your bulletins.
Our Mother, Our Father…
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