Jennifer E. Copeland - "Christian First Aid" (July 9, 2000)
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| - | The second reading is from | 0:12 |
| the Gospel According to St. Mark, the sixth chapter. | 0:15 | |
| "He left that place and came to his home town, | 0:19 | |
| and his disciples followed him. | 0:23 | |
| On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue. | 0:26 | |
| And many who heard him were astounded. | 0:30 | |
| They said, Where did this man get all this? | 0:34 | |
| What is this wisdom that has been given to him? | 0:39 | |
| What deeds of power are being done by his hands? | 0:42 | |
| Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, | 0:47 | |
| and the brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon, | 0:52 | |
| and are not his sisters here with us? | 0:57 | |
| And they took offense at him. | 1:01 | |
| Then Jesus said to them, Prophets are not without honor | 1:05 | |
| except in their home town, and among their own kin, | 1:10 | |
| and in their own house. | 1:15 | |
| And he could do no deed of power there, | 1:19 | |
| except that he laid his hands on a few sick people | 1:23 | |
| and cured them. | 1:26 | |
| And he was amazed at their unbelief. | 1:27 | |
| Then he went about among the villages teaching. | 1:34 | |
| He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, | 1:38 | |
| and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. | 1:42 | |
| He ordered them to take nothing for their journey | 1:46 | |
| except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, | 1:49 | |
| but to wear sandals, and not to put on two tunics. | 1:55 | |
| He said to the, Wherever you enter a house, | 2:00 | |
| stay there until you leave the place. | 2:03 | |
| If any place will not welcome you | 2:06 | |
| and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, | 2:08 | |
| shake off the dust that is on your feet | 2:12 | |
| as a testimony against them. | 2:15 | |
| So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. | 2:19 | |
| They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil | 2:23 | |
| many who were sick and cured them. | 2:27 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 2:32 | |
| - | Thanks be to God. | 2:35 |
| - | For those of us who finally earned the privilege | 2:45 |
| of putting on one of these brightly colored | 2:48 | |
| swaths of fabric, there is one question | 2:52 | |
| that we all must answer, no matter what our faith tradition. | 2:55 | |
| In my own United Methodist tradition | 2:59 | |
| I lost track of how many times I had to answer | 3:02 | |
| this question, and so I began to concentrate instead | 3:05 | |
| on giving essentially the same answer | 3:08 | |
| every time I was asked, in case any of those interviewers | 3:11 | |
| knew each other, and got together, | 3:14 | |
| and began to compare answers to my question. | 3:16 | |
| You know, it wouldn't do to keep changing your story. | 3:21 | |
| But really, after the third, or fourth, | 3:23 | |
| or even fifth time that you are asked the question, | 3:26 | |
| you really do start to feel the pressure | 3:31 | |
| to offer something creative or original. | 3:33 | |
| Then when I heard some of the fantastic answers | 3:37 | |
| that were being given as explanations by other people, | 3:41 | |
| well, that made the pressure to say something remarkable | 3:45 | |
| all the greater. | 3:48 | |
| It's not that one would ever lie when answering | 3:50 | |
| this question, but really, by the fifth time you are asked | 3:52 | |
| you really do want to come up with an original idea. | 3:57 | |
| It's a very basic question, of course, | 4:02 | |
| and each of us stole wearers has to answer it. | 4:03 | |
| They ask us, "Why do you feel called | 4:08 | |
| to the ordained ministry?" | 4:13 | |
| I heard people give stories ranging everywhere from, | 4:16 | |
| "I was driving home from work late one night down a dark, | 4:20 | |
| deserted road and suddenly headlights appeared before me, | 4:24 | |
| and I bowed my head and cried out to God, | 4:28 | |
| and after what should have been a head-on collision | 4:29 | |
| I looked up. | 4:32 | |
| Nothing was there, and I knew it was a sign from God | 4:34 | |
| that I should be a preacher." | 4:37 | |
| To this story, "Well, I just want to help people." | 4:40 | |
| My answer, of course, lies comfortably | 4:46 | |
| somewhere between the fantastic and the mundane. | 4:49 | |
| I'll have you know that I stuck with my story | 4:52 | |
| through the local church interviews, | 4:55 | |
| the district committee meetings, | 4:57 | |
| the conference board interrogation, | 4:58 | |
| and even the bishop's inquiry. | 5:00 | |
| Yet even after we get the stole, people still ask us why. | 5:03 | |
| When I tell someone that I am a Methodist minister, | 5:10 | |
| right after they clean up their language | 5:13 | |
| and hide the beer under the counter, | 5:14 | |
| they look at me as if they're wondering, "Why?" | 5:17 | |
| Or better yet, "How?" | 5:20 | |
| When I first started into this work, | 5:24 | |
| making the initial round of visits | 5:26 | |
| to the shut-ins of the church always provided | 5:29 | |
| an opportunity to explain my call to the ministry, | 5:31 | |
| albeit not quite on the same level | 5:35 | |
| as the Board of Ordained Ministry had expected to hear it. | 5:37 | |
| It was usually more along the lines of, | 5:40 | |
| "Why look, it's that new lady preacher | 5:43 | |
| the bishop has sent to us. | 5:46 | |
| Now how in the world did you get to be a minister?" | 5:48 | |
| But the best one I heard was from an elderly gentleman | 5:53 | |
| who proclaimed when I walked in his door, | 5:57 | |
| "Why, you're just too pretty to be a preacher." | 6:00 | |
| But they never told me about that affliction | 6:06 | |
| in seminary or the Board of Ordained Ministry, | 6:08 | |
| and I spent a great deal of time reassuring this gentleman | 6:10 | |
| that God had a proven track record | 6:13 | |
| of calling beautiful people into the service | 6:15 | |
| and some of those people were even men. | 6:18 | |
| (laughter) | 6:21 | |
| Of course, the ordained don't have a monopoly | 6:23 | |
| on having to justify God's call. | 6:28 | |
| Plenty of lay people get funny looks | 6:30 | |
| every time they head out the door for worship | 6:32 | |
| instead of pouring that third cup of coffee | 6:35 | |
| and settling down with the Sunday paper, | 6:38 | |
| or heading off to the local golf course | 6:40 | |
| for a 9:45 tee time. | 6:42 | |
| And the quizzical looks will get even more serious | 6:45 | |
| if you give up a week of your summer vacation | 6:48 | |
| and you head off to a place like Haiti or Honduras | 6:50 | |
| to build a church or to build a school. | 6:55 | |
| Paul, in today's epistle lesson, | 6:59 | |
| is asked to justify his call to proclaim | 7:01 | |
| Christ as the risen Lord. | 7:05 | |
| Even though Paul has one of those | 7:08 | |
| fantastic caught-in-the-headlights stories, | 7:10 | |
| that's not the one he chooses to highlight. | 7:15 | |
| Oh, yes, he does mention it in a sort of off-hand way. | 7:18 | |
| He says, "Oh, yes, I knew a person | 7:22 | |
| who was caught up in the third heaven. | 7:24 | |
| Could have been in the body. | 7:26 | |
| Might have been out of the body. | 7:27 | |
| I don't know. | 7:28 | |
| But he was there. | 7:29 | |
| He saw a lot of great things, | 7:30 | |
| but I can't tell you about them." | 7:32 | |
| Of course, the person was Paul himself. | 7:35 | |
| What Paul focuses on in the midst of relating | 7:39 | |
| what could have been a fantastic vision | 7:41 | |
| is not the glory and the splendor of paradise, | 7:44 | |
| for that is indeed where he claims to have been, | 7:48 | |
| but he focuses rather on that thorn he received | 7:51 | |
| while he was in the third heaven, | 7:56 | |
| Paul's infamous thorn in the flesh. | 7:59 | |
| Scholars have speculated for centuries about Paul's thorn. | 8:03 | |
| He had a lisp. | 8:07 | |
| He had a limp. | 8:09 | |
| He had a wife. | 8:10 | |
| He had a male lover. | 8:11 | |
| You can see that Paul's thorn usually reflects | 8:13 | |
| more of the scholar's own place in life | 8:16 | |
| than it does Paul's particular challenges, | 8:18 | |
| because for Paul the thorn grounds him in reality. | 8:21 | |
| The thorn reminds him that visions are great | 8:26 | |
| for those lucky enough to have them. | 8:29 | |
| But the reality is, there are a lot more cuts and bruises | 8:31 | |
| picked up while living the Christian life | 8:36 | |
| than there are visions and exaltations. | 8:38 | |
| Paul tells us that if we are dependent | 8:43 | |
| upon glorious revelations to prove the worth of this faith | 8:46 | |
| or the validity of our calling, | 8:51 | |
| we could be in for a long, hard road | 8:52 | |
| full of disappointment. | 8:55 | |
| In fact, according to Paul, that's exactly | 8:58 | |
| the kind of road we are in for, | 9:01 | |
| and the sooner we come to grips with that reality | 9:03 | |
| the better we'll be able to tread the path. | 9:05 | |
| So this would be a good time for all of you | 9:09 | |
| to head to the door, because who wants a hard road | 9:11 | |
| filled with disappointment? | 9:15 | |
| I suspect if you hurry, you could still | 9:17 | |
| make a 12 o'clock tee time. | 9:19 | |
| But as you are rushing out the door, | 9:22 | |
| don't misunderstand Paul here. | 9:26 | |
| Because it is not the Christian faith in and of itself | 9:29 | |
| that will disappoint us and create hardship. | 9:33 | |
| It's life. | 9:36 | |
| Life is hard. | 9:38 | |
| Life is filled with disappointments. | 9:40 | |
| But in the midst of these disappointments | 9:43 | |
| and these hardships, and in the midst of life, | 9:45 | |
| the Christian faith can sustain us. | 9:49 | |
| But you see a vision of driving down the road | 9:54 | |
| and being confronted with lights and sirens | 9:57 | |
| calling a person to preach isn't worth a hill of beans | 9:59 | |
| to you when you face tragedy, or disappointment, | 10:03 | |
| or hardship, when you get a thorn. | 10:07 | |
| What you need then, what I need then, | 10:11 | |
| what any of us need then is a hand to hold, | 10:14 | |
| or a prayer offered. | 10:18 | |
| Or maybe all we need is silent presence. | 10:21 | |
| We need somebody to dig beneath the cheerful exterior | 10:25 | |
| of our everyday existence to push back | 10:28 | |
| the folds of our clothing and notice | 10:31 | |
| the festering, oozing wounds where the thorns are embedded. | 10:34 | |
| Maybe you could help me remove the thorn. | 10:40 | |
| Or maybe all you can do is help me keep it clean. | 10:44 | |
| You can lance it, wash it, bandage it for me | 10:47 | |
| until it heals, if it heals. | 10:50 | |
| Sometimes, simply surviving does more | 10:55 | |
| to strengthen our faith than a neon sign | 10:58 | |
| flashing through the night, "I am who I am." | 11:01 | |
| Visions and spiritual exaltation certainly have validity | 11:05 | |
| for the individual caught in the phenomenon, | 11:09 | |
| according to Paul, but they are not the ties | 11:11 | |
| that bind our hearts in Christian love. | 11:14 | |
| They are not the fellowship of kindred minds. | 11:16 | |
| Those bonds and fellowships usually happen in life | 11:21 | |
| where the thorns grown the thickest. | 11:25 | |
| When I was a student here in the early '80s, | 11:28 | |
| there was a much-loved religion professor | 11:31 | |
| who was about to retire, and so the only people | 11:34 | |
| who could get into his classes were religion majors, | 11:37 | |
| so I became a religion major one fall semester | 11:41 | |
| in order to take New Testament in the spring semester | 11:44 | |
| with Barney Jones. | 11:48 | |
| It was one of the last classes that Barney | 11:50 | |
| ever taught here at Duke. | 11:52 | |
| He had this practice of never scheduling | 11:54 | |
| office appointments. | 11:57 | |
| Barney simply left his door open after lunch | 11:59 | |
| and anybody who wanted to could come by | 12:02 | |
| and chat with him. | 12:04 | |
| His office was up on the third floor of Carr Building | 12:06 | |
| all the way over on East Campus, | 12:08 | |
| but the hall was always lined with students, | 12:11 | |
| and hardly anyone came to talk about their grade | 12:14 | |
| or their paper assignment. | 12:17 | |
| We went to talk to Barney about life, | 12:20 | |
| because he seemed to know how to live life | 12:23 | |
| in such an extraordinary way. | 12:26 | |
| It was not an extravagant way. | 12:29 | |
| It was not even, in our opinion sometimes, | 12:31 | |
| a particularly exciting way. | 12:34 | |
| But it was a good way. | 12:37 | |
| And so we trotted in our problems | 12:40 | |
| and our fears and our heartaches, | 12:42 | |
| because it was obvious to all of us | 12:44 | |
| that Barney didn't have any of his own. | 12:46 | |
| I remember sitting in his office one afternoon | 12:49 | |
| moaning about the disintegration of love | 12:54 | |
| because my boyfriend was so far away, | 12:56 | |
| a couple of hundred miles or something. | 13:00 | |
| Barney listened. | 13:02 | |
| He nodded politely at my declarations | 13:03 | |
| that nobody's pain could be this agonizing, | 13:05 | |
| offered me a Kleenex when needed, | 13:09 | |
| reassured me and sent me on my way. | 13:10 | |
| I felt oh so much better after that visit, | 13:13 | |
| but still certain that he didn't really | 13:16 | |
| understand my heartache because his life | 13:18 | |
| was so good, so comfortable. | 13:21 | |
| Later I learned, as some of you may know, | 13:25 | |
| that Barney had been in the Navy as a young man | 13:28 | |
| and had spent months away from his family. | 13:31 | |
| Maybe he had spent more than a year away from his family, | 13:33 | |
| away from his beloved Margie, who has now predeceased him, | 13:36 | |
| away from his children, and he had missed | 13:41 | |
| many of those parental milestones, | 13:43 | |
| the first steps, the first birthdays, the first words. | 13:46 | |
| He didn't tell me any of those things | 13:50 | |
| when I was moaning about a boyfriend 200 miles away | 13:53 | |
| that I hadn't seen in, what, maybe two weeks. | 13:55 | |
| He just let me sit there and believe | 14:00 | |
| that I had the worst problem in the world. | 14:02 | |
| Well, I did. | 14:06 | |
| That's the way it is with problems | 14:10 | |
| when they are our problems, and Barney knew that. | 14:12 | |
| Paul knew that. | 14:16 | |
| The thorns that we have are our thorns. | 14:17 | |
| Paul's point is, sooner or later, | 14:21 | |
| if we live this life long enough | 14:24 | |
| and we endeavor to remain true to the tenets of our faith, | 14:26 | |
| we're going to pick up a thorn, | 14:29 | |
| and it's going to hurt like hell. | 14:32 | |
| Chances are, it'll be a lot more serious | 14:35 | |
| than a long-distance relationship with a hometown boyfriend | 14:38 | |
| in your second year of college. | 14:42 | |
| But whatever that thorn is, it'll be yours, | 14:45 | |
| and how you handle it will make | 14:50 | |
| all the difference in the world. | 14:52 | |
| In fact, how you handle it could depend on your life. | 14:54 | |
| Because the thorn can be a hindrance, | 15:00 | |
| or the thorn can be helpful. | 15:03 | |
| In Paul's case, the thorn, whatever it was, | 15:06 | |
| kept him from becoming too proud | 15:08 | |
| of his third heaven out of body experience. | 15:10 | |
| The thorn reminded him that Christian faith | 15:14 | |
| is lived out here on earth, not in heaven. | 15:17 | |
| And it taught him that valuable lesson | 15:21 | |
| around which today's epistle reading turns. | 15:23 | |
| Power is made perfect in weakness. | 15:27 | |
| It has been my experience that God has a way | 15:33 | |
| of taking events disastrous from our perspective | 15:37 | |
| and working through those events | 15:41 | |
| to create positive results for us | 15:42 | |
| and ultimately for God's kingdom. | 15:45 | |
| Naturally, the Bible is full of examples. | 15:48 | |
| Joseph's betrayal by his brothers | 15:51 | |
| to the slave traders from Egypt later saves his family | 15:53 | |
| and thus the nation of Israel | 15:57 | |
| from annihilation by famine. | 15:59 | |
| The union of David and Bathsheba, | 16:01 | |
| consummated in adultery and made possible by murder, | 16:04 | |
| provides the successor to the throne of King David. | 16:08 | |
| The death of God's own son at the hands of humans | 16:12 | |
| brings about salvation for the entire creation. | 16:17 | |
| It shouldn't surprise us then that disastrous events | 16:21 | |
| in our own lives can still offer possibilities. | 16:25 | |
| This thorn of Paul's, sent to him by Satan, | 16:30 | |
| was supposed to hinder his ministry. | 16:34 | |
| It was supposed to be a threat to his work. | 16:35 | |
| Instead it taught him the valuable lesson | 16:38 | |
| about humility, and patience, and weakness. | 16:40 | |
| Sometimes, you see, we are saved from our own follies | 16:45 | |
| without even knowing it. | 16:49 | |
| What could Paul accomplish through the folly | 16:51 | |
| of boasting about a vision of paradise? | 16:54 | |
| Probably not very much. | 16:57 | |
| But Paul could accomplish a great deal | 16:59 | |
| by persevering in the face of weaknesses, | 17:02 | |
| insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. | 17:05 | |
| Interesting that we don't even know the names | 17:11 | |
| of those other apostles, Paul's rivals in Corinth, | 17:13 | |
| who were boasting of their own visions and exaltations. | 17:17 | |
| The historians of our faith tradition | 17:20 | |
| failed to record their names, | 17:22 | |
| failed even to record their visions, | 17:24 | |
| and I doubt that it was only because | 17:28 | |
| Paul wrote better letters. | 17:30 | |
| It was probably because in the end | 17:32 | |
| their paradise experiences couldn't sustain their faith, | 17:35 | |
| much less the faith of the communities | 17:39 | |
| to which they proclaimed them. | 17:42 | |
| It is even probable that when they picked up a thorn | 17:44 | |
| their faith died from the infection. | 17:50 | |
| Thorn survival requires some effort on our part. | 17:54 | |
| We can't lackadaisically sit back and wait on God | 17:59 | |
| to fix everything, though the temptation | 18:02 | |
| to do just that afflicts most of us. | 18:04 | |
| Paul claims he prayed no less than three times | 18:07 | |
| for God to remove his thorn, and three times | 18:11 | |
| God replied that grace would suffice. | 18:13 | |
| No one wants to hear that life must continue | 18:18 | |
| in this state of discomfort for at least the short term | 18:21 | |
| if not forever. | 18:25 | |
| We've been programmed to expect more from life | 18:28 | |
| and we feel cheated somehow when we are | 18:30 | |
| forced to deal with inadequacies. | 18:32 | |
| Remember Job's refrain when his friends came calling | 18:36 | |
| and asked him to confess the transgressions | 18:39 | |
| that had brought about such calamitous events in his life. | 18:42 | |
| "I don't deserve this!" Job cried, | 18:45 | |
| but no one believed him. | 18:49 | |
| They too subscribed to that mantra | 18:51 | |
| that life doles out exactly what we deserve, | 18:55 | |
| and when we're not getting what we deserve | 18:59 | |
| we naturally appeal to God to fix it, | 19:02 | |
| as if God messed it up in the first place. | 19:05 | |
| The most often used form of prayer is a petition. | 19:09 | |
| I'm going to do a survey next fall semester | 19:15 | |
| during final exams to back up that claim. | 19:17 | |
| But I am convinced that more often than not | 19:20 | |
| when we pray, we pray in the form of a petition. | 19:24 | |
| We're always asking God to do something for us, | 19:28 | |
| and if not for us then maybe we'll ask God | 19:32 | |
| to do something for someone else. | 19:35 | |
| We call that intercession. | 19:38 | |
| But I think it's really just a petition | 19:40 | |
| dressed up as a request on someone else's behalf, | 19:42 | |
| which when granted will probably make us feel better too. | 19:45 | |
| It's the normal human reaction to tell God what we need. | 19:50 | |
| Paul does it three times. | 19:55 | |
| I've done it once or twice, this morning, I mean. | 19:57 | |
| So what are we to do with these thorns? | 20:02 | |
| God won't remove them. | 20:06 | |
| God seems somehow to be an accomplice | 20:08 | |
| to their insertion under our skin. | 20:11 | |
| Well, here's what I believe. | 20:14 | |
| I have decided that if they did teach this | 20:18 | |
| in a class across the quad years ago | 20:21 | |
| I probably learned it. | 20:24 | |
| But I don't think I believed it. | 20:26 | |
| Now I believe it. | 20:29 | |
| Like Paul, I believe in grace. | 20:32 | |
| I've lived maybe half of my life, | 20:36 | |
| hopefully not even that long, | 20:39 | |
| but I have lived long enough to know | 20:41 | |
| that if I were in charge of my life | 20:44 | |
| it would not be what it is today. | 20:46 | |
| Grace is more than God's forgiveness to undeserving sinners, | 20:51 | |
| though goodness knows that's enough. | 20:55 | |
| Grace is still more. | 20:57 | |
| Grace is the strength that God gives us | 20:59 | |
| to live each day as people of God. | 21:02 | |
| Some need more, some need less. | 21:06 | |
| I've needed more than my share lately, | 21:10 | |
| but there have been times in the past | 21:11 | |
| where I didn't need very much at all, | 21:13 | |
| and I trust that day will come again. | 21:15 | |
| It's all about dressing wounds. | 21:18 | |
| Any time you dress wounds, some good first aid | 21:22 | |
| can save your life. | 21:25 | |
| But you've got to have the right supplies on hand, | 21:28 | |
| supplies like hope, | 21:31 | |
| trust, perseverance, faith. | 21:35 | |
| It also helps to have people around you | 21:41 | |
| who can assist in the application of those supplies, | 21:43 | |
| mentors in the faith who can show us how to live | 21:47 | |
| without a great deal of whining and complaining | 21:50 | |
| even when both of those reactions | 21:52 | |
| would be perfectly justified. | 21:54 | |
| Those kind of people are not in the third heaven | 21:57 | |
| that Paul visited. | 22:01 | |
| They're here, beside you, behind you, in front of you. | 22:02 | |
| They work with you, attend class with you. | 22:07 | |
| They have names like Barney Jones, | 22:10 | |
| who listens to sophomore problems, | 22:12 | |
| knowing all the while that if life were any harder than that | 22:15 | |
| then life really wouldn't be much of a challenge. | 22:19 | |
| You may never know the names of those people, | 22:23 | |
| unless- | 22:27 | |
| unless you pick up a thorn, | 22:30 | |
| and you can't dig it out all by yourself. | 22:32 | |
| And then you learn something about grace, | 22:37 | |
| and about the people who embody it. | 22:40 | |
| And you learn something about yourself. | 22:43 | |
| Then you learn something about weakness. | 22:46 | |
| And then, only then, do you know the power | 22:52 | |
| made perfect in weakness and the strength | 22:57 | |
| sufficient for the need. | 23:00 | |
| That is where Paul found his answer for the call. | 23:05 | |
| It has given me my answer, and I trust | 23:11 | |
| that it will give you yours | 23:15 | |
| through the power of the Holy Spirit. | 23:19 | |
| Amen. | 23:22 |