Sunday, January 09, 2005
The Bishop's Sermon at Tinney Chapel
NORTH TEXAS CONFERENCE BISHOP Rhymes Moncure, Jr., delivered a powerful sermon at the Service of Consecration for Tinney Chapel's new Family Life and Christian Education Center on January 9, 2005. His Scripture was Matthew 5:13-16 and his sermon was entitled: Hey, Church, Do You Know Who You Are? North Texas Conference Communications photo by Joe Dan Boyd using Dr. Joan LaBarr's digital camera.
Hey, Church, Do You Know Who You Are?
Today’s sermon began with a humorous story about a pastor who had always started his sermons over many years with the phrase, “The Lord be with you,” to which his congregation always responded: “And also with you.” But, one day, this pastor began by noting, “There seems to be something wrong with the microphone today,” to which his congregation responded: “And also with you!”
“It’s a joy to be here. I’m just so honored to be here; it really is a joy,” declared North Texas Conference Bishop Rhymes Moncure, Jr., who delivered the sermon at Tinney Chapel’s Service of Consecration for the church’s new Family Life & Christian Education Center on January 9, 2005. “When Pastor Graham mentioned that this would be the first time a Bishop had ever been to Tinney Chapel, I thought: Boy, I hope they think it’s worth it!”
Here, Bishop Moncure told the story of a recent event in the Gainesville, Texas, area, in which a little girl asked him if he was really the Bishop, and he said he was. The little girl continued: “Are you really the Bishop?” Again, he said he was, to which the child asked: “Of the world?” Bishop Moncure said, “No, but I am the Bishop of the Dallas area,” which prompted the little girl to look him up and down before saying: “Awww.”
“In the North Texas Conference, there are 320 congregations in six districts,” explained the Bishop. And, when you count every man, woman, boy and girl in our Conference, Tinney Chapel, you have today the congratulations and well wishes of each of our 200,000-plus United Methodists in the Name of Him who gave us Life.
“And, this is such a beautiful facility, and I can’t wait until we get to the part of the service where we consecrate and dedicate it to the continued use of God,” added Bishop Moncure. “Again, I am honored to be here today with you, and to give thanks for all that God has done with this congregation in bringing forth all that you are.
“I want to share with you some words,” he continued. “When I was a Bishop in the Nebraska area, we had a Cokesbury display every year at Annual Conference. At some point each year, a representative came forward and presented the Annual Conference with a check, representing a portion of book sales, which generally goes toward paying the pensions for the clergy. But they also give the Bishop a book, and my second year there they presented me a copy of Eugene Peterson’s translation of the New Testament. I started thumbing though it and reading it, and quite frankly, I have not been able to put it down since.
“Peterson has translated both the Old and New Testaments, and his translation of the ancient texts presents the Bible in a very fresh, contemporary way,” explained the Bishop. “And I really enjoy reading it. I grew up on the King James Version, that old Victorian language, and of course there have been many translations since. They are always coming out with something different. But this translation, The Message, I thoroughly enjoy reading, and I want to read our text from it: Matthew 5:13-16:
"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
"Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill.
If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand.
Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand - shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
---The Message Translation
“For the people of God, this is the Word of God,” declared the Bishop, to which the people responded: “Thanks be for the Word of God.”
“When I finally got the date on the calendar, after several conversations back and forth, I started reading the information you sent me about Tinney Chapel, to research the church as much as I could. As I started reading, I thought: Now, in a few weeks you will be out there in the Paris-Sulphur Springs District, and you will be in one of the churches that you’ve been informed they’ve never had a Bishop before. And you are the new kid on the block. What are you going to say to that church?
“What are you going to say to a congregation that you are going to go to, and help them dedicate a facility that has shown a sense of growth, and probably the most ambitious sense of growth that church has shown in the last 100 years. What do you say? What do you say to a congregation that you just know that, through the years that they have been here, and in the expansion they will put forth together, it has probably been like a roller coaster: Times they’ve been up, and times they’ve been down.
“Probably been times around here when some of you have wondered: Why are we doing this? And how important is this? And why should we do it anyway? I can almost imagine that there must have been moments when you questioned the leadership of the church, questioned yourselves, and maybe some of you even questioned God: God, are you sure we can do this? Are you sure we ought to do it? Are you sure it’s going to make any difference? What do you say in that church?
“What do you say to a congregation that rolls up its sleeves, and through their blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice, continue to be at ministry to an entire community? What are you going to say, Mister New Bishop? As you sit there with your blank computer screen and you hear that Sunday coming to you quicker than you think you are going to be prepared: What are you going to say? To a church that provides blankets in the winter and fans in the summer for the least, the lost and the marginalized of their community: What are you going to say to them?
“What do you say to a church that, as I look at the apportionment payouts: It’s already 100%. You were almost one of the first churches to do that! What do you say? What do you say to a congregation that really models something, and that you wish the other 319 churches could be there with you that day.
“I have come this morning to raise in the hearing of this congregation what I have hoped and prayed is appropriate. My wife, Jewell, and I like to watch the old classic movies on TV. Those are the ones that make sense to me. I was looking at one not too long ago that came out years ago: Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas. That’s when I became a Kirk Douglas fan. Those of you who are under 40: Kirk is Mike Douglas’s dad!
“That movie, Spartacus, turned him into a full-fledged movie star. He said, in his autobiography, written years afterwards: Before that movie came out, he was just a struggling B actor. But, after that movie, he was recognized everywhere he went. He said he started eating regularly from the royalties of that movie. Bought his first new car: a Buick, and he said that, in those days, you always picked up hitchhikers. You just sort of did it automatically.
“He was driving down one of the boulevards of California when he saw a young man standing by the side of the road, hitchhiking. He said he just swerved by the side of the road, opened the passenger door and picked up the hitchhiker. Soon they were tooling down the road without so much as saying a word to each other. Out of the corner of his eye, Kirk Douglas noticed the young man staring at him, then turning away. Again, the young man stared at Kirk Douglas a few minutes and then again turned away. Finally, after a triple take, he started pointing at Kirk Douglas, yelling at the top of his voice: ‘Hey man, do you know who you are?’
“I hope today the appropriate question is: Hey, Tinney Chapel, do you know who you are? Do you know who you are? You see, we are the ones that God loves. Hey, church, do you know who you are? We are the ones Christ has pinned all of his hopes on, expecting that somehow you and I will inform the world that God loves them just as much! Do you know who you are? Do you really know who you are?
“In today’s Scripture, the one we read a few moments ago, Jesus gathers His Disciples around Him, and whenever you read in the New Testament the word Disciples, you know that’s us in our embryonic stages: It’s talking about the early church. He gathers those Disciples around Him, and says things like: ‘Hey, if you want to follow Me, you’ve got to take up your Cross. You’ve got to pull up whatever is staking you out in life and follow Me.’
“Another time, He said, hey, if you’re going to be my Disciples and follow Me, I’m going to make you fishers of people. You are going to go out and gather all kinds of people. And he looks them in the eye and he says, if you follow Me, you are the Salt of the Earth and you are the Light of the World. Wow! Can you imagine what they must have felt like? As they stood there, as they were listening to the most important person they’ve ever been around in their lives, and he calls them Salt and Light. Now, they’ve been called a lot of things in their lives, but never Salt and Light.
“I can imagine they started murmuring to themselves, and to one another: What’s He talking about? Does He know who we are? I mean, look at us! We’re just fishers. Yet, he said we are the Light of the World. We’re the Salt of the Earth. Imagine that! He says we are the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World!
“Hey, Tinney, do you really know who you are? Do you know just who you are? When I served the United Methodist Church in Columbia, Missouri, prior to my election and assignment to Nebraska, and my assignment here in July, I used to look forward to all the worship services, but the one that I really kind of got goosebumps over, were those annual Christmas Eve services. I really enjoy that time of the year. And, every Christmas Eve, we would have four or five Christmas Eve services, and I’d preach them all, because you had a different congregation at each worship service. And, there was always that one dramatic moment that, although I knew it was coming, it always sort of knocked the wind out of me.
“There was that one dramatic moment in that huge neo-Gothic sanctuary, and there would be a Vesper service, the sun had gone down, and we’d be behind these heavy, stained glass windows and there would be that dramatic moment when we would extinguish all the lights in the sanctuary. And, there we would sit, for just a few moments, in absolute darkness, total darkness. No lights, whatsoever. I knew this sanctuary like the back of my hand. I knew how many steps it took to get to the altar. How many seats there were in the choir loft. I had been in that sanctuary a thousand times.
“But, all of a sudden, the lights went out! How disoriented you can become in total darkness. There’s something overpowering about darkness. All of a sudden my internal compass started playing havoc with me. You lose your directions when you are in total darkness. I can remember suddenly feeling bemused and lost. Where am I? Well, it’s absolute darkness. Until the acolyte lights that
one candle that we called the Christ Candle.
“And, all of a sudden, that room starts getting transformed. Again. And we started lighting other candles from that one candle. It occurred to me how the room started feeling safer and warmer, with just one candle lighting other candles. Now, there were no neon signs. No high voltage lights. No flashing neon lights. Just one candle lighting another candle.
“Hey, church, do you know who you are? We are the ones that Christ has empowered. And equipped. And enabled to be the Light in a darkened world. We are to be the Light of Hope in a world of despair. And the Light of Peace in a world of chaos. And to be the Light of Reconciliation in a world that seems to get more divided all the time. Or maybe we are to be the Light of Love in a world that hasn’t really tried Love yet. Or to be the Light of Grace in a world that’s forgotten God. Or to be the Light of Christ in a world that’s groping in a darkened room, trying to find something that makes sense, that they can hang onto.
“Hey, church, do you know who you are? We are the ones that Christ has called, and you are to be the Light of the World. The Salt of the Earth. Do you ever feel sometimes, I know I do, that all of our institutions in our society, like the schools and the hospitals and the campuses and don’t leave out the churches. God knows: Don’t leave out the churches. Do you ever get the feeling that all of our institutions seem to be getting colder and more insensitive and downright uncaring? You ever get the feeling the world is going the other way in a hand basket?
“Do you ever get the feeling, as I do sometimes, when I read something in the paper, or hear something on the news, and wonder what’s happening to the world? And, I’ll get off to myself sometimes and say, God, what are you going to do about that?
“It’s almost like God speaks back to me, in my spirit, and says, Rhymes, what are you going to do about it? Because, after all, I’ve made you Light and Salt.
“Do you ever get the feeling that all of our institutions are competing, and you wish something would change the world?
“Hey, church, do you know whose job it is to change that? We are the spiritual leaders. We are the ones to make a difference. We are the ones that Christ said: ‘You are the Salt of the Earth. The Light of the World!’
“There must have been times when you wondered: Why in the world are we doing this? After all, we could do better things with that money. Why are we doing this? Maybe, and I wasn’t around when you had those discussions, maybe you thought we are doing this because we are to be the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World. In a darkened place, Christ said, Tinney Chapel, I need you. I need you. To be the Light of the World. And the Salt of the Earth.
“When Robert Louis Stevenson was a boy, and sickly most of the time, and couldn’t go outside to play with the other kids, he would look out his window and watch the lamplighter come along in those days, lighting the lamps on the street. Robert Louis Stevenson used his imagination, looked out at the lamplighter, and one night he called to his mama: Come here, mama, come quick, there’s a man outside who’s poking holes in the darkness!
“Jesus said: Go out and poke some holes in the darkness. Go out and be Light. Be Salt. We’re all God’s got! It might mean, Tinney, that you simply make a difference right here, right were you are, with what God has given you and say, we don’t have a choice but to be Light and Salt. God said it: You are the Light of the World. You are the Salt of the Earth. It might mean that right here with the ministry that God has given this congregation: The lives that God has given the members of this community: That this church become the Leader church that God knows you are.
“In a marvelous little book, called The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes a powerful witness of not only her life, but other things. She does share her childhood experiences. She said that when she was a little girl: I was born different. I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it abundantly clear to me just how different I was: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech, and I had to wear those awful hand-me-down dresses that many of my classmates would give to my mother. They got to wear them when they were new, but not me.
“She said sometimes the dresses never fit quite right. And she said there were always those around to remind her that the dress she was wearing on a given day had once been theirs—when it was new. She said that she would pray in the mornings for snow or blizzards so she would not have to go to school. Because she hated school. They would be waiting for me, she said, walking to school, and they would say: Here she comes. That funny girl with the funny lip. And some girl would say: That dress she’s wearing was my sister’s dress when it as new. Mary Ann Bird said she was convinced that no one outside her family could love her. Not me. How humiliating it was.
“When schoolmates asked what happened to her lip, she would tell them she’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow, it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. She said there was a teacher in the second grade that all the kids adored: We thought Mrs. Leonard hung the moon. She was short, round, happy; she was a sparkling lady.
“And, Mary Ann Bird said every year they had a hearing test: That’s where the title of the book comes from, The Whisper Test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and I knew how it worked. She gave it in alphabetical order: Last name first. We stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back. Things like ‘The sky is blue’ or ‘is it raining today?’ or ‘are you wearing new shoes?’ Mary Ann Bird said that, since her last name started with a B, she always took the whisper test early, and hoped that worked to help the other kids forget about her, so she could walk home without too much jeering.
“But she said something happened that day. Mrs. Leonard started with the As like she always did, but then she skipped the Bs. And she went to the Cs and the Ds and the Es. And I kept thinking: Mrs. Leonard, why are you doing this to me? She went through the whole alphabet, and finally the last name she called was Bird. I knew I’d have to walk the whole length of that classroom, and I could hear them saying: Look at her lip. Wait till you hear her talk. Look at her teeth. And that dress she’s wearing: Someone here wore it when it was new.
“Mary Ann Bird said: I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, I wish you were my little girl. Wow! She thought I was a special little girl. Mary Ann Bird said when she went back into the classroom: My lip didn’t straighten out, my teeth were no different, and my dress didn’t hang any different. But, my head was up, and my shoulders were broad, because I knew that somebody thought I was special.
“Hey, church, He knows who you are. Do you know what our words can do? Do you know what the ministry of this church has done, is doing and will continue to do? Do you know who you are, when this church is literally transforming lives with your words or your deeds or your ministry or your mission? Wow. I wish you knew how important you are.
“Can you imagine what some people are thinking because there is a church called Tinney Chapel? Can you imagine in the winter when someone gets cold and needs a blanket, or in the summer when someone needs to turn on a fan? Or someone in Mexico or Russia is grateful there’s a church called Tinney Chapel, or the world, since you are a global church because of your apportionments?
“Can you imagine what people might be thinking about Tinney Chapel, a church that’s expanding because you believe you can do this? Because you realize it’s not about us. It’s not about us. It’s about what God is nudging us to do. Because God said: Hey, Church, because you, you... hey, church,...hey, church...hey church... hey...
*****
