Listening for God: Loss and The Font of Our Identity

Sermon, 3/21/10 (Lent 5 -- Confirmation Sunday). It’s difficult to know at a young age what a vital role loss plays in our discipleship pilgrimage. The apostle Paul, jailed for the gospel, knew its role quite well. He also knew the gain in Christ that redeemed this loss – the font of our identity …

Scripture     Philippians 3:4b-14

           Listening for God: Loss and The Font of Our Identity

Dedicated to Andrew Booker, Claire Dudek, Matthew Meloan,

Kyle Tong, Mia Tong, and Reia Tong

on the occasion of their confirmation as active members

of the Body of Christ at Bethesda Presbyterian Church

What do some parents do once they leave school, make their financial way in the world, then rediscover through their children that valuable something they have stored away for oh so long?

One American church prophet put it this way: “They meet the girl/boy of their dreams, get married, move to the suburbs, and have children. And then they remember – (their) ideals. So they go to the closet, unwrap the ideals, turn to their children, and say, ‘Here, kids, play with these!’”¹

Ah, the wistfulness of it all.

Ah, the sense of loss.

How to deal with those inevitable moments of loss in our lives which would lead to the closeting – if not the outright burial – of our youthful ideals?

How to listen for God in the midst of it all?

Drew … Claire … Matt … Kyle … Mia … Reia:

As the new kid on your Bethesda Presbyterian block, I do not know you as well as I look forward to knowing you.

But from what I know about you – most of it, from our five months together in weekly confirmation classes – I think I can safely say this: Each of you has tasted a sense of loss in your life already.

It may have been a competition – athletic or academic.

It may have been the loss of a pet.

It may have been a friend. One who moved, or you were forced to leave behind in a move. One who may have even passed away.

Most profoundly of all, it may have been a family member: An aunt. An uncle. A grandparent. Or two. Or three.

Drew, Claire, Matt, Kyle, Mia, and Reia: Each of you has tasted loss in your life – of this I am certain. And yet, like most young people I know, you probably have not drunk deeply of such brackish waters.

You have not drunk deeply, because you have not had the time to do so.

The time on earth, I mean. And the time that flows ever the slowest: troubling, even oppressive, life situations.

Chances are, you have not drunk deeply of hard times.

Yet. And yet, you will. You will.

Stick around. Church or no church: You will.

How to deal with deep loss, when it inevitably passes your way – refusing to brush you by – and instead shoves you, then shakes you, and perhaps even wrestles you to the ground of your very being?

Perhaps you can do better than I did. I had it all, it seemed: Straight-A student. President of the College Christian Union. Heading for seminary.

Heading … to four years of excruciating and debilitating depression. Made all the worse because, as I told myself time and time again, I wasn’t supposed to be feeling this way. I wasn’t supposed to suffer – for look at what I’d earned! “Don’t you know, God, who I think I am?” Poor me. Poor me. Pour me another drink.

I could have done well to have listened – really listened – to the Apostle Paul and his words to us today. To hear him tell it, his was the best of schools and degrees and family pedigrees. His accomplishments, many. His values … well, who really cared about his values. Just look at that scholastic record!

And just look at him now! Hanging out with some religious sect. Writing his peeps from jail. Once again … from jail.

Writing to yet another secreted huddle of Christians, in this case a church in the town of Philippi. “Yet whatever gains I had,” Paul writes, “these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things.” Loss, loss, loss: We get it, Paul.

But wait – there’s a twist! For he then writes, “And I regard them as skubala in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him …”

Skubala. The sound of Paul’s Greek word here resonates well with its meaning – and it ain’t the “rubbish” of our translation! It’s so much thicker … so much smellier … so much filthier. Let’s just say it’s what you might find sticking to a corner of a Roman jail cell.

The thick and smelly and filthy sense of loss. Suffered loss. Voluntary, or no. All “that I may gain Christ and” – hear carefully this most intimate of language – “be found in him.”

For through it all and probably only because of it all, Paul knew of the power of a God of grace. He knew it – and knew it intimately (“knowing God”, he writes … “Christ Jesus has made me his own.”)  He knew God’s grace, because it was never on-the-cheap. Through it all and probably because of it all. I think. At least, that’s how I’ve experienced that grace, as well.

My confirmation friends: If you remember one thing about this moment in time, please remember the power and the hope and the powerful hope of Paul’s words today. Please remember them – when you come face-to-face with the losses in your life that will invariably find you and call you by name.

Losses that make it difficult to listen for God at all – much less “the heavenly call”, as Paul puts it today – whether it be a jolt or a jostle, a shout or a whisper.

When you – not if you, when you – suffer those losses, remember the words of this inmate of empire here. Remember these words, and look down. Deep, deep down.

Deep down, not only in what God has given each of you to thrive in the faith. But right here – right now –

Look down right in front of me – deep, deep down – into the waters of this baptismal font. The baptism five of you will reaffirm today; the baptism Matthew will receive.

Granted: It’s a relatively shallow bowl in there. But take notice of the heft of the font entire. Take notice of its support. Take notice of its grounding.

Its heft – its support – its grounding. For this is the font of your – of our – identity. That container within your soul of being marked by your God for a life sentence of freedom. Freedom from the tears that may one day – if they have not already – fill up this very font of your baptism into Christ. Freedom enough to see in the reflection of those tears a deep well carved out in you – long, long ago – by an insatiably loving God, thirsting for you to know him.

Decades before you were born, a pastor of this church named Carl Pritchett put it this way: “I live alongside a deep well and although my bucket is small there is much water in the well.”²

And the same goes for you – my confirmation friends. There is much water in your well – as well – though you may yet know it.

For it’s water you may not have had to drop your bucket into – not deeply –until those losses come.

As they always do. As they always will.

As the who-we-are and the whose-we-are – the font of our identity – becomes clouded over by the what-we-are the world might think we are … and want us to be …

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott taught college-level English literature for two generations. She especially enjoyed teaching freshman English. “Now there’s a place where you can really empower people,” she says. “You try to encourage them to talk about who they are and to write about who they are, and (you) show some interest in who they are.”

Mollenkott describes how she addresses each freshman English class when she is returning their first graded work. “This grade is not for you,” she tells them. “This grade is for a piece of work you turned in.

“You really want to know what I think of you? I think you’re made of the image of God. I think you’re of inestimable worth; there’s no way that anything I can put in my grade book can ever begin to estimate you.”

Mollenkott began to do this, she says, after reading Flannery O’Connor’s story about a boy who goes up to his attic and draws a chalk “F” on the floor, and hangs himself directly above that “F”. As she puts it: “He didn’t distinguish between the grades he was getting and who he was.

“So for me,” she concludes, “the meaning of life is to share with people that we are the sons and daughters of God.”³

And so you are, my confirmation friends. And so you will always be.

Losses, they come. And losses, they go. Some may hang around for awhile. And some, they may never leave you.

But as for this font of your – and our – identity? Within it you are claimed forever by Christ. Within it lies your spiritual DNA.

It’s there – always there – when you need that reminder the most. It’s there – always there – that we might give praise to its headwater source.

It’s there – always there – for your bucket to overflow.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

¹William Sloane Coffin, Jr., A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 76-77.

²Eugene and Edythe Clark, The Spirit of Captain John: A History of Bethesda Presbyterian Church, Montgomery County, Maryland (NYC: Carlton Press, 1970), 185.

²Interview with Virginia Ramey Mollenkott in EcuFilm’s “Faces on Faith”, 1993.