By Jared
Slack
based on Psalm 27 & Luke 13:31-35
For First Austin: a baptist community
of faith
A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent
2019
March 17, 2019
Not many know this about me, but for about three
years from my Sophomore to Senior Year of high school one of my closest friends
was a 70-something year old lady named Ms. Gipson.
Ms. Gipson was a retired elementary school teacher,
cat enthusiast, avid gardener, cross-stitcher extraordinaire, die-hard Astros
fan, collector of Thomas Kinkaide paintings and precious moments figurines, and
spent most of her life as a longtime pillar of a tiny little Methodist church
just outside the city limits of my hometown.
She was kind, but stern when she had to be, just
like any good teacher, and her home always smelled like a freshly unpackaged
rose-scented glade plug-in.
On top of all this, she concocted the most
profoundly delicious sweet tea our world has ever known.
I imagine by now, you’re wondering why or how I know
so many things about this lovely lady. Things that don’t seem all that
interesting or special to some, but just little bits of her magnetic charm that
I’ve cherished these past 20 years.
You see, Ms. Gipson was my accompanist, and
throughout my time in high school competing in solo contests and auditioning
for regional and state choirs I spent many afternoons in the den of her home
while she sat attentively at her piano going about her work of offering me the
space to explore and experience myself as I really was, not how others wanted
me to be.
You won’t be surprised to know that I was never like
all the other boys I grew up with. Like many small towns in Texas, boys like me
from a very young age were talked about according to what position they’d
eventually play on the football team when they finally came of age.
And me, with my medium height and stocky build, I
was pegged quite early as just the kind of kid who’d grow up to be one heck of
a center on the offensive line. Having an older brother who played the same
position handed me a sort of genetic responsibility to continue the legacy.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize that being
this kind of East Texas boy, running on testosterone and aggression, just
wasn’t something I ever really wanted to be, even if the body I have makes me a
perfect fit for it. You see, the boy I longed to be was the one who spent his
Thursday afternoons with Miss Gipson, singing Italian arias and Spanish
folk-art pieces.
Which for me as I look back, meant feeling lonely
and out of place most days. Not being what others wished I would be. Not being
interested in the things that people expected me to be interested in.
But I was lucky; I found that there were people in
the world willing to make this journey with me. Ones willing to let me be who it
is that I longed to be, who I felt I was supposed to be. People who let me
think outside the box that had been handed to me.
As an accompanist, Miss Gipson knew, like all great
accompanists, that her work was to listen to me and go with me as I discovered
each song. To pay attention to me, to let me go into uncharted places while she
provided the support for this exploration that went far beyond other’s ideas of
how I best fit in the world.
She became a safe place for me to be who it was that
I really desired to be: a gentle boy with a Tenor voice, hiding in a football
player’s body.
And so many of you here today can resonate with
this, I think. You, too have your accompanists in life. Those who came along
just in the nick of time and said to you in one way or another, “I’ll go
with you, friend. Where ever it is that you’re wanting to go, I’ll walk with
you until you get there.”
Earlier in our reading from Psalm 27,
we listened to a poem about a God whose truest nature is to hide us in a
shelter during our days of trouble, a God who will cover us under a tent, a God
who will set us on a high place out of the reach of those who wish us harm, a
God who takes great delight in us singing the melodies of our hearts.
The Psalmist drills down on a truth that so many
seem to miss in our world… this God we have is a safe place, a tender place
where we can lay our heads and rest when the going gets tough.
Just moments ago, Selena read from the Gospel of
Luke where we have this story about Jesus and a group of Pharisees who’ve come
to tell him that Herod is coming after him and that he better run for his life.
And as much as I wish I could, I can’t read their
minds and know their motives… but it does seem clear to me that they were
trying to plant the seed of fear into Jesus… because as we all know, these
sorts of tactics… we see them on display day in and day out… we look on as
people recklessly incite fear as a means of getting people back into their
isolated boxes.
But Jesus responds to their warnings by giving them
an incredibly fearless, albeit off the beaten path, picture of who it is that
he really and truly desires to be.
In verse 34 Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often
have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, and you were not willing!”
You see, Jesus doesn’t do
what men seem to do when they’re afraid… he doesn’t “man-up”, he doesn’t grow a
pair, or puff out his chest and spew forth a rage-filled tongue-lashing, he
doesn’t put on a body camera, walk into someone’s place of worship with
semi-automatic weapons, and live-stream himself while he massacres people just
because he’s been told to be afraid of anyone who’s different than him.
Instead he just tells them his truth. The truth that
he’s not afraid of being different. That he’s not scared of not fitting their
molds and getting in line.
“How often have I desired to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
Despite what others may want from him, Jesus doesn’t
come at us with the slick, hard-hitting, machismo-laced approach people came to
expect from leaders of his day (or even in our own day, for that matter).
Instead of giving way to the isolating nature of fear, Jesus embraces a
familial, deeply connected, tender approach, that equally honors both his
masculinity and his femininity.
You see, Jesus understands how people grow and how
people are fed and set free. And for Jesus, something about this image of
little chicks being brooded over by an attentive mother hen has far more
transformational potential than all the other images he could have gone with.
In this story, as drenched as it is with
anticipation of the tragedy that’s to come in Jerusalem, we find a Jesus who
exposes himself in the most vulnerable of ways. As fully God and as fully human
he offers himself up… before any cross, or crown, or thorns is involved… as a
person who simply yearns to be seen, not as some threat to the establishment.
Not as enemy number one to the way things have always been, but instead as a
safe place to hide when the world gets scary, when things just aren’t working
out the way we hoped they would.
For
me, Jesus demonstrates one of the hardest truths that you and I will keep
coming to over and over in our lives. He brings to our attention the truth that
vulnerability is the essential piece to courage. That being yourself as
you are, as God made you and speaking the truth about who it is that you are
deep down in your gut, even when it’s hard and you’re afraid, is the first step
in owning your power and unmasking your true potential.
Through
this seemingly humdrum, cross-stitch worthy image of a mother hen gathering her
brood of chicks under her ever-vigilant wings, each of us is invited to
discover the peculiar and transformative strength of being open to the needs of
those around us. Of saying, “No” to fear, and allowing the world and the people
who come into our lives to break through our insulating facades so that we
might know firsthand the kind of love and concern God has for each and every
single person on this planet… despite their race, sexuality, economic standing,
religion, or gender.
Even though the cross looms out there off in the
not-too-distant future, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, not out to prove
himself as some fearless hero, not to offer himself as another sacrifice on the
altar of a judgmental God, not to merely take on death and the devil. But
instead, Jesus makes his way with a fierce and motherly love that will stop at
nothing to protect her children.
I
believe that it’s this kind of vulnerability that has the real potential to
open us up to a world of possibilities… to spur us on to be more authentically
ourselves, more caring, more compassionate, and more courageous than we could
have otherwise been on our own.
And
it’s here that I find the most powerful message for a beloved community like
ours. One that has me dreaming up crazy and terrifyingly beautiful things about
what it might it look like for The First Baptist Church of Austin to experience
first-hand the whole-hearted, fully-embodied sort of living that comes from
owning our identity as a safe and tender place for all God’s beloved children
to come and rest beneath our mothering wings of care, support, love, empathy,
and respect.
Dare I say it, friends
that each and every single one of us is called to be just like Miss Gipson. We
are called to be accompanists.
For the past couple years,
and with bringing Selena on board in August, Missions at First Austin has been
making a slow and deliberate shift in how we go about our work of being a
resource and a light in our community here in Austin and around the world with
our mission partners in China, Lebanon, Indonesia and Uganda.
I’m
over-the-moon excited to tell you that we’re ready for all of you to come see
for yourselves the powerful possibilities of what can happen when we follow
Jesus’ lead of rebuking fear and taking hold of our calling to accompany people
in their journey.
And
I want to tell you that it’s not something new to us at all.
It’s
something we already are.
I
want you to grab your bulletins for me and look at the end of our order of
worship. You’ll find a box there with the title, “Words of Welcome.”
Will
you read this aloud with me, “In responses to your decision, we pledge
ourselves to be the family of God for you through life’s journey. We promise to
care for you and learn from you, walk with you and serve alongside you as
together we seek adventurous obedience to Jesus, by God’s grace.”
Every
statistic and study out there done by people far smarter than I could ever
dream of being will tell you that the number one reason why people find
themselves experiencing homelessness, poverty, addiction, or in a place of
being under-resourced is because of the catastrophic loss or complete lack of
connection and relationship.
So,
with that in mind, I want you to indulge me just a little bit longer and close
your eyes and please keep them closed until I tell you to open them back up.
Sometimes
I feel like the luckiest guy on earth, because every single day I get to see
the power of being in community with all of you. I get to hear wonderful story
after wonderful story of your care for one another and I’ve even gotten to
experience it in my own life.
Just
two years ago, when I was laid up at home, hopped up on pain meds and the kind
of fear that always comes when we’re face-to-face with our own fragility…
It
looked like my friend Luke over here bringing me lunch and a bouquet of
flowers, even when I didn’t want people to see me like that.
It
looked like my friend Kelsey coming over to sit with me and watch god-awful reality
television because for some reason Oxy-Codone turned me into a fan of Survivor.
It
looked like Ben and Melissa Mines insisting that we send them our entire
grocery list and then showing up with a car load of HEB bags, because I
couldn’t leave the house and Sarah needed to be at work.
It
looked like a Sunday school class passing around a hat and then sending over a
house-cleaning crew just to help take one thing off our plates.
I’m
here today as living proof of what it looks like be part of a community that’s
willing to accompany you towards wholeness. To find yourself surrounded by
people willing to be the family of God for you through life’s tumultuous
journey.
I
want each of you to imagine with me for just a moment longer what it might look
like for a community like ours to see ourselves the way Jesus already sees us.
To be like a bunch of mother hens pulling in those whom the world has discarded
and forgotten.
What
might it look like for us to rally around people and give them the gift of
experiencing just what it’s like to be intimately connected to a community like
ours that is already so dang good at the art of caring for one another and
lifting one another up when life becomes too much for us to handle?
What
might we be able dream up and accomplish if we were to come together, to put
all of our God-given gifts and skills on the table as resources and assets that
can be linked together and mobilized to come along side people and accompany
them on their journey into living into their full and beloved potential?
You
know what I think it might look like?
You
can open your eyes now… I think it might look a whole lot like a net.
You
see… I told you. It’s something we already are.
It’s
something we’ve always been.
It’s
something that we’ve been looking for years and years.
Like
I always do, I’m going to shoot straight with you. This is one of the deepest
and most desperate desires of my heart: that you’ll jump all the way in with
Missions at First Austin, as we explore and put into action what it looks like
to be a community overflowing with Mother Hens and accompanists.
What
if we began to see that each and every single strand of rope up there
intricately and purposefully woven together to create these beautiful nets
represents a gift, a skill, a resource, an asset that could be connected
together to become a powerful, transformative force for goodness.
In
this world, in our city, and just right outside our doors there are people who
are in free-fall because they lack the relationships and resources needed to
make the journey from being under-resourced to better-resourced.
What
if we made the vulnerable and courageous decision to become the thing that we
already are?
Friends,
let’s be accompanists. AMEN.
*artwork: Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.com
*artwork: Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.com
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