Being Fully Known

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
January 28, 2007
Rev. Samuel Schaal
[Texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10 /Psalm 71:1-6 /Luke 4:21-30]

Though I grew up outside the church, I had many wonderful experiences within, of all places, Alcoholics Anonymous.  My father had been a longtime member, and to some degree my mother as well, and this was our primary social group. Growing up, my mother worked evenings as a nurse, so dad frequently dragged me along to meetings several nights a week (which has trained me well for night-time meetings in the church!) and I sat restlessly through many meetings where people “told their stories” of alcohol addiction and recovery.

The stories were infinitely different and yet the same. They would speak of how they started drinking, how it got out of hand, how they lost nearly everything in terms of family, job and wealth, and how they wandered into an AA meeting and the road to recovery was started.  By following the 12 steps the person began a journey of recovery and out of all of it came, at least for many, a spiritual awakening.

It was strange growing up amid this tattered group of recovering alcoholics.  These stories didn’t make sense to me when I first heard them, but in looking back I realize the wonderful experience I had in what was actually a very spiritual community.

One theme that I heard a lot was that people tended to find God once they admitted how down-and-out their lives had become. Some had tried to find God in other ways.  Some tried church, but too often found that God was silent and even absent there.  It was only when a person – often beaten down by life when they hit bottom – presented themselves to God as they were that they felt a response from God, for God recognizes us in our fullness, not in the partialities we so often present to the world.  The road to recovery is a process of knowing:  knowing oneself honestly and without pretension, knowing others, and through all that, knowing God and letting ourselves by known by God.

God knows us in our fullness.  The lessons today speak of being known, and being claimed, by God. In the text from Jeremiah, we see a part of Jeremiah’s call. Jeremiah doesn’t feel up to the task, even though God had chosen him to be a prophet even before he was born. Jeremiah’s response is one of excuses. “I do not know how to speak,” he protests, “for I am only a boy.” God knew Jeremiah in Jeremiah’s fullness and possibilities—and despite his youth and other inabilities, raised him up as one of Israel’s major prophets.

This idea of being known by God shows up in the very familiar words of First Corinthians. Though we hear this text mostly at weddings, the love that Paul speaks of is not romantic love, but “agape”—the love of God.  He says that though this agape love of God is eternal and is complete, we know (or love) only in part.  But the day will come when we will know in full, even as we have been fully known.  So we can love in this way insofar as we understand that we have been loved that way by God. Through God, a deeper form of human love is now possible because of God’s claim on us.

It’s a comforting thought to think that God knows us completely and that eventually we will see God face-to-face. It’s not quite so comforting when God confronts us with how we really are. Today’s Gospel lesson continues this theme of knowing, but not in a way the community then found particularly pleasing. This text continues the story from last week’s lection when Jesus is in the synagogue and quotes Isaiah, saying that he fulfills the bringing of good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. So Jesus’ ministry, according to Luke, has those who are marginalized as the central focus. 

There’s a bit of dialogue about Jesus being a hometown boy, and he suggests that the people expect him to perform miracles for them and then says that he won’t be accepted where he is so known. 

But then he gets to the real point – “the truth is,” he says –  and mentions how two of ancient Israel’s prophets – Elijah and Elisha – brought blessings to non-Jews.  He emphatically repeats the term that “none of them” or none in Israel, were blessed, except these two Gentiles.  So he reminds the congregation that the prophets rescued those who were regarded as outsiders, not those who call themselves God’s people.  So the Good News is not merely for Israel, but for all.

The people’s response to this truth-telling sermon in the synagogue is to chase him out of town and try to kill him. Jesus confronts the people with what he knows of them. And this is, according to Luke, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  This is not a propitious way to begin, it seems, if Jesus means to make everyone feel affirmed about themselves.  This text challenges our prevalent notion of the gentle, mild Jesus who never provokes, never judges and never questions our status quos.

Jesus challenges the people’s wish to limit God and God’s salvation.  The people thought they knew Jesus, yet Jesus shows them that God knows the people better than they do themselves.  They are fully known by God.  Yet they do not fully know or understand God or God’s will.  They cannot see beyond (what we would today call) their ethnocentrism—or judging strictly in terms of their culture’s mores. God, it turns out, is not a God of any ethnicity, nation or people – God is a God of all.

They saw only in part and were blind to the way they really were.  We see only in part and it is easy to create idols out of partial truths.  The Gospel, though, calls us over the tumult of our worldly idols, through all the dark and shadowy and false things we create in this world – calls us to the heart of God.

The people in Luke’s gospel didn’t know who they were, really.  Jesus was only reporting history that was recorded in their scripture – a history the people had conveniently forgotten.  Jesus was enlarging the idea of what religious community was and they didn’t want it to be enlarged. It turns out they didn’t know their own story.  And they weren’t prepared for where that story was taking them:  to a new, more universal experience of God available to all people. 

So the church in this new era inaugurated by Jesus becomes a come-as-you-are church—open to all without ethnic (or other) credentials needed.  Today’s church and our church is, I hope, a come-as-you-are church, where all are welcome.  And a come-as-you-are church is a church where we listen to each other’s stories, and go deeper with each other, where we accept each other as we are.

The more we understand each other, the more we share how we have experienced (or want to experience) God, the greater will God be present among us.  For we have among us truly varied stories.  We are a church of many different souls.  We are, to quote the opening hymn, the lost and forsaken, the blind and the lame, the rich and the haughty, the proud and the strong.  And we are church and God holds us forever – God knows us fully.

But we don’t just come to church to feel good, or feel affirmed, or feel improved.  We come to church so then we can give it away to others.  AA has as the final of their 12 Steps this important point: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”  For the recovering alcoholic knows she must “give it away” in order to “keep it.”  The culture of AA is oriented to welcoming the outsider, in spreading the message of recovery.

Though the analogy between AA and the church is not perfect, the church could learn much from the culture of AA in this regard.  As church, we invite others who feel lost and forsaken, as well as proud and strong.  The more we open ourselves to others, the greater might we come closer to God’s love, which is expressed in the only way it can be, within this Body of Christ, through the flesh and blood experiences of his human community and in the stories we share with each other while on the path.

My hope is that we can be a church where we share our stories, and in that process help one another move closer to the divine life.  We are trying to move in this direction with some small groups we have started.

The other night we had our first meeting of “Doubter’s Anonymous” and had a good crowd and a good time as people shared some of the doubts in their hearts.  We agreed that we would meet once a month. Also, I invite you to our Quiet Day and walking of the labyrinth on March 3.  You can take the whole day or a portion of it to hear some chapel talks by area clergy outside of our church, pray and meditate, and walk the labyrinth.  And throughout Lent we are offering one primary program on Wednesday nights where Steve will lead us in a process called “Holy Conversations,” a way of helping us go deeper together and take a good look at, spiritually, who we are. These are all indications that we are trying, as a community, to understand more of how God wants us to live. 

In my ideal view of the church, I think of it as a place where sojourners come to share the journey and in that transaction find God.  Frederick Buechner  is a prolific spiritual writer and a Presbyterian minister.  In his book Telling Secrets he describes a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“In one sense they are strangers who know each other only by their first names and almost nothing else about each other.  In another sense they are best friends who little by little come to know each other from the inside out instead of the other way round, which is the way we usually do it.  They do not know each other’s biographies, but they know something about each other’s frailties, failure, fears.  They know something too about each other’s strengths, hopes, gladness and about where they have found them.  They do not give each other advice.  They simply give each other stories about the good and the bad of what has happened to them over the years…They tell each other their secrets, and as you listen to them, you hear among other things your own secrets on their lips.”

That is to say, they come to know God more fully by knowing each other more fully. And perhaps the best summation of how it is that we are fully known by God through each other is in the ancient collect:

“Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

And amen.