God calling us to rejoice in our power�
I stand before you as a member of St. James. I am 26 years old, and I teach 5th and 6th grade Religion and 7th grade reading at the Epiphany Middle School in Codman Square, Dorchester.
I would describe myself as a complex, passionate, overworked, sociable, disquieted and emotional, curious, analytical, excitable, woman who loves laughter, is moved by exciting challenges, and lives awkwardly but intentionally into a relationship with God.
Foremost, I am a child of God, and here, I am speaking to you all as
children of God. We gather in this house of worship to share in the mystery of a relationship to God and God�s creation. It is a terrifying blessing to be alive as one among others of God�s creation, and I have shared two years of my trip in faith with many of you here.
I know that a great challenge for me in living into a relationship to God is treating myself with the love that God would intend for me- loving myself for who I am- a child of God. Presently, and with mixture of great pain and surprising grace, I am seeking ways in my life to call forth the hidden gifts in myself and celebrate them with love, truth, and beauty.
Jesus himself said �You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.� (Matthew 5:14-16).
I am here to share with you this particular dimension of my faith journey. I grew up as the daughter of intense, activist parents,: My father a fiery and incredibly committed Episcopal priest and community organizer, and my mother a wild artistic teacher and social worker-- now both living in Manhattan.
The institution of the church that I fed on was one that took
the Word to the Streets�and I grew up on a model of the church whose focus and resources were directed toward progressive social issues in our local community. My dad, needless to say, was an especially powerful figure in my life�a model of one who has always passionately and intentionally lived his faith, but one who has worked, as many of us do, myself unfortunately included at this time in my life�in OVERDRIVE.
In recent years, I have figured that a life with God, among other things, means a life doing the work of social change. I have, on several occasions, glaringly miscalculated this equation.
If God�s work is the work of Justice and Peace, then I
assumed that work toward this end by any means was acceptable. There is a tension for anyone working especially in the �helping professions� � doctors, teachers, priests, nurses, social service, between working with a faithful level of selflessness, and that crucial, GOD- CENTERED love for oneself. I have worn myself thin, St. James, in various ways, experimenting awkwardly with my love for the work that I am doing, while trying to allow myself a contemplative space for self- building.
This never been easy for me, and I want to share an idea that I have of God that has both justified an unhealthy addiction to work and surprised me with a poignant wisdom about breaking away from a lifestyle where the job takes the place of peace.
I have recently begun to believe that God is actually small, and so it is God�s creation that is necessarily called to be BIG. By this I mean, God is persistently and lovingly calling us out into the world to do his will, his work. I find this idea empowering, because it allows us the miraculous power of choice to go and to find and to create and to experience through our work in a community of faith the change that we want to see around us�in both our
public and private lives.
How often do we or others refer implicitly to a BIG God, who will, in God�s BIGNESS, take care of those persistent problems like the deteriorating environment, or that poverty problem? To assert
always that GOD will take care of this or that is to cut off our own legs.
God has entrusted us with a freedom of WILL, of CHOICE to ACT to CHANGE to LOVE his Creation. I don�t know how you interpret the Book of Revelation, but I certainly am not expecting any windstorm to get rid of that stubborn drug dealing problem in the distressed urban ghettos here in Boston and elsewhere. I do believe in the power of God calling people to organize to create relationships around them in order to build power and change lives.
There is a clear struggle, and theological problem, however, when one interprets all of this GOD IS SMALL< AND WE ARE THE BIG ONES to mean that God needs us more than we need God.
I remember a university acquaintance in Singapore who cried to me regularly, believing that she was herself inadequate in the face of God because she could not successfully �convert� her parents into �believing� and so by her own folly, was allowing them to catapault straight to HELL. I still do not believe in such an unloving God
of creation who would leave us alone with our limited wit and fallen
convictions to make or break his great covenant with creation.
However, I have internalized the devotion that my father and other mentors have shown to their work to mean that because it is our choice, our work, that is part of God�s unfolding relationship to the world, then it is on US to do it all.
This is a stressful concept when it is applied to the working culture of
21st century America. There is always a high premium on
selflessness in the work of people in �helping professions� but it is at a cost, and I have in practice misinterpreted it to mean �without SELF�.
A great part of my faith journey has been living in the midst of a tearful, woeful burnt out struggle of saying no to myself because I fancied that I was busy �serving others�. It has taken a few years of persistent spiritual direction and loving, patient listening of my close friends to wake me up to the idea that God wants me to rejoice in his creation of me. Saying no to myself does not serve God. Serving God is not something we do in a divorced way from taking
exquisite care of ourselves in the process. To be completely honest, I don�t totally understand how that will be evident in my life, yet, but I am working on being authentic through prayer and spiritual practice to reach out to God for his Grace in my life and others.
In closing, I want to share a poem that is normally attributed to Nelson Mandela but that is actually taken from Marianne Williamson�s book, A Return to Love:
I dedicate it especially to the young women in the congregation, and here�s how it goes:
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.
And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Amen.