An Arranged Life
By Rev Charles Johnson
Guest Preacher from McAfee School of Theology, Atlanta GA
October 8, 2006
Luke 9: 1-6 & Luke 10: 1-16
[ Audio
(mp3, 6.7Mb) ]
st
weekend, I celebrated a wedding in the mountains of North Carolina that was essentially an arranged marriage.
I too thought those things only happened in Islamic and Hindu contexts,
in faraway places like India and Iraq,
but there we were giving witness to a Christian marriage that was a set-up from the get-go.
In the way such things come down,
the bride's best friend is the daughter of the groom's mother's best friend.
The long conspiracy to get the two young folks together finally succeeds (against their will,
of course).
Lo and behold,
miracle of miracles,
the plan works flawlessly.
The young man and young woman fall in love,
the relationship is off to the races.
Issues of distance (he in New York, she in Charlotte) and denomination (he Baptist, she Catholic) pose no barrier.
From emails to phone calls to weekend visits to engagement to marriage,
all without a hitch.
Out of nowhere,
they report,
forces seem to converge kaleidoscopically on their behalf,
bringing them side by side to the altar of mutual promise.
Bride and groom freely confess that the whole thing was put together--arranged--and that the folks all around them knew them and cared for them better than they could know or care for themselves.
I don't mean
to offend our Baptist freewill sensibilities,
and I'm certainly not advocating
some weird Calvinist determinism,
but I've been wondering all week whether our
lives are more arranged by forces of love than we know. Don't amazing things
happen to us all the time,
at the agency of actors unseen? Aren't we the
recipients of all kinds of blessings that seem to come out of the clear blue
sky,
like manna from heaven? Isn't there a force field of love energy that is
buzzing all around us,
emitting particle beams of goodness and grace? It's a
fine thing to get to show up on this planet. Who would ever have thought that
those of us in this room would get to share this absurdly small piece of real
estate together here in Summit! Not a bad gig. For all we know,
it might have
been arranged.
Our Leader
seemed to assume that all necessary arrangements would be made for him along
life's journey. Somewhat presumptuous way to live,
but it seemed to pan out for
our Lord. No doubt his parents related the story of the remarkable arrangements
made for him on the night of his birth. Perhaps early on Jesus concluded a
destined goodness to his life: that an Unseen Hand would guide him and pave the
way for him,
that a tender mercy would be right at his feet every step of the
journey.
Jesus always
had things arranged for him. Shelter. Scripture
reports that Jesus had no place to lay his head,
meaning his 401 K was
non-existent. But,
he sure knew how to score some accommodations. He was forever
staying with Mary and Martha,
popping in on them unannounced. Food
He wasn't shy about inviting himself
to dinner,
like he did with Zacchaeus,
or asking for a drink,
like he did with
the woman at the well. When the food gives out at an all day brush arbor
meeting it all works out beautifully and 5000 or so folks were fed with food
surpluses left over. In fact, with Jesus, there is always stuff left over. Friends.
He assumed folks would drop their livelihoods for something as wonderful as
life itself, and they did. The unbridled joy was just too good not to get in
on. Godspell portrays it well: one by one, persons join this motley crew
of Jesus followers until they have a parade ... as if it all were arranged.
When he enters
Jerusalem triumphantly, he does so
on a borrowed donkey that just so happens to be in the right place at the right
time, as if it were all arranged. Even at his arrest and trial there are
options of intervention he does not choose. When he dies, he's got people
making burial arrangements for him; Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea take care
of all the details, as if on cue. When he rises again, there are some faithful
women there to witness the empty slab where dead body should have been. For
Jesus, things just fall into place, as if prior arrangements have been made at
every stage. Makes me think he practiced what he preached to his disciples when
he said, "Seek first God's rule and God's ok-ing of you," as my old
professor Glenn Hinson translated Matthew 6.23, "and everything else will
fall into place." An arranged life.
Well, one
might conclude, this is all literature, narrative, story, redacted within an
inch of its life to create a sense of destiny for a singularly important figure
in history. Real life--my real life--with its willy-nilly unpredictability
isn't so neatly scripted, so tightly ordered, so cosmically choreographed.
Are we sure?
How do we know? Jesus sure seems to think it is. His counsel is to chill out.
Be a bird, he says. Don't worry about sowing and reaping and acquiring and
storing and investing. Just do what you're made to do: fly. Be a flower, he
says. Don't worry about toiling and laboring and working and fretting. Just do
what you're made to do: blossom. Solomon in all his palatial and regal splendor
can't hold a candle to you. It's all been arranged.
These
arrangements of grace aren't just reserved for the selected few or those
spiritual chosen ones with some kind of Gnostic inner light, but for everyone.
Jesus illustrated this by giving the same set of instructions to the nameless
seventy disciples as he gave to the famed twelve disciples. Don't take any
luggage, don't even take an extra change of clothes. You only need the shoes on
your feet; don't tote an extra pair. Don't pack a sack lunch, and don't take money
to eat in a restaurant. Naturally, with no money you won't have much use for a
purse. Leave all that stuff. Rather, arrangements will be made for you all
along the way.
You will find
good folks of great hospitality everywhere you turn. Rely on their kindness.
Accept their provision, eat their food, drink their wine. Stay a spell, don't
move around. You will enjoy their hospitality and they will marvel at someone
who travels so light. You will be partners in peace. Occasionally, you will run
into a miserly old cuss who wants to keep it all for himself. Don't spend a lot
of time trying to convince him of the way of grace and generosity. Just move on
to the next home--they are sure to take you right in.
The journey
will be fraught with danger--you will feel at times like a sheep thrown into a
pack of wolves. But, hear this: you will do nothing less than announce a new
rule of God's love so creative and powerful that it will have authority over
the demonic. It will bring healing to the diseased. In this rule, no artificial
or contrived source of security can compare to the sheer pleasure of God for
you. So go. Now. Everything else will fall into place. It has all been--–you
guessed it--arranged.
I don't
purport to be one of Jesus' famed lilies of the field that frets over nothing,
or a serene sparrow, but I have a testimony about this passage. Down in Texas,
I ran into a tough patch of pastoring, with a handful or ornery soreheads who
just weren't going to let me shepherd the sheep any longer. Stubborn as a post
myself, I suspect I would have butted heads with them to my dying day, but a
greater wisdom prevailed (namely my wife), and I concluded that I had to let go
of my beloved flock. I announced my resignation on May 7, not having a clue
what the next step would be.
Then, Jesus'
wild imagination started unfolding before my very eyes. The next week I
received a call from Dean Culpepper asking me to consider coming over to McAfee
School of Theology
for the next year as a visiting teacher in the area of preaching. I wouldn't
have been more shocked if NASA had called me to be on the next space shuttle.
At Dr. Culpepper's kind invitation, Jana and I checked you out, and began to
discover hospitality and provision at every turn, as if an Unseen Hand arranged
it. "Where will we live?" we ask, and about that time the Joneses
call to invite us to stay in their lovely home while they are studying at
Cambridge. "Who will our friends be?" we ask, and we remember that
Jana's best friend lives down the road near Athens,
and that I knew most of this fine faculty at Southern Seminary. "Who will
teach us how to teach?" we ask, and my student and faculty and staff
colleagues offer help and assistance at every turn. One of my mantras is that
good churches make good pastors, and not the other way around. If good students
make good teachers, and I have a hunch they do, then I'll learn how to do my
job. So, with arrangements like that, what can you do but say yes?
I know it
sounds unbelievably outrageous, but you will be given what you need, when you need
it, before you ask for it every step of the journey with Jesus. Your presence
in this place testifies to your trust in this truth. You know that the powers
of provision are all around us. You have given yourselves to this arduous time
of preparation, and are putting your preparation into practice in the service
of the church and the various ministries of Christ. I honor you and I am
honored by the privilege to join you this year in this enterprise of learning
and discovery. We'll see together what marvelous arrangements of growth have
been prepared for us.
My former
pastor and our dear friend, John Claypool, told the story of the time he was a
young minister in a gathering of young ministers huddled around a seasoned old
veteran pastor. The rookie preachers wanted the old pro to impart the secrets
of the pastoral life. How did he survive all the various and many church
conflicts over a lifetime of ministry? What were the keys to his success? How
did he get through the tough times, the scary stretches when he didn't know if
he was going to make it or not? They fired those questions at the senior
colleague, and he groped for something erudite and articulate and theologically
astute to tell his young charges. Finally, he simply threw up his hands,
shrugged his shoulders and said, "Hey, listen: the Lord is my
Shepherd--what can I say?"
A pastor
friend of mine in Texas took a sabbatical leave with his
family this summer to England
where he went on something of a pilgrimage of church history. The first week or
so, he was nervous as a cat making sure all the travel arrangements were
properly made. Were the hotel reservations in order? What is the appointed time
of check-in? When does the train leave? How long does it take to get from the
hotel to the train station? He said those first days drove him crazy and that
he, in turn, drove his family crazy. Not exactly the sabbatical he had
envisioned. The next day was the scheduled visit to the Salisbury Cathedral. It
was a leisurely four block walk from where they were staying, along the lovely Avon
River. Then, all of a sudden, there
was the majestic sight, rising magnificently from the green meadow. As they
walked closer, they heard singing. Choirs from all over England
had come to a choral festival in the awesome house of worship built in the
1200's. My friend said the whole visual scene, with the massive edifice rising
toward the heavens, and musical experience, with the gorgeous choral waves
washing over him, moved him profoundly. He simply sat at the edge of the building
and cried. What he saw and heard could be 2006 or 1306. It was timeless.
Sitting in the shadow of that church, he realized he was a part of something
far larger and deeper and older than he was. His worries about train schedules
and hotel reservations--Where will I stay? How will I get there? What will I
eat?--no longer mattered. All that would be taken care of. What mattered was
God.
What matters
is God. And what matters to God is you. That is why God has arranged your life
according to God's plan of unimaginable goodness and provision so plentiful
that it will never run out.
So,
colleagues, we've got demons to cast out, sick folks to heal, and a big ole
rule of love to announce. Let's don't worry about all that other stuff. We've
been promised by our Leader that it will all fall into place. Let's just go be
a glorious arrangement. Amen.
© 2006
Charles Johnson.
All rights reserved.
