Finding the Life behind the Time and Talent Forms

Proper 16, Year A

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

While flying around the globe this summer, I had ample opportunity to reflect on the life of a flight attendant. Although there is a picture of me at age four as a wanna-be stewardess in a smart 1960’s costume, giving an appropriately pursed-lipped, haughty look at the camera, I know now that the life of a flight attendant is anything but glamorous. You couldn’t pay me enough to do that job: giving out the same old drinks and snacks, day after day and flight after flight; smiling while hearing the same old complaints from stressed-out customers; explaining emergency procedures to the ceiling while everyone who is supposed to be listening is transfixed by his iPhone; living in and out of airports, coping every day with constant flight delays and turbulence … Can you imagine?! What struck me as I watched the stalwart crews do their jobs this summer, though, was the contrast between the daily grind of their everyday routine in that plane—and the complex training that they must have had in order to save lives when things go wrong. These men and women know how to handle terrorists, even though they most often deal with obnoxious customers. These men and women know how to evacuate a huge aircraft, even though they most often evacuate the trash down some chute. They have complex skills hidden under their drab uniforms and nerves of steel hidden under their weary smiles. They know how to make life-saving decisions that they rarely have to make.

When you think about it, don’t our lives as American Christians work kind of the same way? In our worship, we follow the same liturgical patterns week after week. In our lives outside of church, we navigate the humdrum chores at work and at home. We trudge through our routines.  In church, we lector or we count money or we serve on the Vestry. There are plenty of jobs to do at St. Thomas. But just between you and me …. Altar guild, don’t you sometimes feel like those flight attendants cleaning up before the plane lands? Those of you who put together the schedules, don’t you sometimes feel like you are trying to get 50 backlogged jets out of the Atlanta airport? Teachers and lectors, don’t you sometimes feel like you are pointing out the emergency exits in vain?

We check off the required little boxes on our time and talent cards at Stewardship time, most often putting down the same activities that we have done the year before. Two years ago, I had you all write down your “passion,” rather than what jobs you wanted to do at church. But then I had trouble translating those passions into jobs! Last year, we tried to stir up the routine with a “time and talent fair,” but that didn’t quite work, either. This fall, we’ll be going back to the cards. But isn’t there more to our discipleship than the jobs we have at church? What about the rich gifts and experience that lie underneath?

In the chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we read today, Paul makes clear that our work together as the Church has the lifesaving depth of the flight attendant’s true vocation and training:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, through the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

When I utter that sentence before the offertory in our liturgy, in my mind I vacillate between picturing my body drooping from the Cross and picturing us sitting piously in the pews, eyebrows scrunched and heads bowed in vague “spiritual worship.” The “sacrifice” that Paul is asking of us is indeed a bodily sacrifice. It is a sacrifice of our whole selves. Paul makes clear that in baptism, we die with Christ. We are swept under the deep waters, our sins and our self-centered hearts alive no more. When we rise from those baptismal waters, we are alive in Christ. We live no longer for ourselves but for God. We live a new life “in Christ.”  This new life isn’t some disembodied hovering on earth, however, or some pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by life that we will reach someday in heaven. That is not our “spiritual worship.” The new life that we are given is a fully embodied life on earth—a life full of grace, a life lived with Christ’s love flowing through us and from us. It is a life lived in community. It is lived out in the giving of ourselves through our actions in the church and in society. It is a life that involves acting within God’s frame of reference, rather than doing what our society or our rules dictate. It involves taking on the “mind of Christ,” letting Jesus’ image shape how we see the world. And it involves discernment, testing our ethical choices using this “new mind” that Christ has given us.[1]

I don’t have to go far today to find an example of what I am talking about. In our First Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we watch as the entire people of Israel is saved because of the enterprising and subversive action of 2 midwives, an enslaved mother and daughter, and a young Egyptian girl.[2] Coming from various ethnic, religious, and class lines, these five women are insignificant on their own. They are caught in lives of limited action and buried under a repressive routine. Yet they discern that life must triumph over death. This small group of women see the baby boys of the Hebrews through God’s eyes, rather than through the eyes of Pharaoh. They submit their “gifts”—their skills as midwives, their gifts of compassion, of courage, of smooth talking …--to God’s love as they perceive it moving through their world. As a poet writes in the voice of the midwife Pu’ah: “Year after year/ Shifrah and I struggled to help mothers push newborns/ out of their bodies and/ into the world./ Hour after hour/ we used the secret knowledge/ of our sacred calling,/ gentle words of encouragement,/ our own powerful hands … Besides, [Moses’ mother]/ was my neighbor:  could I/ kill her son?”[3]

Admittedly, the midwives are not Christians. We don’t even know if they are Jews. But they still use their gifts to bring life, rather than to bring the death ordered by their society.Their wits and their skills serve God's command to love their neighbor as themselves. Today, I think of the teams of medical missionaries who are serving the Ebola victims in Africa. Their daily chores must be tedious, their training arduous. Yet underneath, their sacrifice is both tremendous and life-saving.

Here at St. Thomas, as in any community, there are things to be done so that we can function together. So please do sign up for those jobs on your time and talent form. If we all chip in a little bit, then we will get the daily chores out of the way without too much hassle. Lectors, read your hearts out! Teachers, do your thing! Those who serve willingly, show us how to do the dishes and sit at hospital beds with faith and humility! Prophets, get us up out of our comfy ruts and into the world to bring about God’s Kingdom! Those who can bring in food and diapers and money for the open plate offering, show us how to give generously and faithfully! But don’t let it stop there. Don’t just use and honor your own gifts. We need to know and to honor one another’s gifts. Flight attendants and medical missionaries have natural gifts, but they work together to hone their skills so that they can save lives. Can we make St. Thomas a school for living as Christ’s Body, rather than an Institution with boring tasks that need to get done? Can we see one another and ourselves with the mind that Christ died to give us?
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, through the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” 

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[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2001), 190-191.

[2] Susan Niditch, “Another View,” in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (New York: Women of Reform Judaism, 2008), 324.

[3] Bonnie Lyons, “Deliverance: Pu’ah Explains” found in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (New York: Women of Reform Judaism, 2008), 328.