The Reverend Thomas E. Dipko, Ph.D.
Text: "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not been revealed."
I John 3:2
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let us pray: Eternal God, you surround us with so great a cloud of witnesses. With hearts thankful
for those who came before us, we ask one mercy
more: may we hear this day--as once they
heard,--your voice, and adore! Amen.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
With sniper phobia still shocking the nation, our faith calls us to believe that we are already,
you and I, right now, the children of God. There are
days when I find it very difficult to believe that I am a
child of God and-- truth be told-- I have even
stronger doubts about some of my neighbors! But the
tenacious message of the Bible is that we are God's
children, made in God's likeness, destined for
kinship with God. Just when we question all of this,
someone behaves so beautifully that we begin to
believe it anew. Even one person, faithfully living as a
child of God, can change the world.
That is what Bessie Delaney discovered every time she was convinced that all white folk were
bad. In that very moment, she complained to her
sister Sadie, "God sends a ... nice one to me, ... and I
have to eat crow." Even one person, faithfully living as
a child of God, can change the world.
At just the right time, when the me-first
idolatry of our culture seemed insatiable, the story
broke about Osceola McCarty of Hattiesburg,
Mississippi. This 88 year old African American retired
laundress indulged in unauthorized goodness! Living in a
very humble flat, she donated $150,000 of her life
savings to a local college that 70 years before would
not have admitted her as a student. I could hear the
anxious voice of shocked financial planners in the
land protesting, "Osceola, you can't do this; it makes
the rest of us look bad; and who will take care of you
if you need help in your remaining years?"
One of my favorite New York Times reporters wrote an editorial about Osceola who had never
flown in a plane or flaunted a designer wardrobe or
stayed in a fancy hotel:
Roberta Flack sang her a song, and so did Patti LaBelle. [The] President had his picture made with her. Harvard gave her an honorary degree. Whoopi Goldberg knelt at her feet. People, famous and ordinary, sought her out and called her "holy." One man said she made him feel clean. She even made it to New York. Hotel maids loved her, because [Osceola] made her own bed.
Is that the end of the story? By no means. Ted Turner, deeply moved by Osceola's radical goodness, pledged $10,000,000 to the United Nations for the benefit of Children around the world. Then he publicly asked Bill Gates and others to get serious about following her example. No one knows the total impact of the simple sharing of this one child of God. There will be no full disclosure of the ripple effect of her kindness until we all gather at heaven's gate.
First Congregational Church is blessed with a heritage blatantly honest about what it means for
us to be children of God. You know there can be no
wall of separation in our faith between loving God
and loving our neighbors, especially our neighbors in
need at home and abroad. Washington Gladden, in a
sermon that I return to from time to time, said it
this way: "There is no such thing as absolute
ownership in this world;...the earth is the Lord's and the
fullness thereof;...we are bound to use what we have
in fulfillment of God's purposes. To any (one) who
is not an atheist, this conclusion is inevitable."
The danger in my words today is that some of you will think I am talking about money and
possessions. I am, only to the extent that they are
expressions of a larger truth. And that truth is that being
a child of God places us in relationship not only
with God but with all humankind; not just our
relatives, our friends or those we like, but all who share
with us the likeness of God.
The Rabbis tell a story about this
relationship through a brief parable. A teacher is asked, "In
the Talmud it says that the stork is called hasidah
in Hebrew, that is, the devout or the loving one,
because he gives so much love to his mate and his young. Then why is the stork classed in the
Scriptures with the unclean birds?" The teacher
answers: `Because the stork gives love only to its own.'"
"Only to our own" is not good enough in
the eyes of God unless "our own" includes all, all
who with us, are children of God. It is no accident that
in the Beatitudes, those who are peacemakers, who
labor for healed relationships, are given this very
title. Jesus says they are to be called "the children of God."
How strange. While many of us struggle with what it means to be a child of God here and now,
the writer of the first epistle of John has already
moved on to something more. "What we will be," says
the writer, "has not yet been revealed." We can hear
the anticipation in these words. St. Paul, thinking
along the same lines, wrote: "Eye has not seen, nor has
ear heard, nor has it entered the human
imagination, what God has prepared for those who love God."
On the day of full disclosure, when we stand in the
presence of God, what can matter more than being
called son or daughter by the Author of all things?
The "more" is beyond our comprehension...but not
beyond the Amazing Grace of God.
Blessings and peace, dear brothers and sisters, as you live as a congregation of the children
of God on this Consecration Sunday. What you do
here, as those who came before you knew in faith,
can change the world. You will recognize this when it
happens because you, too, will be changed. You
will, that is, unless the stork triumphs in you.