Filled With the Power of God
Speaker: Rev. Christina Fridel
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: July 5, 2009
There once was a young girl who used to help her Mom set up tables at the church in <city><place>Idaho Falls</place></city>, at Trinity. She helped set them up for bazaars, for United Methodist Women and for potlucks, a girl who would play with her sister in the very back of that church. They could tell you every place there was to hide and seek in that church. And now that young girl is now pastor of a church. There was a young girl who loves going to Sawtooth Camp and to be part of the camping program there, and then as she grew, became a part of the counseling part of Sawtooth Camp as well. And now she’s a mom with two small girls who will also camp up there as part of their growing up in the church.
There’s a college student who heard the call of God, as a 19-year-old, to become an ordained Elder. It took a while to figure out what that actually meant in her life. She heard that call from an Old Testament class led by Betty Clark, who had that call confirmed by her father who said, “Have you ever thought about being a minister?”, from pastors at the Caldwell church who said, “That really is what God is calling you to do,” and from a mission trip to a soup kitchen in San Francisco, a college student who then went to Wesley in Washington, DC and went to seminary , and who this last June celebrated 6 years of being an ordained Elder in the Oregon/Idaho Annual Conference. Then there was a pastor serving in Seaside who heard God calling her through the Cabinet to come home, to come back to Idaho and to a congregation here in Boise. And here I am, following God’s call, fulfilling that which God has called me to do, to be back in Idaho the land of my birth, the place of my roots, and indeed a place where my early ministry and early sense of who I was as a Christian was fulfilled.
So today we begin a journey together, indeed a journey that God has called all of us on, to figure out God’s purpose for us together as a church, to figure out God’s purpose and follow God’s grace and guidance, to share the message of God’s grace and love with each other and into this community in which we live, to be part of the people of God within Idaho, the United States, and throughout the World. And I know that if we begin this journey together that we do begin it at a time where there is a bit of grief and a change of transition, with a sadness and a bit of healing that needs to happen.
And I know that I too have had a sense of grief. It is hard today to know that I am not leading that Seaside congregation, people who I love dearly and for three years served faithfully with them and know that, today, they are being served by someone else. And to know that we all have a time of kind of wondering what it is that God is doing, where God is, wondering about this transition. But I know that we stand here today wandering and walking this journey together and knowing that God has a word for us this morning, about a sense about where it is we are called to go, together. And our lectionary text this morning, that we heard, give us a clue, and those three texts give us three promises that God gives us this morning. The first one is that God is with us, the second that God’s grace is sufficient and that our power as a Church comes straight from God and that God has a purpose for us.
The first, that God is with us; that is one of the promises that will always hold true. There are moments when it may not feel like it but God is present always. God is present with us here, He will be present with us as we leave this place, and was present with Paul through roads of passage that may have sounded a little odd. Here is Paul who has been a good Jew, who knew all he thought he knew about God and about what it meant to follow Him, then all of a sudden have this strange experience where God talked to him from the back of a horse on his way to Damascus. And Paul still, years later, is wresting with what that meant for him. But Paul knows that God is with him, that God has been with him and that God was with him in that transition and that moment where God spoke to him, and that God is still with him as he deals with a congregation that isn’t quite sure what they’re going through. Paul knows that God is with him
God is here with us, God has always been with us and God promises to be with us into the future God has planned for us. That certainly doesn’t promise that things will always be easy or that even, indeed, we will always quite know where we’re going. But God promises that God walks with us and is here with us. But if you look at that Gospel lesson, Jesus experienced that too. Jesus is in his home town where you would have thought that people would have accepted him but they didn’t. They rejected him, wondering, who is this weirdo? Who is this guy? Isn’t he a carpenter’s son? And why is he standing up here trying to tell me anything? But Jesus recognized that, too, that God was with him, even when the congregation and the people that he knew said, “We want nothing to do with you.” He knew that God was with him and allowed him to do the ministry that Jesus needed to do. God is with us, period.
The promise for us this morning is that God’s courage is sufficient for us. That’s what God told Paul. Paul is sitting there complaining about whatever thorn it was in his side, whether that was a physical pain or a mental pain or just all of the things he had to deal with. But God wouldn’t take the thorns away. God just said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” And God says that to us this morning, “My grace is sufficient for you” and that our power comes not from within us but from God because he gives us that power and that courage to be the people God has called us to be. Jesus had that same peace. That’s probably part of what they were questioning. Here is this guy. Where did he get his power anyway? And God says to Jesus, “My grace is sufficient for you and your power comes from me.” And Jesus knew that. Jesus knew that his power came from his Father. Our power and our grace come from Jesus, our crucified and risen God, who indeed is present with us.
So as we carry God’s mission into the world we know that it comes from that power and grace from God, not from within us, but from within our crucified and risen savior. So third promise, therefore, is that God has a purpose for us. God has a plan and will continue to show us what that looks like if we start this journey together. And that purpose, in these next few months, is to get to know each other, to find a sense of healing and a sense of working through all of this grief that has come from this transition and knowing that God is with us in all of that. So this morning, as we gather and begin our journey together, know that God is with us, that God’s grace is sufficient, and that God has a purpose for us and God will show us through prayer and through listening and through discerning together what, indeed, that purpose is. And may we know that, as we continue, and in your daily lives, may you know that grace and may you know that that grace, indeed, is sufficient. No matter what happens today or tomorrow or next Tuesday that grace is available and is sufficient for all of us
Thanks be to God. Amen