How God Sees the World

Grace Episcopal Church, Madison NJ
June 14, 2009

The Second Sunday after Pentecost
Year B, Proper 6
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
(2 Corinthians 6:6-10; 14-17)
Mark 4:26-34

How God Sees the World

Well, it’s now the middle of June and graduation season is drawing to a close. A couple of weeks ago colleges and universities across the country held their commencements and now high schools are sending their newly minted graduates off into the world.

We’ve already heard some wonderful senior sermons here at Grace and we have a couple more next Sunday. I’m sure it’s both an exciting and scary time both for the graduates and for the people who love them.

Of course, at graduation ceremonies it’s very common to have a commencement speaker. You know how it usually works. Colleges try to invite distinguished alumni, or politicians, or successful business people or, increasingly, celebrities to make a speech to the graduates and their families. Ideally the speech should have some piece of wisdom for the graduates to take with them into the next phase of their lives.

Unfortunately, more often than not, these speeches from distinguished and famous people are filled with clichés and platitudes and are almost entirely forgettable. And it seems this year’s speeches were more of the same. Now, to be fair, this year the college commencement speakers had an even bigger challenge than usual because the grads in their caps and gowns are entering a job market with very limited opportunities.

So one after the other these distinguished and famous people tried to put their best spin on the current situation and the prospects facing the graduates. A few weeks ago the New York Times ran a piece quoting from some of these commencement speeches. Here are some of the excerpts.

In his controversial appearance at Notre Dame, President Obama told the graduates, “Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence. It is a privilege and responsibility afforded to few generations.”

For his part, Vice President Biden told the graduates, “Remember from your physics class…your hands are on the steering wheel of the automobile. It’s going straight. And one slight turn sends the car in a direction fundamentally different and initially unalterable in the direction it’s been going in. Few people – few generations – get to put their hands on the steering wheel at that moment.”

Um, OK. If that doesn’t inspire you, here’s Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, addressing the graduates of Boston College School of Law. “We are in a recession and the labor market is weak. Many of you may not have gotten the job you wanted; some may have had offers rescinded or the start of employment delayed.” To soften the blow he added, “So, my advice to you is to stay optimistic. Things usually have a way of working out.”

Finally in her speech at Tulane, Ellen DeGeneres tried to buck up the grads by recalling when she was 19: “I was living in a basement apartment, I had no heat, no air, I had a mattress on the floor and the apartment was infested with fleas.”

Reading these excerpts from the commencement addresses and thinking about today’s lessons, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a mistake for colleges to ask the distinguished and the famous to speak to the graduates. Maybe the colleges would get better speeches if they followed God’s example.

God doesn’t see the world the way we do. Of course God loves the distinguished and famous but God doesn’t seem to be impressed by them. And if God were choosing commencement speakers I’m pretty sure God wouldn’t choose the people the world considers distinguished or famous.

Instead, throughout history God turns to the young, to the old, to the anonymous, to the poor and to the seemingly ordinary. God turns to these people to do God’s work. God turns to these “nobodies” to do great things.

While the world dismisses the seemingly ordinary, the nobodies – it’s exactly these people God turns to over and over again to do great things.

And isn’t that one of the messages in today’s lessons?

In that long reading from First Samuel, God has become disappointed in Israel’s first king, Saul, so God sends the prophet Samuel to meet the new king God has chosen. Now, although by this time Samuel was pretty familiar with the ways of God, when Samuel meets Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, he sees the eldest son the way the world would see him. Samuel is impressed by his seniority and appearance, and figures that the oldest is God’s chosen. That’s the way of the world, right?

But that’s not God’s way. That’s not the way God sees the world. So God has to remind Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

“The Lord does not see as mortals see.” God selects Jesse’s youngest and least likely son, David – someone although apparently good-looking, but still undistinguished and certainly not famous. God sees that this nobody should be the king of Israel.

All of the parables of Jesus challenge us to see the world the way God sees the world. Today we heard two parables from the Gospel of Mark – both of which illustrate great abundance and power coming from the seemingly ordinary and insignificant – great abundance and power coming from the tiniest of seeds.

How would Jesus’ first followers have heard these parables? How would the first readers and hearers of the Gospel of Mark have understood these parables a couple of generations after the earthly lifetime of Jesus? It is likely that the first followers of Jesus and the first readers and hearers of the Gospel of Mark would have identified with the tiny, seemingly insignificant seeds.

From our perspective as Christians, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the central event of human history. Yet, in the First Century the vast majority of people even in Israel were unaware of Jesus of Nazareth.

True to form, God had once again chosen someone the world saw as an insignificant nobody to do remarkable things.

And a generation or two later, the Jesus movement was still small and struggling, a bunch of nobodies, still just a small seed. And so those first readers and hearers of the Gospel of Mark would have seen themselves as those small seeds – small seeds that with God’s grace have the potential to bring forth great abundance.

From our perspective, we know that those small First Century seeds took root and grew into the worldwide Christian church – and here we are today.

Yet, despite all of this history, despite our own experience, most of the time we don’t see the world the way God sees the world. Like Samuel we get impressed by appearances, by stature. Like colleges we give our attention to those the world considers distinguished and famous and ignore those the world sees as insignificant nobodies.

But at our best, and with the grace of God, we sometimes do see the world the way God sees the world. At our best and with the grace of God we see that everyone has infinite value and importance – no matter what the world thinks of them.

In her beautiful sermon last week, Katie Doyle talked about Grace Church as a place where there is no age gap. She said it’s a place where she has friends who are three years old and friends who are old enough to be her parents and grandparents.

What a powerful example of seeing the world the way God sees the world!

Today in our Rite 13 ceremony we honor our young people on or near their 13th birthday. We honor them not because the world says “children are our future.” No, we honor them because of who they are right now – and all that they give to our Christian community right now.

What a powerful example of seeing the world the way God sees the world!

Lately some of us have been learning a great deal about poverty right here in Madison. We’ve discovered that poverty is carefully hidden here and there’s whole lot more need than we expected. And we are beginning to think about ways that we can serve people right here in town that the world sees as insignificant nobodies but who God sees as having infinite value and importance.

And it turns out Grace Church has been given a challenge to see the world – to see Madison – the way God sees it. Thanks to Marilyn D’Amelio at Central Avenue School, we’ve learned of four or five families in town that cannot afford membership at the pool. If we could raise $2000 we could make a very real difference in the lives of some of our neighbors this summer. So, next Sunday we are going to station some of our youth at the end of each service just as we did for the Souper Bowl collection to accept your donations to help these people who the world sees as insignificant nobodies but who God sees as people of infinite value. Kit has even come up with a name: “Pooling Our Resources.” This is a chance for us to show that we see the world the way God sees the world.

And with God’s grace we can see the world as God sees the world. With God’s grace we can see that the people the world considers as insignificant nobodies actually have infinite value and importance.

Our challenge is simply to open our hearts to God’s grace and allow God to transform the way see the world.

Amen.