November 11, 2001
Rev. Tara Barber
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Romans 12
Clearly, Harry Potter was called. Ten years after being left on the doorstep of his aunt and uncle’s home, strange things began happening, until it was unmistakable that he was called. It began with a letter. A simple invitation. An invitation to begin a journey of adventure and discovery.
An invitation to become who he really was all along. And like many of us, Harry didn’t receive that first call.
The second invitation didn’t reach him either. This call worried Harry’s aunt and uncle. They ran from the letters, and the call that they represented. Maybe you and I know something about running from a call.
But the call followed them. It followed Harry wherever he went, and finally, on the moment of Harry’s eleventh birthday, the call caught up with him.
A giant appeared who told Harry who he really was, and to invite Harry to come and learn and grow. Harry was a wizard – and “a thumpin’ good one, too,” in the words of Hagrid the Giant. And he was being called to go to Hogwarts School of Wizardry. This began for Harry a new life of adventure, discernment, and homecoming.
My first invitation came in high school. The minister at the Congregational Church in Kirkland handed me a brochure for the Pacific School of Religion and said, “I think you should consider going into the ministry.” I couldn’t hear the call in his words. Like Harry, the call didn’t catch up to me for 10 years. And then one morning, while listening to a sermon by a finalist for the position of Senior minister at my home church, that call caught up with me.
Maybe, like Harry, it was because my defenses were down. Maybe it was because I had run as far away as my fear would take me. Maybe it was because it was time. Instead of a giant knocking at the door, I heard a soft voice saying, come home. Come home to the place where I can fully be myself. Come home to the community who has nurtured me and challenged me and reminded me of who and whose I am. Come home to the place where my gifts and the world’s needs meet. Come home.
It was a call to leave my house writes Bettyclare Moffatt. “Her cousin’s husband had been diagnosed with cancer, and though she said that she would be there for him, her enthusiasm was waning. You see, Bettyclare had put in her time. “Surely that was all that was required of her. Surely after years of working in the AIDS crisis, with death and dying, with support groups, with families, surely after years of caregiving, she could be excused. She had done her share.
“Then one afternoon,” she writes, “as I visited the hospital reluctantly but dutifully, I came upon my cousin’s husband alone, staring out the window at the noisy construction site below. Somehow, past the daily recital of symptoms and prognoses, he began talking about how people reconstruct their lives after a long crisis.
About how people go on after pain and loss. About how ordinary people, like the people in my family, shine softly, leading the way, so that others may not stumble or fall so deeply into despair.
I remember that we talked of courage and everyday kindness. A connection flowed between us. The hospital room lightened. Despair eased. Then he asked me…to give him a neck and back massage…I did as he asked. The side where the surgery had been, where the scars were, resisted my touch. It was cold, dark, clammy, despairing, shocked, numb. The side where no surgery occurred, however, was warm to my touch. Alive.
As I kneaded and pummeled and stroked gently…an amazing thing happened. The hurt, cut, ravaged side of his body warmed ever so slightly. The healthy side of his body responded. A connection flowed between us again. I could almost see the energy. Alive. A holy instant.
He thanked me courteously when I finished and fell back on the pillow to sleep. “No indeed, thank you!” I responded.
I walked out of the hospital room and down the corridor, blinded by tears. I got into the car and cried old numb, scared, hurt places within me back to life. Gifts given, gifts received. Alive. I’m alive.”
Bettyclare Moffatt, Soulwork
They had no idea where this trip would take them. When they flew from Seattle to New York on September 10 to attend a conference, they had no idea where they were really being called. This minister I know and her husband, awoke the next morning to the same terrible news that hit each of us that morning.
And they did what many people across the country did, they went to donate blood. Because of their previous experience, they were immediately drafted to assist in the drawing of blood, and worked for three days with the thousands who volunteered to help.
“At the end of the third day, (she writes) they said they didn’t need anybody (to help) anymore…so, I spent the next few days at the Armory volunteering as a chaplain. (She continues) I spent most of my time talking with cops. And in spite of all my training and three years of seminary, what I did most was talk about BASEBALL. They craved normal, funny conversation…It was so ironic to me that that was the most valuable thing that I could do –talk and laugh with them. But in spite of the light conversation, there was no denying the horror of the disaster…” And even in the midst of the horror, she boldly proclaims that “we have witnessed so much love and concern everywhere.”
It wasn’t the theology that she knew or the scripture she understood that made her a minister to those people. Instead it was her willingness to go and be human, to share her gift of humor, and her skill of drawing blood that enabled her to minister in that time and place.
Where are you being invited to go? How can you minister to the needs of this world? Where are you called to reach out, to risk, to touch another human being?
It was a story about two men who worked in the World Trade Center. One man gathered his officemates together, and helped them down the stairs toward the exit. Along the way down, they passed someone who was injured, and the second man volunteered to assist him down. After a few flights it became clear that the injured man couldn’t go any further. The man who was assisting him stopped, and said that he would sit with him, so that he would not be alone. The others went on down the stairs, leaving the two men sitting together. “I will sit with you, so that you are not alone.” His presence with this injured man was his last gift.
Madeleine L’Engle writes, “Isaiah knew himself to be mortal and flawed, but he had the child’s courage to say to the Lord, “Here I am. Send me.” And he understood the freedom which the spirit can give us from ordinary restrictions when he wrote, “When you pass through deep waters I am with you; when you pass through rivers, they will not sweep you away; walk through fire and you will not be scorched, through flames and they will not burn you.” He may not have had this understanding before he wrote those words, for such understanding is a gift which comes when we let go, and listen. I think I looked up this passage because I dreamed that a friend reached into the fireplace and drew out a living coal and held it in his hand, looking at its radiance, and I wondered at him because he was not burned.
It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. …And for each of us there is a special gift, the way in which we may best serve and please the Lord whose love is so overflowing. And gifts should never be thought of quantitatively.
One of the holiest women I have ever known did little with her life in terms of worldly success; her gift was that of bringing laughter with her wherever she went, no matter how dark or grievous the occasion. Wherever she was, holy laughter was present to heal and to redeem.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
These words of Madeleine L’Engle point to a radical truth. We are each gifts to be given. Each of us has been called and invited to respond, here am I, send me. Send me to walk on water, send me to laugh, send me to Hogwarts School of Wizardry, send me to Sebastopol, send me to a hospital room, send me to New York City, send me to risk my life for the good of another, send me home to minister among God’s people.
I appeal to you, sisters and brothers, by the grace of God, to give yourselves as a living sacrifice. Do not be conformed by the limits of this world but be transformed – so that you might rejoice in hope, extend hospitality to strangers, and genuinely love all. Be transformed - so that you might hold a live coal in your hand, so that you might listen to giants, so that you might give the gift of laughter or healing touch, so that you might come home and serve the world with all that is you.
A minister, who me? Yep. And so are you.