We Are Enough

Sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church

Danville, KY
1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39 | Psalm 96 | Galatians 1:1-12 | Luke 7:1-10

When I was in elementary school, my social studies teacher assigned a special individual project to our class. We were to artistically represent – through poetry, art, music - a story from one of the cultures we had been studying. We had been making our way through the ancient near east – through the Sumerians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and the Hebrew tribes. Some of my friends bought modeling clay at the craft store and, with toothpicks, they fashioned Sumerian cuneiform script. Others went to the “paint your own pottery” store and they painted plates or bowls to represent the beautiful colors and figures of ancient ceramic art. I, instead, went to Hobby Lobby, and purchased Plaster of Paris and some model train figures, and – with some magic markers, glue, paper towels, and a lot of imagination, Plaster became Mount Carmel and plastic train conductors and passengers transformed into Elijah and Ahab's priests of Baal. The rather expressionless passengers – who I don't think even had facial features - stood around twigs surrounded by blue putty, while the train conductor, with his arm lifted in solute, stood around a small conflagration – a larger pile of twigs with super-glued tendrils of red, yellow, and orange streamers extending higher than his tiny plastic head.

My mini “Mount Carmel” survived one move and more than ten years before my mother convinced me to throw it out. As it happens, miniature biblical scenes are very effective dust collectors. So, I went off to college, and mini Mount Carmel went into the trash.

I've wondered for years why I held onto that model for so long. For a while I attributed it to a minor hoarding habit, but realized that I was quite good at purging my closets and junk drawers of other obsolete objects.

So, I was delighted when Amy asked me to preach this morning and the readings happened to be the story from Mt. Carmel, and the letter from Paul and the Gospel of Luke Luke. I think I've found my answer to why I held onto that model for so long, and surprisingly, it didn't come entirely from the reading from Kings. It came to me from the centurion in Luke 7.

The elders came to Jesus asking for him to heal a slave of the centurion.

“He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and he built our synagogue for us.”

Later, some friends sent by the centurion approached Jesus, speaking on the centurion's behalf: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”

Twice in the same passage - just sentences apart - ideas of human “worth” and “worthiness” are brought forward.

Worth. I think that's what lies at the center of my interest in the Mt. Carmel narrative, and one of the reasons I was so reticent to throw this dusty Biblical diorama. Because of worth.

So, let's unpack this.

Ancient baal worship was prominent throughout the near East, and baal was not a singular god but baalim, the plural, was this large array of gods - gods of fertility and ran rand war, the harvest, and so on. And there was this never work of appeasement, to make sure you were offering the proper sacrifices to the gods so that they would give you in turn the desired outcome. This went from sacrifices of food, animals, wines, but even to women and children who were offered to the gods of rain, fertility, war, and on and on. And if your sacrifice wasn't good enough, the sacrifice had to be “upped” because you were not worthy, what you provided was not worthy – of rain, of protection, of fertility, of life. It's a rather disastrous calculus to win favor with these gods.

Despite the evolution of Israelite religious practice from devotion to many gods – as many peoples of the near east did - to the devotion and reverence for the one true God, these ideas continued to creep in, and I think we see it this morning in the Gospel, though it is very subtle, and we see it in our own lives. This appears in this morning's Gospel, where the reason that Jesus should help the centurion and his slave is because the centurion is worthy. He has, in the eyes of the elders, offered the right sacrifices – has financed the construction of the synagogue - and so in our human eyes, he should have procured favor with God. “He is worthy of having you do this for him, because he built our synagogue for us.”

Yet, something amazing happens, and the centurion's emissaries come to Jesus, and they admit that the centurion is not worthy. The centurion, though he sits in a position of such power, acknowledges he is a subordinate to Christ. A man set under the authority, and not in this case of of Rome, or the capricious demands of his pantheon of gods. He puts his faith and his trust in Jesus.

So, this mini-Mt. Carmel, this dusty thing that I was so reticent to get rid of, I think I couldn't let it go because it was reminding me of something so important. Of something VERY important about our relationship to God.

Either we worship a god we must continually appease, to whom we must continually prove our worth OR we are fully, and wholly, and completely worthy by definition. We are children of God. We are enough.

Mt. Carmel was a battle between false gods and the one true God. But I think for us today, it's a battle between the gods of our society and the gods we create to whom we must prove that we're lovable, that we're worthy of love. An eternal rat race to prove we're deserving – OR a God who knows our innate worth, who loves us because we are His children.

Discovered by a friend who heard me preach - see www.momastery.com/blog

So, either prove that you're worthy, or, put your ultimate faith and trust in God and KNOW that we are enough.

These are some of the reasons why I am so honored to be with you today and so excited about your Reading Camp, coming up here in just one week. It is because, as much as Reading Camp is about reading, about school preparedness, about building skills for academic success, it is even MORE about impressing upon the children that we serve that they are worthy. They are loved. And they are enough.

As any volunteer at a Reading Camp knows, each child brings with him a complex life story. Across the seven Reading Camp programs in the Diocese of Lexington, you'll find incredible diversity among these campers who come in all shapes and sizes, from all backgrounds.

Some children will indeed be from middle-class families, whose parents who are seeking every and all possible way to help their children achieve grade-level reading, build the skills they need.

Some children will be from low-income families, whose mothers may work more than one job to put food on the table.

Some will be foster children, some will be children who live in the mountains of our southeastern counties without running water, some will be from the inner-city in Covington who live with their grandmothers because their dad is in jail and their mother is on drugs.

Some will be poor, others will be comfortable. Some will be American-born and others will be refugee children whose families fled war and famine.

And amidst this diversity, there are two major common threads that bind them all together and make them so similar. The first is, as we know, the fact that they are struggling in school. They're really struggling to read. Before third grade, children must learn to read and after third grade, they must be able to read in order to learn, and they are without that basic skills. At risk of falling further and further behind. .

The second common thread is the despairing and hopeless prospect that many of them carry with them – even if they don't know it... I would assume some of us carry this with us too – that they are unworthy. That they're not smart enough, not pretty enough, not good enough. Part of this might stem from their academic struggles. Part of it may stem from their environment - their families, their peers, their schools. But, A large part of it, I argue, stems from our society and our media – tgese modern day false gods and idols – to whom we must prove that we are enough. These modern day false gods that applaud certain very narrow conceptions of beauty, and success and intelligence and diminish all others.

So this is where you, the people of Trinity Danville, step in. This is where the ministry of Reading Camp steps in, all of us, together. We are not only concerned with the children's reading skills, though that's core of what we're doing. More importantly, we are concerned with the children's self-perception, with their sense of worth. We want them to know that they know they ARE capable, intelligent, beautiful, worthy, and loved.

Reading Camp is first about building reading skills for academic success. But the other and far more important part of Reading Camp is Mt. Carmel – a battle between gods to whom we must prove our worth and the one true God who loves us and knows us to be innately worthy.

THAT is what you're doing with Reading Camp. You are disavowing those false gods who would make us sacrifice the best parts of ourselves to prove our worth. You are acknowledging the important truth that we are all children of God.

So, bless you. Bless you for your ministry to the children in Danville and Boyle County. You will, in gentle, kind, and loving ways, let each child know that they are loved, and they do not have to be afraid or ashamed of their struggles. That they are worthy. That you are, too. And we are all children of the one true and living God.

Sometimes I wish that my dusty model of Mt. Carmel was still around, as a reminder. But I know, all I have to do is look to Trinity Danville and to Reading Camp.

And Jesus said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Amen.