With All Your Passion 11-18-12

With All Your Passion 11-18-12 God, we thank you that when we turn to you, you are always there—lead us to know that we can be ever in your presence—ever in the peace that comes from knowing we are right where we belong. Let us move and live and have our being in you. Amen It occurred to me when I began to write this particular sermon that many of you were not present almost 3 years ago when we met at Genette and Noreen’s house for a “Meet and Greet”. There was no service at that first meeting, but there was a lot of excitement about starting an MCC Church even though many did not know exactly what that meant. I told my story that night and so a few of you know the truth about my experience with patience and passion, but most of you do not. So, here goes— I grew up like many of you. My mother became a single parent when I was 10 years old and my sister and I learned to be creative in order to spread the little bit that my mother had a little further. I went regularly to church—it was my whole life. First a Methodist, I later discovered the more exciting Southern Baptist Church down the street. By that time, I was already singing in many churches and my commitment to the both churches meant that most, if not all, of my spare time was spent in church. By the time I was 21, I “felt the call” as we Southern Baptists say. I had a passion for Christ’s church that would not go away. Folks were supportive, but I learned a few years later that most of those who were originally supportive had no idea what I intended to do, and when that became clear they withdrew their support immediately. I taught school for a couple of years and then I went to seminary. When I first arrived at seminary, I learned that the only degree available to women was a degree called an M.R.E. which meant that I could work or direct work in Religious Education. I had no intention of doing only that and I and some other brave women went to the President and advocated for a chance to earn the same degree as the male pastors were earning. We compromised—we had to agree to earn the Religious Education degree along with the more useful M.Div. degree while our male counterparts had only to earn the M.Div. degree. Not to be deterred, I did just that. Now, I also married a man who was becoming a Southern Baptist Pastor as well. For a while this gentle and intelligent man and I tried to co-pastor a church. Even though I had been ordained in Texas by a forward-thinking church, my “call” was rejected in favor of his. Now those of you who know me well have to know that I was not going to be able to deal with this for long. Change had to occur. After a stab at the wonderful world of academia, the money finally ran out, and I had come out and left the acceptable world of heterosexual marriage behind. In spite of my continually knocking at God’s door, it became clear to me that I would need to do something else to earn a living. So, for 25 years, in the midst of lots of adventure and drama, I worked in the fields of social work, training, child welfare, and domestic violence while always, or almost always working a second job in a church. My jobs led me to develop a multitude of skills, but I continued to wonder why my answering God’s call was not being acknowledged by God’s people and, it seemed, by God. And, then, in the last half of my life, I found the Metropolitan Community Church. I had come home and I was ready for God to use the passion that I had been given as an ardent adolescent to the fullest expression of God’s grace that was possible. I have, of course, left out the years of struggle, pain, anger and feelings of abandonment not because they are unimportant to the story, but because they can wait for another day. Working first at Joy MCC in Orlando, and then coming to The Villages to begin this church, my life, my “passionate patience” as Paul says, was rewarded with this great gift we call Open Circle. I look back on my life and wonder how I maintained this passionate patience through so many ups and downs and then I realize a great truth, it is not I who maintained this “passionate patience” it is God who kept it alive in me. And today, I have the rare and wonderful gift to live fully from my passion. In my gratitude to God for this great and amazing experience, I got to wondering about why it seems so hard to find people who are living out their passion. It is an old saying, and yet completely true for me—“there is no greater joy than being home”. Finding and living one’s passion is, at once, God’s greatest gift to you and your greatest gift to the world. Motivational speaker, Michael Hyatt, gives us this challenge: “Just think of how the Kingdom of God would explode if we dared to live from our passion!” I want to let that sink in for just a moment. Michael Hyatt isn’t talking to or about preachers. He is talking to everyone—not just me, but to all of us. And, so I want to be clear—passion is not just for preachers or pastors—if it were, not only would we be very lonely, isolated from the very folks we are called to serve, we would also be quite useless in the world. God calls pastors to walk the daily walk among all those who are given a passion for something that will not only change their lives, it will change the world. Let me put that another way. All of you have a passion that, if you allow it to, will change your life, and by doing that, will change the world. There are lots of reasons why we find it hard to discover our passion. Some of them are: • It’s difficult to admit and address our long-held insecurities. So, we’re more comfortable living there than we are in discovering and living our hidden dreams and callings. • Somewhere along the line, we learned that it’s not appropriate to “brag about ourselves:, so we use this as a reason to shut off that still, small voice that says, “with God, we can do anything.” • We look at all the needs in the world and think that we don’t have anything that could possibly help. • Somebody, somewhere, (you gotta love those Puritan ancestors)taught us that it is wrong to spend time on ourselves, thinking about what we want or being introspective. • We’re already so busy that it feels impossible to think about adding anything else, when what we need to think about is why we’re working ourselves to death at all. • Here come those Puritans again, we’ve learned that doing work we don’t like is somehow “good” for us and we believe that our characters are made better with hard, unrewarding work. • The last time we tried doing something we really loved, we experienced rejection and we’re not about to go down that road again. • Our fear of failure is strong. We believe that if we never identify our passion, there will be no need to take action; and, therefore, no need to risk failing. Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you? They do to me. But if we return to both are scripture lessons, we see that there are words relating to passion and living out our passion. Jesus calls us to love God with all our passion and prayer, intelligence and energy. That sounds to me like a call to discover what it is that God is calling you, unique you, to do in this world. Daphne Rose Kingma, author and speaker says this: “The task is to recognize that you are uniquely special, have something to give, some talent no one else shares in quite the same way. This gift needs to blossom so we can appreciate and enjoy the benefits of it and acknowledge you for it. You owe this to yourself and to all of us to honor your gifts, for only when you share your unique joy with the world does the entire world benefit… Don't let shyness rob you and the world of the power and the passion that lies within you. No one can be all that you will be except you yourself.” These kinds of challenges are hard for us to hear, especially those of us who are stuck back in one of the reasons I discussed just a moment ago. Before we close, we must take a look at what Paul is saying—it’s as if he knows exactly our struggle: When we throw open our doors to God, we find God already there. And suddenly we are where we’ve wanted to be—in the “wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.” But wait, God isn’t done—there we are, shouting God’s praise even when things are not going well. Paul says that we will grow “passionate patience” which makes us strong and committed. When we are always alert to God and the passion for life God gives us, we’ll be unable to hold all the blessings that God puts into our lives and, by using us, in the lives of others. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church says, "When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn." We could be a people—a fire—who the world would love to see—alive and on fire for God’s justice. We, each in our own way, find first our own passion and then share the fire from our souls with one another. Each day, in each new way, God gives us the beauty of another day. The sun rises and all of God’s world wakes up. May we wake up as well, alive and on fire in God’s plan for all of us, together and apart. Amen