Roomful of Bones
Isaiah 49:1-7
I Corinth 1:1-9
Anyone in need of a pep talk this morning? Feeling a little down, discouraged?
Are you tired at looking at budget deficits whether at church and at home? You keep shelling out the money and it never seems to be enough, and with energy prices rising and a recession possibly around the corner, you wonder where the money is going to come from this time?
Are you tired of swimming against society all the time in your values? Tired of the materialism? Tired of trying to maintain decency in an increasingly crass society? Tired of the rich getting richer and the powerful getting more power? Of people just looking out for themselves? Tired of trying to stand for things like principle and honor and respect for tradition when it seems it’s just a joke to everyone else. Tired of trying to help the needy only to get the rug pulled out from under you by someone who knows how to work the system?
Are you tired of trying to persuade young adults that spiritual health is as important as physical and mental health? Tired of trying to keep up with all the technological advances and research in every area of life? Tired of trying to educate the ignorant on any number of issues? Tired of trying to break down walls of loneliness and isolation in an increasingly walled off, cubicled, entertainment den kind of world. Tired of fighting parenting battles without much support, only to see kids make wrong choices time and again? Tired of seeing fame and publicity and wealth and promotions snatched up by people who don’t deserve them? Tired of seeing national leaders make the same mistakes year after year that ruin so many lives? Tired of seeing substance abuse and addiction grow despite all efforts to battle it? Tired of fighting apathy in the community?
Well, if you didn’t need a pep talk before you came to church, you probably could use on now, after that litany of pessimism and frustration.
But that’s exactly where the prophet was in our reading from Isaiah
this morning. He had been assigned the task of reforming the people of
It seems to him that he’s getting nowhere. He can’t change things; he seems no closer to accomplishing his task that when he started. Worse yet, he’s wearing himself out getting nowhere. He no longer sees the point and he’s ready to quit.
“I have labored to no purpose,” he cries, “I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”
How does God respond to this exhausted cry of despair? With sympathy? A pep talk? Encouragement?
He says this:“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to
restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of
Incredibly, the prophet says he’s ready to throw in the towel, he can’t take it anymore, that the task is just way too big for him, and God answers by saying, “I didn’t give you enough to do. Here’s a bigger job for you. Throw this on top of all the other things you’re doing.”
Seems kind of heartless, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t that be enough to make
you throw up your hands and walk away once and for all? It makes God sound
like a cruel tyrant; in fact it sounds very much like Pharoah in
Since we know God is not a cruel and unreasonable tyrant, we have to ask why would God give this kind of an answer to his poor struggling servant.
I suspect the answer to that question has something to do with our reading from Corinthians today. Corinthians is a congregation torn apart by about as many problems as a congregation can have and still be in one piece. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope for them. Trying to build a functioning congregation out of that mess seems a hopeless task. Yet Paul tells them:
In Christ Jesus you have been enriched in every way
Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift.
In saying this, Paul reminds them that as serious as their problems are, God has given them the means to deal with them. As discouraged as you get over the failures, and dead ends, and false starts, and backsliding, remember that when you are connected to the Spirit of God, you have what you need to accomplish wonderful things. I can do all things in Christ, says Paul. The problem is not that we lack the means or the gifts to do amazing things; it’s that so many gifts lie buried and unused.
Many years ago a fellow was hired to take over the lackluster paleontology department at Yale? Seemed a hopeless cause. He had virtually no facilities, hardly any budget. Very little was known about dinosaurs, there was not much interest in them. Given the situation it wasn’t likely that he was going anyway in a dead end career.
His despair grew worse when he went down to the basement of the building and discovered a mess of Biblical proportions. The university’s entire collection of bones was piled in a room, ceiling high. Thousands and thousands of bones all jumbled together. The job was impossible. One look at room and he was ready to walk away for good.
But as he looked at that hopeless mess, it gradually dawned on him that he was actually looking at a treasure trove. This was one of the largest collection of fossils in the world. There was enough evidence to advance the world’s knowledge of dinosaurs beyond what anyone dreamed, and to reshape the way people understood the world.
The problem was not that he didn’t have the resources to do his job. The problem was that he had so many resources, he was overwhelmed by them. He didn’t know what he had, or where to start. If he took the time to inventory what was there and make use of it, the sky was the limit as to what he could accomplish.
Isaiah and Paul are saying something similar. We all get discouraged by huge problems and lack of results in trying to do God’s will. But the problem is not that we don’t have what we need to make a difference. The problem is we have so many resources, we don’t know where to begin.
Isaiah reminds us that, no matter what it looks like, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. Paul reminds us that the problem is not that God hasn’t given us the tools or the spiritual gifts to work wonders. The problem is that he has given us so many that it’s all just a jumble unless we spend some time to locate them and inventory them.
Have you ever heard of asset mapping? It’s a new approach to building up the effectiveness of organizations. Instead of looking at problems and challenges and trying to figure out how we’re going to solve them, asset mapping turns it around. It starts by taking an inventory of assets. What skills, what connections, what experience do people in this group have? Every group that has ever done this discovers they have far more resources available then they ever imagined. Once you figure that what those resources are, all you have to do is put those assets into play, and great things happen.
Asset mapping works with spiritual gifts. Instead of looking at problems and trying to decide how to solve them, effective congregations first take an inventory of spiritual gifts. What skills to people have, what connections, what knowledge, what experience? Take an inventory, see what we have, and then put those assets into play. Asset mapping changes the question from how in the world are we ever going to solve that problem, to what’s the best way we can we use all these gifts? It changes a negative approach to a positive approach.
The gifts are there, says Paul. Let’s get them inventoried and we can turn this sanctuary full of bones into something powerful and effective.
This positive approach to mission carries over into the Gospel reading for today. Upon John the Baptists endorsement, two of his disciples start following Jesus around. Jesus notices them and asks “What do you want?”
These disciples then ask, “Where are you staying?” And Jesus invites them to come.
The sense of the original Greek is a little different. What Jesus asked can be interpreted as “What are you looking for? What is driving you? What motivates you?
The disciples answer, “Where can we find you? Where can we find God?”
It isn’t the shortage of spiritual gifts that limits us, and I think I can prove that in a moment. The limiting factor is our answer to those two questions:
Jesus’ question is a hard one, and it’s personal. “What are you looking for? What’s driving you in life? What motivates you to use the spiritual gifts that you have?
The disciples’ question is easily answered in theory, but a little harder in practice. “Where can we find God?” “Follow Jesus.”
The formula for success then is simple:
1) Find what motivates you to use the spiritual gifts you have 2) Take those gifts and follow Jesus
A wise pastor put it this way: The key to a satisfying life is to find where your deep passion and the world’s great need intersect. Find where your deep passion (that which motivates you) and the world’s great need (the call of God) intersect.
I discovered the truth of that long ago, when I was asked to be the chair of a large church arts festival. I didn’t know how to say no, so I did it. It was a miserable experience. This wasn’t something I was good at, or had any experience or interest in. My involvement did no one any good, least of all me.
When the ordeal was over, I decided that wasn’t going to happen again.
I wasn’t going to wait to be asked to do things I didn’t want to do or couldn’t do well. I would try to decide what I wanted to do, what motivated me. And then find a place in the church where there was a need for what I could do and wanted to do, and volunteer to do it, before someone talked me into doing something I didn’t want to do.
Life in the church has been so much better since then. I was able to accomplish so much more in the church than I ever did before because I was finding the place where my deep passion and the world’s need intersect.
I will leave you with two examples that demonstrate how asset mapping works, how answering those two questions in our Gospel reading today make all the difference:
In 1998 an on-line magazine was started called The Industry Standard. It was by far the most successful magazine startup in history. Within a few years, the project went bankrupt and the magazine folded. Was the problem that they did not have enough resources to succeed?
On the contrary, The Industry Standard was absolutely swimming in money, and they had top professionals at every level of the operation. Whatever problems the magazine had it was not about resources. In fact, the demise of this magazine inspired a book called Starving to Death on $200 million dollars a year.
Contrast that to the story of Miriam Ulrych of
He ended up staying with Miriam for the year. She helped his mother put him in school, and for the next six years, she sent the money to keep him in school
Twenty years later, she returned to
But this was only a drop in the bucket. The shanty town in lived Paulo had lived was a place of squalor with no school, no sewage, no health care. More than 80% lived below the official poverty line of $35/ month. Children were forced into the streets, to eke out their own survival. There they were victimized by criminals and others. Children were routinely killed by security officers hired by business owners to get rid of these nuisances. Many were pressed into a lifetime of slavery.
Miriam decided to do something about this. She found two people who shared her passion, a cab driver named Luiz, and a domestic worker, Josefa, who was trying against all odds to get a school going in her community.
What resources did they have? Three amateurs, none of them wealthy, two of them extremely poor. Not enough to accomplish anything. What was the use?
No, they took seriously Paul’s words: In Christ you have been enriched in every way. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift.
They had all the assets they needed. They pooled their
assets and set out to work. Miriam set about raising funds, buying arts and
crafts from the area and selling them in her
Their organization, which they called Street Angels, was able to build a school of mud and sticks, hire 3 teachers, and obtain educational material. A few years later, they persuaded a local developer to give them a tiny plot of land on which to build a real school. Two years later, they had a 3-story elementary school in place, which became the center of the community. More than 300 students were enrolled, with hot lunch, toilets, and real books, and now, state support.
At the same time, they closed a polluted well and tapped into a municipal water system. They created a foster care sponsor program that supported 270 children. They built and found a way to staff a health center. They organized a community-based craft business.
You can fail on $200 million a year. You can succeed, as the Street Angels have, on what seems to be a shoestring. The gifts are there, in abundance.
Find what motivates you, inventory your assets. Take your passion to a place where the Jesus leads, to a need in the world. If we do that, there’s not a problem we can’t solve.