Message 10-02-05
 
Series: The Three Gifts of God
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13

Title:     Fully Known

Intro
 One of the churches in which I worked in the past was a large church that had multiple secretaries and a couple of sextons.  A sexton is someone who cares for the physical property, cleaning, mowing, and making sure all the rooms were ready for use on Sundays.  The head sexton was an older Irish man, a man in his 60’s.  His name was Francis McKemey.  Francis told some of the best stories.  I brought my lunch to work every day for a year just so I could listen to his stories.  The support staff of the church gathered in a little room to eat together each day and invariably Francis would end up telling stories.

 There was one day when he was explaining how he got a bad bruise on his forehead.  And he had this habit when he was telling a story, the way that some people say, “You know”, Francis would say, “Can you see it?”  “Do you see it?”  And so he began explaining that he was in the bath, taking a shower and he wanted to scrub his feet.  So, he says, I positioned my foot on the corner of the tub, do you see it?  Can you see it?

 And one of the secretaries said, “I have it vividly in my mind.”

 Well, suddenly there was silence, an awkward quiet and then Francis’ pale, Irish face just went red from the collar of his shirt to the top of his head.  The entire room exploded.

 Francis was already being vulnerable, just telling us how he slipped and fell, but he didn’t realize how vulnerable he was.
 
 Vulnerability is a scary thing.  If you’re a fan of “Smallville”, you know that Clark Kent has just lost his super powers.  He’s vulnerable.  Those were the words his mom used, “You’re vulnerable now.”  It made her cry.  She had to worry about him now.  Vulnerability is not safe.

 One of the scariest things in the world is being completely vulnerable.  That’s why it is so precious when we find out it is okay to let our guard down.  When we find people or even places where we can relax and be ourselves we treasure them.  One of the greatest gifts we can give to another person is this gift of safety, providing them with an arena, an area where the complete person can be expressed and enjoyed.  

Although they are completely vulnerable they are not in danger.  Providing that safety is a gift we receive from God and it is a gift that we can pass on to others.  In the Bible, this gift is referred to as “knowing.”  The way we talk about it today, we might call it “intimacy”.

Study
This is the third in a series of three entitled “The Three Gifts of God.”  These gifts that we receive from God are also the tools God puts in our hands so that we can fulfill the work of being his representatives to the world.  We are called as Christ followers to work with God in reconciling the world to him.

 This suggests that the world is distant from God.  It suggests that we have a responsibility that is greater than our employment, greater than our family, greater than our friends… certainly greater than what other people think of us.

 The three gifts of God are the tools that have been given to us so we can do the job of reconciliation.  These are the gifts that we can celebrate receiving and that we can joyfully pass on to others.

 I think we need to take hold of these gifts more dearly each day because we are living in dangerous times.

 These are dangerous times because our society works very hard at making us dull, because religion is becoming more important than God and because people who don’t believe in God are becoming people who won’t believe in God.

The dullness that society creates.

 The images and information that bombards us everyday.

 Getting into People, getting into Extra, getting into 15 pages of pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie… getting a feeling of intimacy without the experience of intimacy.

 The family member who talks a lot…

 We are increasingly dull to the experience of intimacy.  When we start our 10 and 11 year olds into watching movies that have a PG-13 rating we are showing that we’ve become dull.  Ten and Eleven year olds don’t need the physical and emotional stimulation of those movies.  But we’re dumping them into it.

 The more we stimulate the bigger the need.  That’s because dullness creeps in.  We need a bigger flash every time.  I’m a person who loves roller-coasters.  Do you know why they are building bigger and faster and more convoluted roller-coasters?  It’s because people like me are looking for the next thrill.  They know I’m going to grow dull to the experience I’ve already had.  We are dumping our children into numbing experiences.

 Dullness makes us ache for a bigger, stronger experience.  But all we’re talking about is a “flash”, because that’s all we can produce.

 What God calls us into in knowing is a deeper, richer experience that fills us up with satisfaction.

 My worry is that the church doesn’t get this.  My worry is that the church is not willing to take the time to know and so it is securing authority.  I see that all around me.  When I listen to Christian radio or watch Christian TV shows I hear people discussing the need to gain larger and larger authority.  The Christian community seems to be pushing their need to be right, instead of being God’s people.  And it’s not just Christians.  I see it in the suicide bombers and the arguments in Israel.  I see it in the scientific community.  There is a growing need to demonstrate sometimes in horrible ways that our side is right.

 This is leading toward people drawing lines of separation.  And we need to worry about this as Christians.  People who don’t believe are rapidly becoming people who won’t believe.  Battle lines are being drawn.

 We are not called to be “right”.  Do we have something to fear from Science?  Science can not disprove anything about God.  The only thing that science can disprove is our imagination.  When we create stories from the stories we read in the Bible, when we lay onto the Bible our own imaginative descriptions and claim that things in the Bible had to happen just the way I imagine them, then we’re in trouble.  All we’re demonstrating is that we’re afraid that we’re vulnerable.

 Nothing is going to hurt God and nothing is going to keep God from fulfilling his purposes.

 Instead of creating battle lines we are supposed to be opening the door.  We are supposed to be opening the door to cleansing because all human beings are a mess.  We are supposed to be opening the door to feasting because all human beings have the regular needs everyday of food and drink and companionship.  We are supposed to be opening the door to knowing because all human beings need intimacy.

The gift of knowing is the gift of love.  We might not be perfect at it right now, but that’s okay.  We are to do it even if it’s as unclear as an old mirror.  We are to do it because we know that someday it will be clear.  Someday it will be as clear as daylight.  Scripture refers to intimacy as knowing.  In the Bible this is seen in the deepest of physical intimacy – right in the beginning where we are told that Adam knew his wife.  We are told here in our Scripture today that we will know someday even as we are fully known.  Some day the intimacy that God has toward us will be completely experienced.  We’re told in Revelation that someday we will receive a stone that has our true name on it.

We all have names and they reveal who we are.  They are an opening to intimacy.  Someone can claim an intimacy with me by knowing my name.  They can call to me and I will turn.  Someday we will receive our true names and the intimacy we have with God will be revealed in its fullness.

How do we do this?

There was a little boy who saw puppies in the window of a pet shop everyday on his way home from school.  He stood watching them for a long time one day and then when he got home he begged his mother for one.  After a long discussion about the responsibility involved she gave in.

At the store the boy looked over the puppies and then said he wanted the little one in the corner.  The shop owner said, “Oh, you know, you might not want him.  You see how he sits on his own and doesn’t play around with the others.  There’s something wrong with his back leg.  It doesn’t work right.  Why don’t you pick out another?

Without saying a word the boy pulled up his pants leg and showed the woman the shiny metal brace around his own leg.

We are told by our Teacher, Jesus, that the lost one was more important than the 99 who were fine.  How do we do this?

We open our eyes to the ones who are like us.  We look for the ones who aren’t equipped, aren’t clean, aren’t brilliant, aren’t happy, aren’t well… the ones who are like us and we pick them.  We make friends with them.  We build intimacy over time with them.

This is so important.  We have been given the job of reconciliation and we have been given the tools to do the job.  All we have to do is imitate our teacher and use the tools – cleansing, feasting, and knowing.

There was a city church that was in a tough neighborhood.  The sanctuary door was left open so that people could come in but there was a monitor system that was tracked every day.  The secretary of the church was able to watch over what was happening in there each day.

One day she came into a staff meeting and told the pastors and directors that there was a man who had been lying on the steps at the front of the sanctuary for hours.  He was just lying sprawled on the steps, occasionally standing up, lifting his face, lifting his hands and then lying back down.

Someone went out to make sure he was okay and that he was praying.  Then he was left alone.  He was filthy, his clothes ragged and his hair in knots.  He was there everyday after that, lying on the steps and the sexton and the altar guild left him alone, working around him.
Finally Sunday came and when the pastor came out for the early service she discovered that the man was there.  She was scared.  She was vulnerable.  What if he was crazy?  She realized even more clearly how dirty he was and how he looked hungry.  She told him gently that a service was going to start and that he would have to leave.  He said, “That’s okay” and he left.

The pastor says that throughout the service she was disturbed.  She made herself walk around the spot where the man had lain.  She said it was like there was a heat in the spot and it made her think about the man’s devotion, his abandonment in his love for God and his expression of it.  It made her want to leave doing “good” things behind and do more for God.

 What could she have done?  She could have spoken with him during the week.  She could have invited him to stay for worship.  She could have invited him to eat with her.  She could have invited him into a place where he could get washed up and where he could relax.

 The sextons left him alone.  The altar guild left him alone.  The pastor left him alone.  But his presence, his intimacy with God marked the church.  What can we do?  You already know don’t you.

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
    ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.