The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for June 10, 2007

Texts: Psalm 146/Galatians 1:11-24

Title: “Destiny”

              A man once invented a light weight boat that could be assembled and disassembled with ease, a boat that could be easily transported in a three by five foot car top carrier he also designed.  After acquiring a patent for his boat and completing the rigor process of review and approval by the Coast Guard, he began to search for a site where production of his boat could begin.

               Having secured a site he began acquiring the tools and the materials to begin production. The man quickly discovered that the challenges he faced in building the prototype versions of his boat were quite different from the challenges he faced in fabricating the boat in quantities. Machinery had to be designed, production schedules devised, distribution networks created, and, importantly, employees hired and trained to execute his plans.

              The learning curve was steep, but in time the man had a product to bring to market. Even as his inventory of boats grew, the man began to advertise for the two or three persons who would constitute his sales force.

              Though it took a while, the positions were finally filled. The man, you must understand, was fiercely proud of his boat, an enthusiasm that came immediately to the surface as he gathered his sales staff and introduced them to the boat’s various features.

              The staff training proceeded for the better part of the week before the businessman felt that his new team was adequately prepared to take his wares into the world. Be assured it was an anxious, but also a proud day, when the man sent his sales force into the field, newly printed product literature tucked into their briefcases.

              You have to understand that the man had made a substantial investment in his product, financially, but also emotionally. This boat was his dream, the big event of his life.  You might even say that the boat was his destiny.

              Destiny is a big word that may imply, among other things an outcome or destination.  For instance, “His destiny was to become president of the United States.” Destiny may imply purpose.  “She fulfilled her destiny when she gave birth to her child.” Destiny may imply a loss of control, fate.  “Destiny dealt him a bad hand.  Abandoned as a child he went on to one misadventure in life after another.”  Destiny may even imply, as Professor Glenn Tinder suggests, “authentic selfhood.”  Central to the Christian faith is the conviction that your destiny and mine are realized when we become the persons God intended us to be.

              The boat was the big event of the man’s life, yes, even his destiny. Mind you, the man never personally spoke of his boat in that way, but in fact all who knew him believed that the boat the man invented was the logical end point to which his interests and training led.

              Mind you, the world doesn’t always cooperate or step aside when one is working out his or her destiny. No, not at all, and this was a lesson the businessman would learn and relearn as he attempted to bring his vision for the boat to realization.

              The patent, licenses, building, equipment, and trained personnel all in place, the man had an inventory to sell, and now a sales force to turn vision into the dollars that would recoup his investment, and pay him what he hoped would be a handsome return. Everything was ready to go, but insofar as the man’s destiny was concerned, the world didn’t cooperate, at least to the degree that he had hoped.

              The man faced one significant problem.  His enthusiasm for his boat was not infectious, not, at least, to the degree he was infected.  Oh yes, the sales staff dutifully called on potential clients.  They knocked on the doors of wilderness outfitters, boating stores, and marinas. Days turned in to weeks as orders barely trickled in.  If indeed it was his destiny to bring a new product to market, the market wasn’t cooperating. 

              Faced with this obstacle the man might well have lost confidence.  He might have sold his inventory at a drastically reduced price, closed up shop, and taken a loss.  He might have gone back to the drawing board and designed a more conventional type of boat than the one he was selling.

              Instead, he went into the field with his sales staff, and in watching them, learned one very valuable lesson. He learned not to assume that the people who were presenting his product to the world shared his enthusiasm for the product.  The boat he was trying to promote and sell may have been his destiny, but it wasn’t theirs.

              When your destiny is on the line you make special efforts to protect it.  Enthusiasm was the issue. He learned that enthusiasm for something cannot be acquired without knowledge. In order to sell his product his sales staff needed to know his product, and not in some superficial way, but by learning the various steps through which the boat needed to pass in the building process, and overall functionality of the boat.

              He learned that his sales staff could not effectively sell his product unless they believed in his product.  I remember my first job out of college.  I was hired to sell curricular materials for a division of McGraw-Hill.  I still remember how the company’s division manager who was assigned to train me went on and on about the virtues of the products in the company’s catalogue.  At one point I debated whether or not I should step in to remind him that I was not a client. My trainer believed in what he sold.

              The businessman learned a third lesson from observing his sales force in the field.  He learned that it is important to know your potential customers’ wants and needs. He learned that there was no “one size fits all” sales approach, but that it was important to know what features of his boat would be most attractive to the specific client, the wilderness outfitter or the marina owner.

              We never work out our destinies alone, and this man was no exception.  Most specifically, he needed those sales persons. But here was the problem he faced: how would he go about generating enthusiasm in them? He recognized that enthusiasm emerged out of knowledge of his product, belief in his product, but also attention to his customers’ need and wants.

              More acutely than our businessman, more acutely than most of us, even more acutely then virtually anyone that ever walked this earth, the Apostle Paul, was aware that destiny shaped his life. Did he not receive the gospel, the good news of salvation, from Jesus Christ himself?            

              Throughout his lifetime as Jesus’ disciple his enthusiasm for ministry never flagged. As one whose life only acquired meaning as a vessel carrying Jesus to the world, he lived his life constantly strategizing on how he might do that job better. Part of that strategizing involved how to enlist others in bring the message of salvation to the world, how to build knowledge and enthusiasm in them.   

              Paul was a man of destiny who experienced the call of God in Christ in such a profound way that he spent his life trying to demonstrate to all who would give him a hearing that God, revealed to the world in Christ, was their destiny also, that they in turn might help shape the destinies of others.

              In the presence of our destiny you and I feel that we are where we should be, that all is as it ought to be, although we may be unable to explain why that is so. You and I have been assigned a destiny by God in which our authentic self has room to emerge and grow. Jesus came to model that authentic self, and he tabbed Paul, his disciples, and those who believed in him, to continue that work.

              As individuals we have destinies, as the church, the body of Christ, we corporately share a destiny, and that is to see God’s reign inaugurated here on earth. That destiny is not something we stand back to witness passively. 

              Fact of the matter is, friends, our business as a church is sales. Yesterday we concluded our most recent effort at “hotdog evangelism.”  So why do we bother with such things? Like our friend the boat builder we believe, at some level at least, that we have a wonderful product to introduce to the world, indeed we believe that the world’s destiny is tied to that product, and that product is God’s grace.

              We present God’s grace to the world, that’s what we do.  To do that effectively, however, requires something special from us, and that is enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm, of course, doesn’t just drop down out of the sky, instead enthusiasm is based first on knowledge, what we know.  To sell a boat you need to know a lot about boats, likewise to “sell” God’s grace you need to know a lot about grace.

              Knowing something, of course, will not carry the day on its own.  We may accumulate great stores of knowledge about a subject, but before we go out to share that knowledge we must also believe that what we are sharing has value.  We become enthusiastic about what we know when we believe that what we know has value and is beneficial to ourselves or others.  

              The church knows things and believes things that the world would profit from knowing and believing.  We who are part of the church must answer for what we know and believe. But are we prepared to do that?  A hotdog and hospitality may establish an acquaintanceship, but what builds the church?  The church is built on effectively responding to the wants and needs of the people with whom relate. We build the church because first and foremost we ourselves believe in and are enthusiastic about what is available here.

              Sales is the business we are in, our vocation to demonstrate that the human destiny, each one of our destinies, is being shaped by the lessons we extract from that book.  No, we can’t make sales, we can’t build the church, unless we know the product we hope to sell, believe in the product, and are enthusiastic about it.

              Destiny.  A big word. Authentic selfhood. A big concept. Hotdogs and some afternoon fellowship while important efforts in introducing ourselves to our neighbors, do not address the big issues that motivate people to come to a house of worship. If those big issues are to be addressed in places like this it will because people like us, in congregations like this one, know the big words like destiny, grace, hope, and faith, and are enthusiastic about how the realities to which those words point are shaping our lives.

              Sales, it’s the business we’re. But do we know the product well enough to make the sale?  That is the question that is ever before us, particularly in these stressed times when sales may be very hard to come by.

              This church to which we have committed our time, talents, and money has a destiny, and we are not in control of that destiny.  This church’s destiny is God’s business. But God has made us guardians of that destiny, in this time and place.  Uniquely challenged by the circumstances the storm thrust upon us, our guardianship requires more from us than any former generation who worshiped on this site. Pray with me that we may meet the challenge, trusting that God will not abandon us.

PRAYER

              In your word, O God, is our destiny.  It is a word of hope, of encouragement, of salvation, a word both recorded on the page, but also a word embodied in human flesh. In your word, written and embodied, is our destiny. 

              Free to live in your word, we have forsaken that freedom because we have lacked motivation to enter your word.  We know little, because we study little. We come to church seeking meaning, but we take little initiative to prepare ourselves to receive it.  Forgive us for wasting our time on trivialities, O Lord, even as we begrudge you a mere hour or two of our lives on Sunday morning, fifteen minutes a day for pray and devotions. Ballgames, birthday parties, and festivals these are the things we readily make time for while neglecting the obligations that come with participation in the body of Christ.  A jealous God, how our folly must anger you.

              The leaders of the great nations met this week, but without ardor to address the substantive issues that face the world’s citizens.  There is great energy committed to staking out turf, but little energy to preserving the world’s turf for generations to come. Content to live in the moment, O God, our leaders do not challenge us to provide for the future, even as threats to that future become more apparent. Abide with those who insist on change, O God, those who will not concede the future to the world’s bureaucrats, and revolving door of politicians.

              O Lord, support those who live in fear of their lives this day.  Our own brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, make a great claim on our minds and emotions, but to Christ all God’s children are brothers and sisters.  We insist, as you do, O God, on the essential dignity of each child of your creating, and mourn the injustice and inequity so many of our brothers and sisters are forced to bear. In your cross, O Christ, we witness the suffering that grips our world today, suffering etched in the faces of the starving, the neglected, and those who brutalized by death squads.  In your mercy, O God, show us some sign that deliverance is on the way.

              Continue to raise up leaders in the church.  We pray for all women and men who are contemplating a vocation to serve in parish ministry. We are grateful, O God, for the women and men who have answered the call and are attending seminaries and other training sites for pastors.    

              Strengthen those who are in distress today, those consumed by personal doubt, those for whom life has lost meaning, and all who feel alienated and removed from the world around them. Support the unemployed who struggle to find work, the under  employed who struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.  In your mercy attend those whom addiction has enslaved, that they may find the help that they need.

              In your name we pray for those who generously volunteer to help their fellow man. Abide with men and women who commit hours of their time in youth sports, scouting, Big Brothers and Big Sisters programs, child advocacy programs, and the many programs designed to assist senior citizens, particularly those who have limited means.

              Finally, Lord, we lift up the boys and scout leaders of troop 150 as they begin their Alaskan adventure.  Guard them in safety throughout their time away, even as you enrich their lives with new experiences and challenges.

              For this day, the church, and for each other we give thanks this day, praying the prayer…