"TAKING OUT THE RUBBISH"

Jonah 1:1-3; Philippians 3:4b-14

How do you understand yourself to be a child of God?

Do you understand yourself to be a child of God?

I suspect that some of us say that we are

because we've always been told that we were.

And I suspect there are others who know it in their bones

because there was some occasion,

some event,

some crisis or tragedy or opportunity

when everything crystallized

and all of a sudden

it became clearer than clear

whose we really were.

It's like the hymn "Amazing Grace."

Some of us sing along without thinking much about it.

Some of us love it because it reminds us of certain occasions

when we have sung it,

or it reminds us of certain people

who sang it with us.

Then there are those of us

who sing it with extra clarity

because we are convinced beyond a doubt

that it is "grace has brought us safe thus far,

and grace will lead us home."

That's how it was for John Newton,

the man who wrote this hymn.

Newton had it all -

he was a slave trader,

independent, wealthy,

with no misgivings

 about getting rich quite literally on the backs of others.

But much like Jonah,

it took a thunderstorm on rocky seas

to bring him to his knees

and ask God's protection.

And as God is wont to do,

God gave him far more than he asked for.

In the end he was saved from a storm,

but God had saved him from far more than that.

Not only did he leave the slave trade

and become an abolitionist himself.

He went on

to write what is probably our most beloved hymn.

It took a flash of lightning,

but Newton came to understand himself as a child of God.

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The older I get,

the more convinced I am

that we only come to see ourselves as children of God

as we begin to make sense of our lives

through God's eyes

and notice where it is that God has been at work in them.

Unfortunately we live in a time of me, me, me -

when the emphasis gets put on

my experience, my story,

my needs,

myspace.com,

my, my, my.

The good news

is that searching for God's movement in our lives

is cut out of entirely different cloth.

Rather than navel-gazing

to discover who I am for my own self-centered purposes,

understanding ourselves as children of God

is the story of our being led to discovering who we are

in light of God's goodness

and God's good intentions for us.

To put it another way,

if our lives were a sentence,

we would not be the subject of it;

God would be the subject,

and we would be the object.

My life is not about my choosing and fulfilling my own destiny;

my life is about God calling me and using me.

That was how it was for the apostle Paul

when we met up with him this morning.

This is also how it's been so far

for every one of our "Soup and Story" speakers.

For Charlie, and Rhonda,

and Bob and Laura,

as I'm sure it will be for Doris and Roy,

it's been far less about how each of them struck out on their own

and created their own destiny,

and far more about how God's grace was the golden thread

woven through their highs and lows,

holding their lives together,

whether they knew it at the time or not.

And that's exactly it.

We come to see ourselves as children of God

as we begin to make sense of our lives

and notice where it is that God has been at work in them.

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And once we begin to make sense of our lives

as we see them through the eyes of God,

then everything else in our life as we once knew it

is up for grabs.

It's like we wake up from a weird dream

and wonder how we got here.

Those things we used to want,

the ways we used to behave,

those things which used to be important to us,

somehow all of a sudden

we don't need them anymore.

It's not that the things we were saying and doing and wanting and buying

were bad things -

we just don't need them anymore.

It's kind of like training wheels for a bike.

They serve a purpose for awhile.

They provide extra balance and stability

while you're learning to ride a bike.

But once you've figured it out

and are riding that bike down the driveway by yourself,

it's time for the training wheels to come off.

It's not that they're bad things.

You just don't need to hang on to them any longer.

They've outlived their purpose.

Once we begin to make sense of our lives

as we see them through the eyes of God,

suddenly there will be any number of things in our lives

that will have outlived their purpose.

And if we don't count them entirely as rubbish,

as did the apostle Paul,

then at the very least it will be time for a garage sale.

That's how God has tended to work in my life.

Some of you know

that before I decided to go to seminary,

I worked in advertising in and around Dallas.

And I was pretty good at it.

I started out working for the Dallas Times Herald,

and ended up working for an advertising agency

specializing in recruitment.

I was the account executive

for some companies that you would recognize,

working with them to come up with a campaign

that would provide them with a great pool of folks to hire.

But over a period of two or three years,

God and I wrestled to the mat

about what it was that I was supposed to do,

and finally I made the decision to begin seminary.

People thought I was crazy.

I had to give up my cool apartment

and move back in with my mom.

I gave up the cushy office and the expense account

for a part-time job where I had to ride the bus.

One day about six weeks later my phone rang,

and it was Bill Carrera.

My favorite boss from the advertising world.

Bill was going out on his own

to open a new agency,

and he wanted me to work with him.

He offered me more money than I'd ever made.

A company car.

And a chance to work with a guy I trusted and admired.

It took every ounce of will I had,

but I told him that I could not

because I had decided to change careers

and go into the ministry.

Things got a little quiet on his end.

If he'd called me six weeks earlier, I said,

I would have jumped at the chance.

But this was already in motion,

and so I would have to say no.

I got off the phone and cried for about an hour.

A couple of weeks later,

I got the news that Bill had moved ahead with opening his new office -

and he had hired my nemesis!

Talk about adding insult to injury.

I had to give up what at that time seemed like a dream job,

and then she got it!

Even so,

did I ever make the right decision.

Fortunately,

God had saved me from myself.

The cushy job and the company car -

they weren't bad things.

I had just outgrown them.

When I began to see the way that God was at work in my life -

not when I had found myself,

but when I realized that God had found me -

somehow those other things

had outlived their purpose.

I just didn't need to hang on to them anymore.

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So what's your story?

You've heard mine and the apostle Paul's this morning.

Over the last few weeks,

you've had a chance to hear Charlie's, and Rhonda's,

and Bob's and Laura's.

And you'll have a chance to hear Doris' next week

and Roy's the week after that.

What's yours?

How do you see yourself as a child of God?

Can you look back through your life

and see yourself not as the subject,

but as the object of God's action?

Where is it that God is calling you?

And what is it that you need to leave behind?

How is God's grace at work in your life?

Where is it that God is leading you?

My friend Amy Cloninger was at Mo-Ranch one summer,

and she wanted more than anything

to prove that she could swim the length of the pool

so that they would let her go on the big slide

into the Guadalupe River.

But Amy had to wear glasses,

and she was blind as a bat without them.

She kept swimming in circles

because without her glasses,

she wasn't able to get her bearings

and swim the length of the pool.

Her father noticed that she was struggling.

So he came up with the idea

of walking alongside Amy

on the edge of the pool

to give her a landmark..

So while she could hardly see her hand in front of her face,

she could make out her father.

Maybe it was just the security of having him there

as much as it was having a beacon to follow.

But when Amy began to stop struggling on her own

and let herself be guided by her father,

it wasn't long

before she was going down the big slide into the river.

Sometimes, friends,

we're swimming in circles too, aren't we?

Even with our glasses,

sometimes we don't know which way is up.

But instead of admitting to that,

we still try to find our way all by ourselves.

It is as we begin to understand ourselves

as children of a loving God

that we see that God is right there,

sometimes walking beside us

to give us strength whether we think we need it or not,  

and sometimes a little ahead of us

when we can't see which way to go.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

was blind but now I see."

Amen.