“DARING DISORIENTATION ”
Matthew 10:24-28, 34-39
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

Have you ever walked out of a movie theater and felt disoriented, so that you had absolutely no idea where you parked your car? I have.  And if I’ve parked in a multi-level parking structure, I’m in serious trouble.

There is something about spending time in a dark place then moving into light, about dwelling for a while in someone else’s story, then suddenly trying to re-enter your own that’s a little dis-orienting.

Or, sometimes, in an unfamiliar place, whether geographic or relational, have you ever been so turned around that you have trouble finding your way?

In the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, I was living very near the epicenter in the San Fernando Valley.  At 6:02 a.m. I was literally thrown out of bed, the earth rolled beneath my feet for one full minute. Let me tell you, that was at least 6.4 on the Richter scale of disorientation.

Think, for just a moment, about how it feels to lose a key, a datebook, a check, a crucial phone number, or a credit card. Even these things can shake us up.  

Now – take a moment to remember the kind of life-shaking losses that can turn our whole world upside down ... dis-eases, deaths, disappointments, failures that can fill our hearts with fear and confuse our minds.

Our text this morning from Matthew’s 10th chapter describes the serious consequences of following Christ.

Discipleship leads to disorientation -- to challenges, change and even suffering. Rather than a bridge over troubled water, or a path to lifestyles of the rich and famous, rather than a spiritual technique that helps us hold it all together, discipleship is downright disorienting.  It is coming from a darkened room into the powerful light of day.  Coming from being immersed in someone else’s story to suddenly re-entering your own story, a story that claims you and that you claim.  

According to Matthew, Jesus says, “A disciple is not above the teacher ... In this text, this means, If Jesus the teacher suffered and was crucified...why should a follower of Jesus expect to escape suffering and rejection?
But Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not be afraid.”  He says it again,  “Do not be afraid.”

He doesn’t say “do not be afraid because everything is always going to go your way.  He doesn’t say “do not be afraid because you will never suffer.”or, “Do not be afraid because you’ll never fail.”

J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, said these words in her commencement address at Harvard this year, “By any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.  An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.  The fears my parents had for me, and that I had for myself, had both come to pass and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.  Why do I talk about the benefits of failure?  Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential ... Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena in which I believed I truly belonged.  I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized and I was still alive ... “

Commitment to the way of Christ also means a stripping away of the inessential, a daring disorientation to the world God so loves.

It means to let go, to release our assumptions about: self, world, suffering, and even about the holy.  

Why would somebody choose that?

Yesterday, Karin Hilton, Randy Miller and I were on a panel at the Reconciling Ministries Luncheon at our California-Nevada Annual Conference in Sacramento. At the luncheon, there was a pastor from Zimbabwe who was present because he had heard of our pastoral and solidarity delegations to the Philippines that we’ve sent because of the hundreds of extra-judicial killings there.  Now, as the violence, economic collapse and attacks on religious workers in Zimbabwe were escalating; this pastor was moved by stories of struggle and solidarity half a world away and contacted one of the team leaders, Michael Yoshii, to ask for more information, to learn how to help the people in the Philippines, and how to learn from their experience. Michael Yoshii invited this brother to join the Cal-Nevada delegation that will leave tomorrow from SFO (and also includes Carolyn Talmadge). And there he was, yesterday, at a luncheon concerning inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the church. Daring disorientation.

Ask Kit or John, Greta, Jerry, Becky, Sol, or others who regularly prepare food for the men’s shelter dinners, Has feeding others fed your soul? Ask Lloyd, who has traveled to Nicaragua setting up partnership in ministry for this congregation :  Has traveling to Nicaragua, changed you?

It doesn’t take international encounters or even dramatic dislocations to bring new understandings.  Daily and weekly Sabbath, study, worship, re-creation, prayer...reaching out to love and serve... changes us.

Some of you -- may have come to church for the sake of your children – or your parents -- only to realize that we all are learning and growing and re-discovering essentials.  Perhaps our love of children and one another leads us to dare disorientation for the sake of the world that God so loves.
 
 Following Christ is not about coming to church, it is about commitment to community and to a way of life.

Garrison Keillor said “You can become a Christian by going to church just about as easily as you can become a car by sleeping in a garage.”

We are daring disorientation together... refusing to settle in to a world of unsettling realities ... refusing to remain comfortably oriented to a world where so many people suffer...aligning our lives with God’s healing, hope and hospitality.
 
In 2007 there were 11.4 million refugees and 26 million people displaced by conflict and war. There are an estimated 210 million orphans worldwide (poverty, violence, HIV/AIDS).  How can we “settle in” in a world like that? (*The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.)

I remember a very disturbing experience I had at a dinner gathering years ago, when John Vincent, then Director of the British Urban Theological Unit said to me, “The only authentic ministry in the suburbs is to dig ditches for people to fall into.”

We’re not in the suburbs, but we are in North Berkeley, and at Epworth, we are choosing to dig ditches, to risk failure, to fall into God’s great adventure, to respond to Christ’s invitation to risky, thrilling, soul-full soul-full and abundant life. Let us live into the consequences of claiming and being claimed by God’s outrageous love.

Jesus says “those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  Amen.