Ambassadors for Christ

Psalm 107: 1-3, 23-32
Job 38: 1-11, 16-18
2 Cor. 5: 14-21

Rev. Denise Giacomozzi May
February 5, 2006

First, thank you on behalf of United College Ministries in Northern Virginia for the support Rockville United Church gives UCMNV through the National Capital Presbytery and the UCC Potomac Association. We are grateful for your support. Also, RUC member, Sharon Williams, served on our Governing Board, Penny Wallace used to work for UCMNV and other RUC members volunteer as well as make financial gifts.

So, it is good to be able to thank RUC for the many ways you help UCMNV live out our mission. And it is an important mission because our venue is higher education where the choices students make will affect the lives of the multitudes. For if the world was a village of 100 people, only one of them would have a college education and that one person will make decisions that affect the other 99.

This morning we will examine our scriptures focusing on the importance of giving thanks, the importance of campus ministry and the decisions youth make which effect their lives, the values of faith in contrast to those the academy promotes as well as our call to be ambassadors for Christ to the next generation.

Turning to our scriptures, the New Oxford Annotated Bible says about Psalm 107: “This Psalm was perhaps sung by groups of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the feasts, offering thanks for
escape from various dangers.” Verse 1 encourages all to “give thanks to the Lord, for God is good.” Giving thanks is where faith begins. To give thanks we must pause to notice all we have to be thankful for—do any of us really take time to consider how much is going well in and around us?

It is in giving thanks that we find our true purpose, which is to be in relationship with our Creator. In the act of giving thanks we understand the goodness of God who is described in James as the giver of all good things.

Psalm 107:2 reads “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble.” Do we say so? Maybe we shy away from giving our testimony of faith because the loudest voices of Christianity tend to condemn and exclude—which, by the way, represents a failure to comprehend the essence of the Gospel of grace found in John 3:17: “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

So we might be reticent about talking about our faith because we do not want to be associated with such a co-opted version of Christianity—or perhaps we do not share our testimony because we do not have a testimony? Our Psalm refers to testimonies of those in trouble on the sea and how God rescued them. Verse 27 says they “were at their wits end.” Perhaps we have not been in storms at sea, but surely we have been in stormy situations in life and felt “at our wits end.” I know I have.
This Psalm is a testimony—which is simply an experience shared with others—a testimony of the Almighty’s deliverance in response to the pleas of the Creator’s people. In verses 31 and 32 the Psalmist urges those who have experienced God’s mercy to thank God and “to extol God in the congregation of the people….”

It is not enough to ask for God’s help, there is an obligation to notice when God responds and to tell the story of that deliverance to the gathered community. Let me repeat: It is not enough to ask for God’s help, there is an obligation to both notice when God responds and to also tell the story of that deliverance to the gathered community.

Note that the context of the Psalms, the community of Hebrew believers, saw faith not as a private matter, but understood that God intervenes in the community and in individuals’ lives for the sake of the community. Part of how that works is the telling of stories through time, the sharing that passes through generations.

Everyone who has ever reared children and sent them to Sunday school please raise your hands. Good. You have then by your actions considered it important to pass along the stories of faith. Thus it makes sense that you would want the church to be present if your children venture to college.

Rev. Byron C. Banget wrote in The Presbyterian Outlook that “By the time many young people reach college, they have already become disaffiliated from the churches in which they were raised.” Banget writes that “while student enrollments have grown dramatically, the numbers of campus ministers and chaplains have declined….The current low priority of campus ministry for mission and program funding is puzzling” he goes on to say. Banget “believe[s] campus ministries are losing out because they lack visibility in our churches, because anxious church leaders lack clear vision of the long-range needs of the church, and because evangelism and mission impulses that once animated denominational life have waned.” Further, Banget says “The university intensifies our society’s prevailing secular values of competition, achievement and success. Campus ministries offer alternative sources of community and values cherishing people for their individuality, character and commitments, regardless of their attainments. Campus ministries provide countervailing influences in the lives of young people seeking identity and making life-style decisions.”

Now, last summer I spent two week-ends, first at my high school reunion and then at my husband Jan’s. (We are 5 years apart—or, to be specific, Jan is five and a half years older than I am—sorry, dear-- so school reunions come in batches.)

At my reunion I met a man I’ll call “Tim.” Tim made it a point multiple times to let everyone know which ivy-league school he went to, that he lived in a well-to-do community and what prominent undertakings he was involved in.

As the evening wore on, Tim was drinking himself into oblivion. Then he told me privately that he had wasted his life. Each year, our school holds a service to remember those who died. Tim said that for about 60 seconds during that service he felt as if God was trying to break through to him. He said he had done bad things and again asserted that he had wasted his life. I reminded Tim that he was still alive and mentioned Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, which some have suggested should really be called the Extravagant Father, and left it at that since, in his condition, there was no point in saying more.
The next week-end, at Jan’s reunion, we met a man well into his 80’s with a sparkle in his eyes. He is working on—not his golf stroke (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) but on how to solve the problem of computers crashing and needing to be re-booted. Just being around him one can sense the energy and passion he has for life. Jimmy Carter’s choices since his presidency came to mind. Columnist Richard Cohen wrote, with obvious amazement, how Carter was actually living out his principles. I was both amused at Cohen’s shock at the authenticity of Carter’s beliefs as well as saddened that lived-out Christianity which seeks the greater good without calling attention to oneself is so rare that it is shocking.

Two reunions. Two men who have made very different choices.

Turning to our passage in Job, it is what is known as a theophany, or “divine appearance.” As a 22 year-cancer survivor, Job appeals to me because it walks right up to life’s most bitter realities: extreme suffering of the innocent and the failure of human compassion in the face of such suffering. Having had Hodgkin’s disease at an early age was a gift in that the brevity of life hit home sooner for me than for most. I learned early that the choices we make matter, if simply because we may not be around to amend them. I also learned we must make peace with our Maker and that relationships, not things, are what count.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible says “the poet echoes the question, ‘What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit do we get if we pray to him?’…. Job demands justice, and his final challenge shows that he regards religion and morality as [the human] claim for happiness. Job renounces his defiance only after the Lord asks, “Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Job is satisfied without self-vindication by an experience of immediate communion with God….In the poetic language of the book, God is at work in the universe…and…[a]t the same time, [God] cares for Job so fully that [God] reveals [God]self personally to him and shares with him the vision of [God’s] cosmic responsibilities. A God who confesses [God’s] burdens to [a human] is a God who is profoundly involved in the destiny of [humankind]….In the presence of holiness and creative love, [Job] surrenders his pride in adoration.”

Friends, there is a less-than-friendly atmosphere in the academy where titles and degrees too often mean more than people do. In this environment, degrees and status are gods. Job 38 presents an alternative perspective on the values of that world. For here, the Maker of all that is at last speaks in verse 1: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” The Lord continues in verse 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” Here our Maker puts humanity in our place with one question.

In the context of the academy, faith presents a challenge by its very existence. UCMNV and our partner denominations, value both faith and the life of the mind. We hold that the search for truth may take many expressions and that we should not fear the search, but rather rejoice in the seeking, for the end of all search for truth is God.

Let me be clear: the life of the mind and the co-existence of faith and the intellectual life is a hallmark of our mainline traditions, but intellectual pursuits can only take us so far in the search for truth. Rev. Gordon Forbes has said, quote: “There is a subterranean river of grace,” end-quote—and that is a deeper truth than anything that can be comprehended by the methods employed in the academy.
We have no choice when confronted with such a question as is posed to Job, but to acknowledge our brief and new appearance on this earth and our own mortality.

When a member of the George Mason University community died suddenly in his mid-fifties, people responded, understandably, with shock and grief, just as we are shocked by David’s death. To be at the school memorial service was to see another side, a vulnerable side, of that justifiably proud community. Strong men, leaders, were close to tears. And the state-run school chose to conclude the service with a communal reading of the 23rd Psalm.

Richard Rohr, author of many books on spirituality, has said that “there are two paths to transformation—suffering and prayer.” He notes that “most people do not get real in prayer until they suffer” and believes that “suffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize most of us and bring us to our true self.”

Aristotle said “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” I recall a commencement speech at my alma mater. I was stunned at the naiveté and historical amnesia of the speaker who went on about how education would eradicate all manner of inhumane behavior. I thought of Dr. Mengale, the infamous Nazi who conducted brutal experiments on Jewish children during World War II. Education, for all its benefits, is morally neutral. It is the heart of each educated person which chooses to direct the fruits of education—for good or for ill. And who will guide those hearts?

This brings us, in conclusion, to our 2nd Corinthians 5 passage where Paul urges believers to be ambassadors for Christ and to teach others about being reconciled to God. Verse 16 says: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view….” Friends, our faith teaches us a needed way, the way of Christ which is the way of love. Christ calls us to abandon ourselves to such love so that the Lord controls our very actions and lives to the end that we regard all people through the eyes of our Creator who is no respecter of persons, of degrees, of human accomplishment, but who values all equally not for what we may have been privileged to accomplish, but for who we are.

UCMNV has a mission that gets me up in the morning and focused. Do you search for meaning? Ministry to the next generation is your mission too! And the Gospel mandate. Thank you again for your support. There are many ways for you to respond to help that mission even further. Somebody needs to be where young people are in order to tell them that the choices they make do matter and that life is not about over-use of substances, not conspicuous consumption nor the accumulation of accomplishments and that there are few sadder things than to waste one’ life.

They need to hear of a God, who as the UCC statement of faith asserts, can save us from “aimlessness and sin.” And if they have made poor choices, they need someone to let them know God longs for reconciliation with them. But each of the campus ministries supported by our denominations, including Rev. Holly Ulmer’s United Campus Ministry at the University of Maryland, needs more resources to be a more significant presence on our large campuses, a mission field with the future leaders of our country, and indeed, with students from many nations, future world leaders. We each need Board members to do volunteer and funds development to help secure resources. Is God calling you?