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“Warts and All”
I Corinthians 15:1-11
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
We all come
to this place with our own dependencies and codependencies. We come with our unique perspectives. We come with our joy and our pain. We come even to church on this frigid
day. Who would have thunk
three years ago that I would have left
We are here on this day, and we had better make it worth surviving the cold.
Here’s how we do it. We recognize that we are here, warts and all.
My daughter Amanda has this wart on her hand. It doesn’t hurt physically, but it has caused her some embarrassment. If seven-year-olds can be this cruel, I know the teenage years are going to be really tough. We finally went to the dermatologist who has given her some cream and some advice. The problem is, her body doesn’t realize there’s a wart there. It thinks it’s part of her skin and so it doesn’t send any of those white blood cells to get rid of it. If she wants to get rid of it, she needs to remind her body that it doesn’t need to be there. How do you do this? Blister beetle juice. This is poison from the blister beetle that makes the body fight the blister as an infection. The problem is it makes blisters on top of the blisters. We had to have this done twice before we could get rid of the wart. I thought, there must be a sermon here somewhere. Amanda is happier without her blister, but getting rid of it was pretty painful, perhaps even more painful than keeping it on, at least physically.
We come here, all of us with warts of some kind. Some stay dormant for a while, some are obvious and some are covered up. Some have become so second nature to us that we don’t even think of them. Think about your warts.
I know what some of mine are. A lot of you know what they are too. Some of my warts include my propensity to try to do everything and therefore neglect doing the important things well. I have a tendency to ignore or avoid conflict. I am a recovering sexist, a recovering heterosexist, a recovering codependent, a recovering violent person, a recovering cynic, even a recovering Baptist.
What are you recovering from?
Church is a place where all of us are welcome regardless of our foibles. Sometimes we need blister beetle juice and sometimes we need to just adjust to our warts. Paul was someone who typified a guy full of warts.
Paul was
very prolific as an evangelist of the gospel.
He traveled far and wide and kept in contact with his churches. His letters make up a third of the New
Testament. But today’s scripture leapt
out at me as I was leafing through the lectionary readings. He exposes his warts. Paul says: “I am the least of the apostles,
unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the
It seems to me that Paul affirms four things here.
First, he proclaims his own humility (I am least of the apostles and unfit to be called an apostle)
Second, he admits specifically what he has done wrong (I have persecuted the church)
Third, he admits that this is who he is. He is a redeemed person who sees the world through his former life as a persecutor, a sinner. Paul’s response to God’s grace is the key to his life.
Finally, he commits himself to a new life (God’s grace toward me has not been in vain).
I wonder what would happen if we dealt with our warts in a similar fashion.
Paul begins with a statement of humility. “I am the least of the apostles and unfit to be called an apostle.” There are some of us who do the self-deprecation thing as a way to substitute for humility. Someone gives us a complement and we say, “Aw, it’s nothing really.” Someone tells us we did a great job and we say, “Well, I didn’t do as much as he did.” This is really not humility. It’s Minnesota Nice. It’s not becoming haughty. It’s not taking credit. I’m still learning that the proper response to a compliment is, “thank you.”
Now, Paul
knew darn well that he was unfit to be an apostle. He wasn’t one of the 12. He persecuted the Christians,
he never met Jesus in the flesh. But the
difference between his humility and shallow self-deprecations was that Paul
knew he had some major problems. He knew
that he was not all that. He knew that
his upbringing as a Pharisee told him that he was among the very righteous
elite. But Paul got sprung from that
prison on the road to
Paul now knew that he did not have all the answers. He also knew that he might never earn the trust of the church he had persecuted. His humility was real. I invite you to remember that none of us have all of the answers. None of us have a corner on faith or right living. We all need to grow. When we recognize that, we are approaching true humility.
The second thing Paul does is tell the truth about his life. “I don’t deserve to be an apostle because I persecuted the Christians.” He confessed his sins. He spent the rest of his life trying to repent of those sins that he committed. If you have done something wrong, the hardest thing to do is to confess it to the person you have wronged.
It’s hard because that person may not accept it. It’s hard because you might pay dearly for it. It’s hard because it might cause a whole lot of pain. Confessing your sins is like putting blister beetle juice on. It hurts. But sometimes it doesn’t hurt as much as it does holding on to the sin.
In counseling, I have been with people who struggle with the wrongs they have done. It’s hard to confess it to a counselor and it’s even harder to confess it to the person they have wronged. For some people the pain of that lost relationship is a wart they have grown accustomed to. It’s easier to hide it than to aggravate it and making it into a potentially open sore. So it becomes their secret. If they share it, it might cause pain. But not sharing it causes pain, too. If we hold on to something for so long, it can define who we are. The person or people we have wronged may or may not forgive us. Even if we make amends, the memory of the blemish is still there and the challenge is to figure out how to live with our sometimes painful past.
This leads to the third thing Paul said. “But by the grace of God, I am what I am.” In other words, here I am, with all my warts. Here I am a recovering sinner, a recovering persecutor, here I am one who has lived through the pain and humiliation and sorrow. Here I am ready to start a new life, not where I once was but “Just as I am without one plea.” Think about what you have done and remember that God’s grace can and does work in you. Maybe you can acknowledge, like Paul, that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But you can also say that God has not left you and God is not through with you yet.
Malcolm X was a figure who struggled with who he was and ultimately came to terms with the new creation that he became. Born in poverty and living in the mean streets, he got in trouble with the law and ended up in prison. It was there that he had his conversion to Islam and realized the destructive pattern that his life had become. He realized the destructive cycle of the lives of many African-American people and worked to make himself and those he encountered more powerful, proud, faithful and formidable.
I found
myself thinking of him again this week as I saw reports of people visiting
Abraham’s ancient temple in
Finally, Paul says that God’s grace has not been in vain. Paul commits to live his life in a way that will make the world a better place. That’s what ought to be the result of our faith. That we are strengthened to be better people and that as strengthened better people, by God’s grace we can make the world a better place.
Martin Luther King said, “If I can help somebody as I pass along
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song
If I can show somebody he is traveling wrong then my living shall not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought
If I can spread the message that the master taught
Then my living shall not be in vain.”
Sisters and brothers, we all come with something in our lives that we’re not proud of. We all come with something we wished we had done better. Something we wish we would have said in another way. Something we wish had turned out differently. What I want to say to you is that even though that exists in your life, God’s purpose is still being worked out in you.
You have an opportunity to be better than you are. You have an opportunity to make amends. You have the opportunity to take the grace God has given to you and use it to make you a better person and the world a better place. That’s what this communion meal is about. It is gathering strength for the journey that is ahead of each of us. May God’s grace be upon all of us warts and all. And may we find a way to live with our warts, just like God does. Amen.