Our Dream (Part 1): To Welcome and Accept Others
Ezekiel 20:40-42 and Mark 1:4-11
January 9, 2000
David Beckett, D.Min.

What is the most beautiful word in the English language? What single word rises above all others, creating for you the most positive feelings you could imagine? Is it joy? Happiness? How about the sound of your name? I want to suggest that the most beautiful word in our language is actually a word we don’t use very much.....BELOVED. It is a word God used in introducing Jesus to the world. "This is my beloved Son." The dictionary defines "beloved" as "greatly loved"..."dear to the heart". Certainly Jesus was dear to the heart of God.

Are you aware that God feels the same way about you? It doesn’t matter how you have lived your life. It doesn’t matter how many wrong choices you have made. It doesn’t matter how much failure you have known. You are dear to the heart of God. You are beloved in God’s eyes. You are welcome into a relationship with the Creator of this universe. How many of us actually feel the power of these words? It is so hard to live every moment of our lives with this sense that God loves us, isn’t it? How can we listen to this voice when there are so many other destructive voices screaming at us? "You are no good! You are not popular! You have ugly features! You deserve to be forgotten!"

Keith Hernandez was one of baseball's top players. He is a lifetime .300 hitter who has won numerous Golden Glove awards for excellence in fielding. He's won a batting championship for having the highest average, the Most Valuable Player award in his league, and even the World Series. Yet with all his accomplishments, he has missed out on something crucially important to him -- his father's acceptance and recognition that what he has accomplished is valuable. Listen to what he had to say in a very candid interview about his relationship with his father: "One day Keith asked his father, 'Dad, I have a lifetime 300 batting average. What more do you want?' His father replied, 'But someday you're going to look back and say, "I could have done more."'"

Some of you have grown up with this kind of message. In spite of all the affirmation and acceptance you cannot erase that powerful voice from someone in your past that haunts you with the message that you will never measure up. The problem for many of us comes when we begin to believe these voices. The problem comes when we believe these messages to be true and begin to speak them to ourselves.

One of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, wrote a book called "Life of the Beloved." In this short book he wrote, "Over the years I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not our success, popularity or power, but self-rejection." Haven’t we all fallen into this trap at one point or another? I dare say that many of us are still living in this trap of self-rejection. I have lived in this trap and still struggle when its jaws try to clamp down on me.

When I was in high school back in the olden days as my kids like to say, there were voices telling me I was beloved but I found it easy to tune them out. Instead of listening to my parents words of encouragement I focused on the message from my peers that told me I needed to have the right clothes, the right body, the right car if I was to be acceptable. Instead of listening to the voice of my church telling me I was beloved, I was drawn to the voice of the media which brainwashed me into thinking I needed to buy this product in order to feel good about myself. It wasn’t until much later in life that I finally realized the trap I had entered. Anyone who has traveled down the path of self-rejection knows the pain and self-destructive behavior that awaits us. It is not a fun way to live.

God knows this. It is not how God created us to live. God is speaking to each one of us the same message spoken to Jesus 2000 years ago. "YOU are my beloved! With YOU I am well pleased!" Is it possible that you and I can hear this voice of God? Henri Nouwen writes, "Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say or do. As long as being the Beloved is little more than a beautiful thought or lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from becoming depressed, nothing really changes. Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour."

Back when the telegraph was the fastest means of long-distance communication, there was a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a young man who applied for a job as a Morse code operator. Answering an ad in the newspaper, he went to the address that was listed. When he arrived, he entered a large, noisy office. In the background a telegraph clacked away. A sign on the receptionist's counter instructed job applicants to fill out a form and wait until they were summoned to enter the inner office. The young man completed his form and sat down with seven other waiting applicants. After a few minutes, the young man stood up, crossed the room to the door of the inner office, and walked right in. Naturally the other applicants perked up, wondering what was going on. Why had this man been so bold? They muttered among themselves that they hadn't heard any summons yet. They took more than a little satisfaction in assuming the young man who went into the office would be reprimanded for his presumption and summarily disqualified for the job.

Within a few minutes the young man emerged from the inner office escorted by the interviewer, who announced to the other applicants, "Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, but the job has been filled by this young man."

The other applicants began grumbling to each other, and then one spoke up, "Wait a minute--I don't understand. He was the last one to come in, and we never even got a chance to be interviewed. Yet he got the job. That's not fair."

The employer responded, "All the time you've been sitting here, the telegraph has been ticking out the following message in Morse code: `If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours.' None of you heard it or understood it. This young man did. So the job is his."

Our livelihood, indeed our life, depends upon our ability to discern the meaning of these words: "You are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

We all know that this process of becoming the Beloved is a struggle. It happens to us over a period of time. Are there any guidelines in this struggle? Nouwen offers three. "First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry and, in the long run, destructive. " This is what Nouwen is talking about. Every time we are rejected or hurt our feelings may not be telling us the truth about ourselves. Even though we may not feel it at the time we need the faith to listen to God’s voice telling us that we are beloved and dear to the heart of God.

Several years ago I was in a meeting where people were telling me how angry they were with me. Some of it I needed to hear. Much of it was not constructive. But it was easy for me to be sucked in to the destructive power of their feelings. Part of me wanted to say, "Okay. You’re right. I’m no good. I’m a bad person." But I had entered that meeting saturated in prayer. During the barage of anger I opened my hand to look at words I had written earlier. It read, "Remember who you are." I wanted to listen to God’s voice when I felt that the strong feelings of others were not justified. I know who I am. I am a beloved child of God. It’s what baptism is all about. Baptism is the ink written on our hands that forever says, "Remember who you are, a beloved child of God." In the remembering I was empowered to see that negative encounter as a positive one and to this day I am still good friends with the people in that meeting.

The second guideline in this struggle is that we need to look for people and places where we are reminded of our deepest identity as a beloved child of God. In other words we need to be around people who help us feel loved. This is one of the reasons St. John United Methodist Church exists. It is why families exist. In my own family I realize that my children will listen to voices other than God’s. But I so want to speak God’s voice that reminds them of how much God loves them. Every morning as I dropped them off at elementary school I would say to them, "Remember who you are." Every morning we gathered for a brief time of prayer. Every meal we would sing of God’s goodness and love. Parents will often wonder if their words make any difference in the lives of their children. But we must work to hear the voice of belovedness for ourselves AND speak it and show it to our children.

Thirdly, we need to celebrate our belovedness. This means we live in a constant state of gratitude to God for all of the gifts of life. Thankfulness is fruit on the tree of belovedness. Show me a person who knows deep down that they are loved by God and I will show you a thankful person.

What does all this have to do with St. John and this vision series? Through our mission and vision statement we are saying that we want St. John to be a place where "belovedness" is practiced. We want everyone to feel this is a place where people feel welcomed and accepted. The prophet Ezekiel spoke of a vision for the Hebrew people, "For on my holy mountain, says the Lord God, there I will accept them." The word "accept" means "to receive" or "to be pleased." The first of part of our vision is to be a welcoming and accepting church. If we are to become this kind of church it will require two things: 1. We must avoid the trap of self-rejection and accept the truth that God loves us. 2. We must try with all our hearts to see the belovedness in every person who walks through our doors. Are you willing to accept the challenge of this dream? Are you willing to work at it, to help pay for it? During his days as president, Thomas Jefferson and a group of companions were traveling across the country on horseback. They came to a river which had flooded because of a recent downpour. The swollen river had washed the bridge away. Each rider was forced to ford the river on horseback, fighting for his life against the rapid currents. The very real possibility of death threatened each rider, which caused a traveler who was not part of their group to step aside and watch. After several had plunged in and made it to the other side, the stranger asked President Jefferson if he would ferry him across the river. The president agreed without hesitation. The man climbed on, and shortly thereafter the two of them made it safely to the other side. As the stranger slid off the back of the saddle onto dry ground, one in the group asked him, "Tell me, why did you select the president to ask this favor?" The man was shocked, admitting he had no idea it was the president who had helped him. "All I know," he said, "Is that on some of your faces was written the answer 'No,'and on some of them was the answer 'yes.' His was a 'Yes' face."

Jesus lived his entire life with the certain knowledge that God had a YES face. The world often has a NO plastered on its face and many of us have experienced the pain of being rejected by the world. As a church and as individuals we need to know at the very depth of our being that when we look into the face of Jesus...when we look into the face of God...we will always see a big, wonderful YES. And we need to take that YES and let it live within us. We need to take that YES and offer it to the world.