Open Wide

Open Wide

Pentecost 3B

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Title: Open Wide

1 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12 There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. 13 In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

It is always an adjustment to come off a retreat or a camp or something that has taken you away from the routine of every day to something other than that -- to a different setting, a different schedule, a different ... purpose, even. The adjustment can sometimes be gentle, and at other times, drastic. Having spent this past week with about two hundred teenagers was a baptism by fire in some ways ... in others, it was a breath of fresh air. In still others, it was a reminder of just how treacherous a time adolescence can be.

I got here this morning and it didn’t quite feel right to begin the morning without doing The Revolution shuffle (with motions) - (twirling hands in front, while leaning forward, then to the side, back, and the other side) “Oooooooh --- Ooooooh -- (alternating jabbing motions with hands - first time down and to the side, second time up and to the other side) do you want a revolutin? (hoooo-hoooo)(high-pitched) I said do you want a revolution? (hoooo-hooo)” with two hundred other kids ... would you like to join me? C’mon! Everybody up! :-)

I talked to Lindsey and Hannah about doing that as a call to worship some Sunday ... we might yet ...

David and Colleen Burroughs - you might recognize the name -- Esther Burroughs -- those of you who have been involved in the Women’s Missionary Union over the years ... she was President of the National WMU for several years, I believe, and Coleen is an MK from Africa. I became friends with them while we were in Seminary together in Louisville. Their camps, the program they’ve put together, is unlike anything I experienced as a child going to camp when we were back in the States, because it is a blending of both discipleship and missions opportunities. They go hand in hand, they are one and the same in terms of the purpose of the camps. You have hands-on missions opportunities.

The group I was with went to a park that was next to a low-income housing project in one of the areas of Monroe, NC, which is a town that might be comparable to Tappahannock. (note: on research, it’s not, it’s MUCH bigger), it’s on the outskirts of Charlotte. We did day camps for a couple of hours each afternoon from about 12:30 to about 2:30 with the kids from the neighborhood -- Anglo, African American and Latino. I had a chance to greet and get to know some of the families there.

The role of the chaperones and group leaders is actually to step back and let the kids do the ministry. It’s giving them the opportunity to experience hands-on what it means to be the presence of Christ.

Our theme for the week was drawn from 2nd Corinthians 5:17-20 (read):

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The theme interpretations, the way that those passages were applied were profoundly moving.

There were four mission teams formed from the teams that were there; one was helping a woman with some needed repairs around her house , including to her wheelchair ramp, and yard cleanup; two, including mine, were day camps at different low income housing areas, and a fourth was doing some work at a rehabilitation center.

The stories we heard from the children who came to our camps were hair raising. Stories of both parents being imprisoned and the daughter is left living with her stepmother; we heard of how, anytime there was a disagreement -- any disagreement -- the stepmother would call the police on her stepdaughter, stories of gunshots in the streets every night, and of the children staying inside because it was simply not safe to be out; stories of adolescent girls selling themselves just to have money to spend -- just heartbreaking stories.

But to watch the campers interact was that breath of fresh air. I don’t think children naturally have a mistrust of a stranger, especially between children, there is an immediate connection - basketball, t-ball, water sports (that was a big one -- and it happened to fall on the most heavily overcast and coolest day of the week). To watch the kids slide and have unbridled fun was encouraging.

The evening worship was moving. The camp pastor is a young man who has just completed his first year at Truett Seminary, which is connected with Baylor University in Texas. He connected with the kids in a way that was ... intimidating.

So why am I telling you all this about camp?

Our group was the smallest group there. There was one other group that had one more camper than we did, but most if not all of the others had anywhere from ten to maybe 50 campers from their youth group there. It got me to thinking about the disparity in terms of numbers. I got to thinking about why there aren’t more kids at Jerusalem, about why there aren’t more of us in worship at Jerusalem. And then I got to this text, and in reading back through 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and remembering what the situation was, I was reminded of what we are called to do as Christians.

Paul was dealing with a church that was being, in some ways split apart. Folks were being ... I don’t want to say distracted ... they were being pulled away by what they called “Super” Apostles.

You think about Television Evangelists today, you think it is a modern phenomenon; these churches that have stadium-sized auditoriums, and millions of dollars in budgets, and state-of-the-art ... everything, and have tens of thousands of members, and you think it might be a modern thing, and it is really not. There have always been those charismatic -- in the sense that they draw people to them -- speakers who draw crowds, who get people exited and get people to ... connect -- so I don’t want to entirely criticize this -- it’s NOT a criticism -- but for those of us who maybe prefer this smaller, more intimate setting, we struggle with a sense of, “Are we doing it right if we are still this small? Are we being ... faithful?”

Paul is addressing that here. Where he speaks starting in verse three:

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

Does that sound like successful ministry? Not exactly ... and yet ... what portion of scripture remains with us, and from whom? I don’t know that any of the epistles, or any of the gospels are from Apollos ... it makes me wonder ... substance ... the substance of what faith means in terms of living it out, applies whether you belong to a ten-thousand member church or to a church that has less than 300 on the roll and gathers fifty souls on a Sunday. It is a word of encouragement to know that it doesn’t matter -- the size of your faith family -- that what matters is how we individually and as a congregation turn that faith that we believe into practice. And it doesn’t matter whether we send two or whether we send forty children to camp, we are still called to be faithful. And in carrying out that faithfulness, in living that out, we are doing the will of God.

Let’s pray.

God of Grace and God of Glory, you who call all of humanity to you, you who bless the large and the small congregation, we give you thanks that we can know each other, that we can live in each others’ lives, that we can be your presence, in a very concrete, in a very real, in a very palpable way. That your love and your grace and your mercy can be found within each of us. I ask, O God, that you would bless us, that you would dwell in us, that we would let you shine through in everything that we do, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

If you would like to turn to our hymn of response, it is number 273, “Freely, Freely”

The Open Wide reference in the title of the message is from that last part, where Paul writes

“We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

The invitation is to not just open wide our hearts to what God wants to do through us, but that we also open wide our hearts to the community around us. WE DO THAT, but it bears repeating. And it bears pointing out that that wideness, that openness is one that we cannot restrict, because God did not restrict it to us.

Let’s stand and sing.