An Adventure with Your Name on it, Part 4

This post is the final post in a series from a sermon.  It began on April 24.

Harkness also says that our faith will lead us on courageous adventures.  Faith means that we are willing to count the cost, and then take the risk anyway.

There was a story told at John Lewis’s funeral that really struck me when I heard it. In the 60’s, John Lewis was a leader in voting rights advocacy. Selma, Alabama is in Dallas County. The population of Dallas County was more than ½ African American, but only 2% of the voter roll was. John Lewis felt a call to open the doors of equality, and one of the ways to do that was to work for voting rights.  On February 18, 1965 in Alabama, rising racial tensions had resulted in bloodshed when state troopers had clubbed protesters in nearby Marion and shot a 26-year old to death. On March 7, John Lewis led what was planned to be a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capitol of Montgomery.  The March began at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and then crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge – a bridge named after a Confederate General who was also a grand dragon in the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.

 

As he prepared for the march, John Lewis packed a backpack with an apple, an orange, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and two books. He lost the backpack during the march, and he ended up being knocked to the ground by a state trooper and beaten in the head with a nightstick – multiple times – so badly that they fractured his skull.

 

He had packed a backpack because he thought the march would result in his arrest, and that he would end up in jail. In 1963 he had said, “We do not want to go to jail. But we will go to jail if this is the price we must pay for love, brotherhood, and true peace.”  He packed a backpack because he knew the cost – and he marched anyway.

 

God called John Lewis to work for freedom and true peace.  God calls you by name on a courageous adventure, too. Will you move forward, even when you know the cost?

 

Harkness explains that this kind of faith – trusting in God enough to reorder our lives and to move forward on a courageous adventure, aware of the cost, results in an awareness of saving help - an awareness of the power of God at work in our lives.  Let’s go back and visit Courageous Thomas again. In his doubt, what he needed to know is that this resurrected Jesus who can walk into a locked room was actually the Jesus who had died three days before – the Jesus who had taught them, led them, loved them. He needed to see the wounds to know that these were the same person. And what did Jesus do? Jesus provided Thomas with what he needed.  Courageous Thomas left that room not only knowing that the Jesus he had walked with was now resurrected, but also that God would provide what he needed – saving help.

 

Nineteen years ago, Scarlett and Fred Kellerman were at an event at their church – Lewisburg UMC – when the facilitator asked them “What is God calling you to do?”  Scarlet said, “Start a mission project and help people.”  The facilitator asked, “What’s stopping you?”

 

The created Wellspring of Greenbrier. A few months ago, 10 years later, as they were retiring, Scarlet said, “We keep in mind what Jesus asks us to do – to build his kingdom here on earth. Giving food, drink, clothing, freeing those who are imprisoned by addition and poverty. We do this for God and with His help. We could never have done this without the Spirit here.”

 

God calls us by name, and when we step out in faith, reordering our lives in trust, even though we know the cost, God will walk with us, providing what we need, providing saving help.

 

Your name is Beloved. God is calling you on a courageous adventure. On this day that feels like the aftermath of a great party, when Easter is over, when the trumpets are packed away, and the certainty of faith feels more amorphous, and we are wondering what to do, will you step out in faith, and answer your call?