5/27/18 “God’s Chosen Misfits” by Nancy Petty
Text: Isaiah 6:1-8
I imagine we have all heard it once or twice. You don’t have what it takes. You lack the experience we are looking for. You haven’t published enough. You just don’t have the charisma or the academic training or the skill we need. That indiscretion in your past is a problem. You’re too tall, too short, too round, too different. You’re not pretty enough, handsome enough. You’re simply not what we are looking for right now. And we translate: you are not enough, not good enough. How many times have you felt like you are just not enough? Or told you’re not enough? And you believed it. You believed your experience didn’t count. You believed that mistake you made years ago makes you less than now. You believed that the person standing next to you deserved more than you. You believed that she was more attractive and he more dapper.
I learned this week doing research that about 10,000 people a month Google the phrase, “Am I ugly?” While many of these are probably our young girls, not all 10,000 are. Some are adults who, like those teenagers, have gotten the message that they are not enough. The messages come fast and furious at us: buy this product, get in this school, land that job, own this bank account, have these friends, belong to that church…and then, you will be enough, good enough.
We are told by our culture, by our churches, and by even sometimes by our closest comrades that we are not enough. Our culture tells us that we are not enough because we don’t have x or look like y. Our churches tell us we are sinners, wretched worms, underserving outcasts, not worthy enough to stoop down and untie the thongs of a brother’s sandals. And even sometimes our friends—our closet comrades—tell us we don’t have what it takes to fulfill our dreams when we dare to dream big. We end up feeling like we are the misfits of the world—those not chosen, those not good enough. And we are tempted to cry out with Isaiah, “woe is me.”
I’ll be honest, I never really felt like a misfit until I came to Pullen: at least not on the outside. As a teenager, I was in the “in” crowd at school—well, one of the “in” crowds. I had friends. My teachers liked me, even though I frustrated the bejesus out of most of them. I was a pretty good athlete. I had a boyfriend—that was the “on the outside” part. Sure, if I thought much about my sexuality I could get to misfit pretty fast but survival meant not thinking much about my sexuality. So, for the most part I didn’t feel like a misfit.
Fast forward to now, and most days I feel like a misfit. For starters, I pastor a church that is considered a misfit in many, if not most religious circles. Although I am only 54, I get asked regularly by the Harris Teeter check out person, if I get the senior discount. There have been a few instances when I have been asked if Karla is my daughter. (Talk about not feeling good enough.) I’m a bit of a misfit in my professional circles—a lone Baptist pastor that hangs out with local rabbis and imams. My politics, theology, and family makeup all make me a bit of a misfit in many places, if not an outcast.
My point is that we receive a lot of messages in this world that we are not enough—not good enough. It is this feeling that Isaiah felt when he encountered God’s presence in the temple the year that King Uzziah died. And what an encounter it was. Now I have had, what I would call, some deeply moving and transformative spiritual experiences in my life. Moments when my awareness of being in God’s presence seemed a bit extraordinary. But I have never seen God sitting on a throne, or inanimate objects come to life and fly about me singing, or experienced the doors and thresholds of this sanctuary shaking, or smoke mysteriously fill the sacred space (well, except when Bishop Malkhaz was here and he swung the holy smoke incensing this place).
Maybe in the presence of such I, too, would cry out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a woman of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” “Woe is me, for I am not enough. Woe is me, for I am not good enough. Woe is me, for I don’t measure up.” Maybe in such moments, when we encounter something so mysteriously beautiful and wonderful, it is only natural to feel small and unworthy and not good enough. But here’s what I want you to hear today. While that is how we often feel in the presence of something so powerful—small, insignificant, unworthy, not enough—that is not how God sees us. To the one who created us, we are enough. We are, by all biblical accounts, God’s chosen misfits—every single one of us!
And here is my evidence. Moses was a murderer and couldn’t talk. Gideon was afraid. Noah got messy drunk. Leah was tagged ugly. Mary Magdalene was demon possessed. David was a murderer. Rahab was a prostitute. Abraham was too old. Isaac was a daydreamer. Jacob lied. Naomi was a widow. Job went bankrupt. John the Baptist ate bugs. Jeremiah was too young. Isaiah preached naked. Jonah ran from God. Peter denied knowing Jesus. Mary was lazy. Martha worried too much. The disciples fell asleep while praying. Zaccheus was too small. And Paul was a murderer. And God used every one of them to change the world.
My favorite part of this text from Isaiah is the scene where one of the flying creatures flies to Isaiah holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs and with that live coal, he touches Isaiah’s lips and says, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed you and your sin is blotted out.” It is so easy to read this part of the story and hear punishment because that is how it has been taught. We read those words “your sin is blotted out” and we can’t hear anything else but that we are sinners. And we think of that live burning coal as punishment for those sins. Now I would agree that having a live coal placed on your lips would feel like punishment. But as I read this part of the story now, as one who has struggled much of my life to feel like I am enough, I hear something different.
It was not God who told Isaiah that he wasn’t good enough. It was not God who said, “Woe is you, Isaiah. You are lost and have unclean lips and live among a people with unclean lips.” No, those were Isaiah’s words. That was the narrative that Isaiah had told himself. It is the narrative he believed about himself. And even if we widen the lens to what was going on with the people around Isaiah, it was the narrative they had bought into as well, a narrative they were living out in their daily lives. A narrative that focused on how messed up and bad they were.
It’s not so different from where we are today in this nation. We have bought into a narrative about who we are as a people that says we cannot do better because we are a fallen people, lost, underserving, wretched people, unworthy of peace and love and goodness. We are a people driven by our guilt and greed rather than grace and generosity. We are a people who believe the narrative that we are so sinful that not even the God who created us can redeem us. Why else would we act the way we are acting as a nation? If we believed we were enough just as we are, if we believed that we are truly loved by our Creator, if we believed that we were created with original blessing rather than original sin, if we had been told all our lives in our churches and mosques and synagogues and temples that we are a blessing, that God loves us just as we are, that we are enough in God’s eyes, that every person is a part of God we wouldn’t be deporting the stranger who has come to us looking for refugee, we wouldn’t be denying healthcare to those who can’t afford it, we wouldn’t be killing our brown and black brothers for walking down the street wearing a jacket with a hood, powerful men wouldn’t be drugging and sexually abusing women, and classmates wouldn’t be killing their classmates. Kneeling ast the altar and standing around communion tables, in Sunday school classrooms and catechism classes and torah teaching and prayer rooms we have been told that we are not enough, not good enough, undeserving and therefore all of the human family is not enough and we have believed it and we are living out that narrative. Why else would we act the way we are acting as a nation?
But the vision Isaiah had of that live coal being placed on his lips was not an act of punishment from God for not being enough. No, as I see it that vision was one of blessing; for whenever we feel that we are not enough God longs to touch those places with blessing and healing. Isaiah, imagining that live coal on his lips, was what he needed so that he could let go of his own guilt and feelings of not being enough. Because only then could he respond to God’s call to go out and proclaim a justice love that could transform the people. It is true, only when we are able to begin healing those places of guilt and separation from ourselves and others can open ourselves to say, “Here am I, send me.” Only when we can let go of this narrative that we are not enough, not good enough, it is then that God’s narrative of us can take hold of us and begin to transform us and the world. And in case you missed it, from the very beginning, God’s narrative has been and is you are enough, very good. Misfits or not, we are God’s chosen—every single one of us!
Believing that we are enough doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do. We are enough because we are God’s. Our work is to keep peeling away the layers and layers of messages telling us that we are not enough until we reach that place where God resides within us and then live from there. You might be surprised to hear me say this but Donald Trump is enough. He is enough because he belongs to God. The problem with our president is that he doesn’t believe he is enough. He has bought the narrative that he is not enough—not good enough. And so he goes about telling others they are not enough hoping against all odds that he will then feel like he is enough. It is a sick perversion of who and how God created us to be and how God wants us to live. It’s sad and we all do it. Some of us do it with more power behind us than others of us. But we all do it.
John Dewey, the American philosopher whose ideas have been influential in social reform once said, “The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.” I would add, “The good woman is the woman who, no matter how morally unworthy she has been, is moving to become better.”
Sometimes, like Isaiah, we need a ritual of blessing to move us along the way to become better, and I mean by that to move closer to that divine spark within us from which we are created. We need to have the imaginary coal placed on those places where we feel we are not enough so that we can have God’s blessing that restores and transforms us. Whether it be on our lips, like Isaiah, so that we may be more courageous in speaking truth for justice, or whether the coal is placed on our hearts so that we might have more compassion for others, or whether the coal is placed on our eyes so that we may see more clearly the suffering of our neighbors we, like Isaiah, need a blessing that releases our guilt and separation and send us out into the world to be God’s people of love. If you ever feel like you aren’t enough or worthy enough, remember that God used a bunch of misfits—some deeply broken—to share love and hope to a suffering world.
When you are not feeling like you are enough, remember Moses and Gidon and Noah and Mary Magdalene and Leah and David and Rahab and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Naomi and Job and John the Baptist and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Jonah and Peter and Mary and Martha and Zaccheus and Paul and all of the disciples. And remember, God used every one of them to change the world. You are enough. And right now, God needs you to believe that because God needs more of us to say, “Here am I, send me.”
A Ritual of Blessing
Rituals are important. We know that from the rituals of this community: Rite-13, baptism, communion, Ash Wednesday and the imposition of ashes, weekly worship, laying on of hands when we ordain someone to name a few of our rituals. But we need more rituals to remind us that we are enough and that God’s blessing rests upon us and has from the very beginning.
It is also true, that all of us have places, like Isaiah, where we need God’s healing touch. So for our ritual of blessing, I want you to imagine that you are holding a live bright burning coal. It is not a coal that will hurt you. It is a coal that will heal you and release whatever pain and guilt and separation you are carrying. Now place that coal on you—on your lips, your eyes, your heart—and hear God saying to you, “You are enough. You are good enough. You are loved.” Hold it there. Just hold it there. Wherever there is pain or guilt or separation, hold it there. You are enough. You are enough just as you are.
