Super Heroes and God's "Dream Team"

8-27-17

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thanks to the VBS theme this year… I’d like to inform all of you that I’ve decided to change my official title here at Family of God. From how on I would like to be known as Pastor Lydia of Awesome, or just Pastor Awesome for short. What are my superpowers? I can baptize faster than a rushing river! I can lift high the cross! And I can leap tall Bibles with a single bound! And now, I am just waiting around for Hollywood to discover me and make the next big blockbuster movie out of my adventures assisting the good people of Bucks County.

Every good superhero has a good origin story, too. Some of my fellow superheroes and heroines were born with their special powers. Others got them in all kinds of strange ways – they were bitten by radioactive bugs, exposed to mysterious cosmic space rays, or injected with strength serum. Still others came to be super heroes by using their brilliant use of technology and gadgets.

What’s MY “origin story”? When I was a baby, I had my forehead splashed with water three times, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. I grew up in a group of other baptized super hero people, being nurtured and encouraged in my faith by my family and other caring adults in our community.

Me – and YOU - we are part of a very special league of super heroes. Many of us have different origin stories. Some of us might have begun our super hero journey in another tradition, or no tradition at all. Some were baptized later in life, as teens or adults. Others in this league wandered away the community of super heroes for a while, but eventually found our way back.

Those of us gathered in this building today, and are gathered to worship in communities around the world…. baptized part of this community of faith and named as God’s children forever and ever, we, who have been saved from sin and death by the mercies of almighty God…. We are part of the League of the Living Lord.
Also in this League of the Living Lord are all kinds of characters with interesting backgrounds and unique super powers. There is Abraham and Sarah, who became the father and mother of God’s people, both by blood and by their faithful examples.  The prophets of old, like the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah, were given wisdom and prophesy to speak truth to power in the face of injustice. Mary refused to give into fear and took a bold risk when she accepted her calling to give birth to and raise Jesus.

Besides our Bible heroes and heroines, Martin Luther turned the Christian world upside down with his stubborn belief in a merciful and loving God… and his ability to write his books, including a translation of the Bible in his language, with incredible speed. Martin Luther King Jr., named after him, preached his dream of a world where both black and white could be free of racism and segregation. Mother Theresa cared for the most forgotten and unwanted people in the slums of Calcutta. All these people are card-carrying members of the League of the Living God.

Today we heard about Peter, disciple of Jesus, bold talker and water walker. When Peter reveals Jesus’ super hero name of Son of the Living God, Jesus in turn gives HIM the Superhero name of Petros… but not a super impressive one, it seems. Petros means small rock or little pebble... Today Peter becomes “Pebble Man.”

While Pebble Man SEEMS like a weak superhero name… but Peter is a chip of the old bedrock that the Church has been built on – the rock being Jesus, the cornerstone of our faith.

Peter…Abraham, Sara, Mary Martin Luther, Mother Teresa…. this is quite an intimidating list of faithful people in our Super Hero League. These people have indeed left us some mighty big shoes to fill. But, like all heroes, our faith heroes have mighty flaws to go with their mighty powers. Abraham and Sarah tried their own “creative” ways to fulfill God’s promises. Most of the prophets were pretty reluctant to take the job as God’s Super hero. Martin Luther was stubborn to a fault, and Mother Theresa struggled with spiritual dry spells. And even among Jesus’ own disciples there are deniers and deserters and betrayers. So, I guess, we are in some pretty good company. 

Which is a pretty good thing for us, because we are all too often distracted from our super hero duties. Like Jesus and the disciples in the town of Caesarea Philippi, filled with stone statues of every kind of god and goddess… we are daily surrounded by statues, real and imagined, that entice our attention and devotion.  Status, success, stuff, salaries, stocks, sports, schedules – these are the dead stones that hold sway over US.

We don’t wake up every morning and say to ourselves, “You know what? Today, I’m going to be too busy to be kind to a stranger. Today I’m going to benefit from racist institutions and laws. Today I’m going to make decisions that will hurt our planet.” Unfortunately… it just happens. The Reverend Doctor James Forbes, a Baptist minister who spoke at our Rostered Leaders Gathering recently in Atlanta, said we don’t have to decide to participate daily in the injustices of the world… it happens because of sin and the broken state of the world. That is why transformation is needed, to be living sacrifices.

From Dr. Forbes, we heard that leading up to the 1992 Olympics, the United States would always get soundly defeated in basketball… until the 1992 “Dream Team” was assembled. Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and more led the way to Olympic gold, winning games by 44 points or more.

Then Dr. Forbes wondered, if WE at the Rostered Leaders Gathering, had be brought together as “God’s Dream Team” for this time and this place.

Rev. Dr. James Forbes

And I wonder too, though OUR team may be small, if God has not been gathering together a dream team, right here in Buckingham.

But first, before we can become this dream team, we must be transformed. And then Dr. Forbes showed us how we do it. This 82-year-old man laid down flat on his back, like a person laid out in their final rest. We were all stunned, and you could hear a pin drop. He informed us that we need to die to ourselves. Not a graveyard death, he said, but a living sacrifice. That way, we can present our wholes selves to God. That way, we will be ready to be on God’s Dream Team. That way, we will be ready to do our part in the League of the Living Lord.

Our God is a rock that is alive, dynamic, and on the move. Those other things that claim they have power over us? They are lifeless, powerless, and have been overcome by the mighty and loving arms of God.

Dr. Forbes told those of us gathering in Atlanta with white skin, that if there is any advantage to be gained by the color of our skin, to use it to restore community with all people, and to use our privilege to fight the white supremacist movement.  He reminded us that in order to become part of God’s Dream Team, we are to undergo a radical reconstruction of to the infrastructure of our being. And it is certainly not very comfortable to be reconstructed. But it is necessary for being a baptized superhero for God.  

 In our baptisms, we have died to our old selves, and we rise up as new sons and daughters in God’s chosen family, God’s Dream team. And so, as God’s superheroes, we are sent into the world as a chip off the old boulder…to, as the affirmation of baptism (or confirmation) liturgy goes, “… to follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” To which, we as a church respond, “I do and I will, and I ask God to help me.”

We as members of the League of the Living God have been given this mission: to not be conformed by the powers in this world that defy God, but instead to be transformed into living sacrifices of God’s justice and deliverance for the sake of the whole world.

What’s the Church’s superpower? Resurrection. The broken being made whole. Hate turning into love. Light shining through the darkness. Death transformed to new life.  Jesus transforming the cross as an instrument of death into a symbol of hope and new life, the symbol that all of us baptized superheroes carry on our foreheads. Invisible, like a secret superhero identity, but still always present.

Only our secret superhero identities are supposed to be public. To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God… in a way that others can see.

And others WILL see… and some may not like it, not one bit. But we let our light shine. We are transformed and we witness the transformation of others. We are part of the Dream Team, with son of the living God at our side. Amen.

(The last picture is one of the white supremacist who was targeting St. John Lutheran Church in Ambler, PA - about 30 minutes from FOG - for having a sign outside their church that said "fight white supremacy." This person then shared one of their member's profile pictures and called him names, and posted pictures of knives on his FB profile. On Sunday morning no violence happened, and the church was overflowing with people and support from the surrounding community.)