I Kings 19:1-14, Matthew 5:3-16 (Unison Reading)

April 27, 2008 Rev. Mike Stevens

I use the word, "conversion" in the title of this sermon. In this case, by "conversion" I do not mean a radical, once in a lifetime event, like Paul's experience on the road to Damascus. Most of us who have grown up in the church do not have that kind of a dramatic experience. But we do change; we do grow into our faith...

As I think about the changes in my life and the growth of my faith, I see some of my story in the story of Elijah. Elijah the prophet - knowing the truth, smashing the idols of Baal... Then threatened, frightened, disappointed in himself, he gives up on his people. In a small way, but one that is important to me, I have had Elijah's experience.

I studied at Yale Divinity School in the early '60's. Concern for justice ran high. We were in the midst of the early civil rights struggle. Most of us students and many of our teachers felt the major Christian witness for our day had to be in response to social issues, particularly that struggle for racial justice... The parish church was not looked upon with much favor by my classmates and me. We saw it as a place of the comfortable pew, burdened with irrelevant traditions, not able to effectively address the important issues of our day, likely even bound for extinction.

Unlike the majority of my classmates, I accepted a call into the parish ministry, a call to a small church in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I went to that exurban, affluent, 99 and 44/100 per cent White community with some of the feelings of an old-time missionary, setting out to convert the heathen. I was entering a hostile culture, determined to change it before it destroyed me. Within that first year, 1964-65, my awareness of what was going on in Vietnam increased, and I had a new truth to lay on my reluctant congregation, an additional call to be a prophet. In that conservative, upper middle class, white community, I was sure that God was calling me to witness for racial justice and for peace as I opposed an unjust war.

Needless to say, I made people angry. I encountered opposition. Sometimes I feared I would lose my job or ruin my career or have no friends. Sometimes, like Elijah, I ran away to hide. I did not say and do all that I knew I should say and do. I was afraid; I saw no change from all my efforts to usher in a new day of justice and peace, or at least new attitudes about justice and peace among the people of my congregation. Worst of all, I hated myself for being ineffective and cowardly. The ever righteous prophet --Mike Stevens who was fresh out of seminary -- became my super ego sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, "You haven't changed the world. You haven't even convinced this little church of 100 people!"

I knew self-hatred and a cave of fear. But I also knew angels who brought food and drink to my empty soul, and there were still small voices in the midst of the wind and earthquake and fire... There was my wife, Mary, who usually agreed with me and always stood by me. There was Nick Kovarco. He argued violently with me about what he called "the bums on welfare," and he insisted that cities, which were of so much concern to me, were terrible and hopeless places. But as an ex-bachelor who had married just the year before at age 50, Nick got up at 5:00 every day to commute to his print shop on Times Square, so he could provide a good home -- not just for his wife, but also for her two daughters and her mother and her father and his own sister. Then he'd come home and often skip dinner to make choir rehearsal or attend a church meeting. Why did he do all that? Because he had learned in Sunday School that if you loved God, you did things for people and you supported God's church... There was Harriet Hackert who tried hard not to use the word "Nigger" in my presence, who was offended by my talk of racism, but who listened and still invited us to supper... There was Milt Smith who sincerely thought my stand on the Vietnam War was unhealthy for the Church and even unhealthy for the nation. But Milt shook my hand warmly every time he saw me. And he respected me enough to look me in the eye and tell me what he thought. And every Sunday morning after Church, as he looked on smiling, his two little girls gave me the biggest, nicest hugs anyone could ask for...

Those people and others like them in that first church changed me. I often disagreed with them; I despised some of their values; I accused them of worshipping idols; and I discovered I loved them. From them or from God through my relationships with them, I learned gentleness. I even learned to be more gentle with myself because I discovered that many of their values which I despised and their idols which I tried to smash were also, deep down, my values and my idols. If I could love them in their weakness, perhaps I could love me in mine. I preached that God loved them in their weakness. Could I accept God's love for me in mine?

My conversion to gentleness was neither complete nor final.

I still struggle with the church's and my own inadequate responses to issues of social justice and our failures to live in peace. But today is different. Maybe it's because the early 21st century is different from the '60's. Maybe we all expect less - maybe not enough - of each other and of ourselves. Maybe it's being a "Senior Minister" all those years, part of the establishment. Maybe it's getting older and more tolerant of the limits on my life. Whatever the maybes, I know that I am continuing in my conversion to gentleness - gentleness towards you in churches, and gentleness towards myself.

I have told you this long, personal story because I have a hunch that your story may not be so different. I suspect we all tend to hear the demands of the Christian faith loud and clear and find it hard to accept the Christian faith's gift of grace. James Carroll writes:

We are all learning. But what? We are

learning from our failed renewals and

peace movements and block unions and

discussion groups and lost elections

that the world is not what we want it

to be. Our deserts refuse to be a

garden. Our mountains won't move. Our

caves are as dark as any loneliness. Yet

here we are alive and looking still for

love. Yet here we are telling each other

what we have learned... We have learned

that we are no heroes. We are the people

who do not go to jail for our convictions...

We are the people who forget to observe

those righteous boycotts, who laugh at

racist jokes, who break promises all the

time. We talk a lot about faithfulness

and justice and peace because we live so

far from all of it. We are - how did we

used to put it? - sinners.

We are sinners. To discover it and say it without being destroyed by the knowledge - that's a conversion, a conversion to gentleness...

The question comes, "Are you a Christian?" I hesitate. "Not the kind you should be!" shouts Mike Stevens, fresh out of seminary, in my ear. (Oh, he's still alive and well. In each of the churches I have served, he has managed to make a few people as angry as he made Nick Kovarko and Milt Smith and Harriet Hackert. But they and I have learned to live with him. Sometimes he has been good for us.) "Are you a Christian?" comes the question again. And I think of all all my failures to be truly faithful, of the mistakes I've made and the people I've hurt. "Are you a Christian?" I think of what I have learned from Mary and Nick and Harriet and Milt, from people in churches since. And a still small voice whispers within me, "Yes...By the grace of God, yes."

AMEN.