Sermon Series ~ July/August 2008
“The Content Of Our Character: Living Into The Way Of Christ."
July 13: “Value Vulnerability” Romans 5:1-9
by Pastor Allen V. Harris

Introduction To Sermon Series
- Why this series?
- What I won’t do:
> Elementary School “Character Ed.” (If missing, go back to “start!”)
> “One Size Fits All” list (Jesus didn’t use lists! When asked the essence of the law, he could have easily used the Ten Commandments, but no! He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbor as yourself. This is the essence of the law.”)

Last Week: Lifelong Learning
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TODAY:
Valuing Vulnerability
What we’re up against:
>Vulnerability vs. Weakness
- Homeland Security, Alarm Systems, Concealed Carry Guns, Unprovoked Warfare: FEARFULNESS!
- Worldly power exploits vulnerability takes advantage of the weak.
- Christ-like vulnerability gives up power and witnesses on behalf of the weak
> We must be aware that not all people hear & understand “vulnerability” in the same way: it depends upon your power perspective.

Metaphor: Belly Of The Beast
> Not the nice and sweet image of rubbing the belly of a family pet, but rubbing the belly of the Big Brown Bear! One of the most profound images of vulnerability is when an animal is comfortable enough to bare its belly. Valuing Vulnerability is like a beast laying down and allowing its belly to be exposed, rubbed, petted.

Essence of “Living Into The Way Of Christ” Romans 5:1-9
>Christ’s power came from his vulnerability (Incarnation /Incarceration)
- Incarnation = God Becoming Vulnerable (Christ Born A Babe)
- Incarceration = God Becoming Vulnerable (Christ Crucified A Criminal)
>Romans 5:3 “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings”
>1 Corinthians 1:25 “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.”
>2 Corinthians 12:9-10: “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
>Philippians 2:5-7 “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

What Is Vulnerability?
> It is: taking chances, openness, caring for others, transparency, giving up power, yielding, silence, forgiveness, willingness to suffer
> Example: Dietrich Bonhoffer, Gandhi/Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “SoulForce” non-violent civil disobedience, Obi-Wan Kenobi (in Star Wars series)
> Study & Renewal Leave Example: Katrina Brown’s (picture right) documentary: Traces of the Trade in which 9 members of a white family trace their northern family roots to a huge slave-trading enterprise based in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Practically Speaking, How Can We Live Vulnerability?
> Fully live out being an Anti-Racist/Pro-Reconciling; Open & Affirming, Accessible To All Congregation;
> Eric Law’s Multicultural Work, especially “Mutual Invitation” (1) process of communication
> Take Baptism More Seriously: Baptism Is Taking On The Vulnerability Of Christ

Hymn: Have Thine Own Way, Lord

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me, I pray!
Power, all power, surely is Thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Hold o’er my being absolute sway!
Fill with Thy Spirit ’till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me.

Conclusion: A Faithful Christian Values Vulnerability and Witnesses For The Weak

There, I’ve said it.
Amen


(1) See Eric H. F. Law, The Wolf Shall Dwell With The Lamb (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993) pp. 79-88
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unpreached Example:
Unwitting icon of Vietnam War brings message of forgiveness
Posted to: News

By Matthew Bowers
The Virginian-Pilot
© April 22, 2008
You recognize it when you see it, this iconic photo from the waning years of the Vietnam War. [photo below story.]

A 9-year-old girl, naked and screaming, runs down a road with other scared children. A wayward napalm strike by South Vietnamese planes had burned much of her body.

Nick Ut, a photographer for The Associated Press, won a Pulitzer Prize for the June 1972 picture. He also helped get the girl to a hospital, where she spent the next 14 months and, against odds, survived.

The horrific image helped further sour American support for the war. And the girl, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, now a 45-year-old mother of two living outside Toronto, has taken her unsought fame and put it to use over the past decade to help other children victimized by war and terrorism.

All miracles, she said by phone Monday.

"The first picture, yes, it is a symbol of war, and I have no choice," she said. "But the second picture is my life right now, is a picture of love, of hope and forgiveness. And it is my choice."

Kim Phuc - pronounced "fook" - will speak at Old Dominion University tonight, giving the Marc and Connie Jacobson Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Lecture at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building auditorium. Her talk is free and open to the public.

She laughs easily now, talking about blessings in her life. But she was seriously burned over 65 percent of her body when the planes bombed a pagoda in her village north of the former Saigon where she was hiding with her family; two infant cousins were killed. She remembers much of it; changing weather still causes her pain.

The miracles began immediately, the later Christian convert said. Her feet weren't burned, so she could run. Her face wasn't burned, either; the other scars she can cover with clothes. The photo's fame helped her get better care.

Back in her village by war's end, Kim Phuc was closely supervised by the now-ruling communist government and put in propaganda films as a "national symbol of war."

She later studied in Cuba, where she met a fellow Vietnamese student. They married in 1992 and, returning from their Moscow honeymoon, defected to Canada when their plane stopped to refuel in Newfoundland.

Another miracle: Praying for help to escape, an airport terminal door literally opened, she said.

The next miracle was tougher: learning to forgive. She could share and understand people's pain, but it took time and prayer to lose her bitterness.

Now, she said, her experience has given meaning to her life: helping children.

Kim Phuc was invited to speak in 1996 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She told thousands about her trek to happiness. She met and forgave the American pilot who helped coordinate the South Vietnamese airstrike that injured her, found some closure for herself and birthed the idea of the Kim Foundation, which she founded the next year.

She saw the foundation as a way to give back for the help she had received, by raising awareness and money around the world for charities that provide free medical care to young war victims, and to promote peace and forgiveness.

Also in 1997, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - UNESCO - named her a goodwill ambassador for the culture of peace, and she sits on other child-welfare boards.

"I cannot change the history of what happened to me," she said. "But I can change the meaning of it."

That's what she'll tell the ODU audience tonight, she said, along with the importance of education, love, cooperation, freedom, patience, "and the most important lesson of all that is about forgiveness."

"Now I can be grateful for that picture," she added. "I can work it for good."

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com
http://hamptonroads.com/2008/04/unwitting-icon-vietnam-war-brings-message-forgiveness 

Kim Phuc Phan Thi, today

Photo Credit:Kim Phuc Phan Thi, center, gave the Vietnam War a human face when Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captured her anguish as she fled her village in Vietnam after a napalm attack June 8, 1972. The photo won a Pulitzer Prize the following year. (Nick Ut | The Associated Press file photo)



Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2008 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096