Sermon: "Flat Tires"

John, thank you for that reading, and for your sermon title: “Flat Tires.”  There’s nothing about flat tires in the Bible, I’m pretty sure, but it still gives us a lot to work with – since today’s Gospel text is about going out on the road as disciples of Jesus.  Have you ever had a flat tire?  On my first day of driver’s ed, we found a flat tire on the big white “student driver” Chevy sedan – and my teacher made me change it.  He was no feminist, but he said that as a dad, he’d wanted to protect his little girl by making sure she knew how to change her own tire.  He thought no woman should ever be left helpless by the side of the road, so now he was keeping me safe by teaching me how to fix a flat.  But it wasn’t the lesson I wanted to learn that day.  It was hard to feel very grateful.  But I think many great life lessons come to us from God like that – more like flat tires than joy rides in the car.  It’s hard to name them as the miracles and wonders that they are.

The truth is, it can be dangerous to be a Christian.  Did you hear what Jesus said here in Chapter 10? 

16 “‘I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. ¹⁷Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; ¹⁸and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles.’”

I wonder how many kids would agree to be confirmed if they read this passage first?  To listen to the call of Jesus means we can expect to be handed over, flogged, and dragged to trial as enemies of the “principalities and powers” of this world.  We can expect the Way of Jesus to be a bumpy and treacherous road, full of potholes and even booby traps and land mines. A couple flat tires might be the least of our worries, before it’s over. I’d be lying to you graduates if I didn’t tell you, as they do in the scouts, to “be prepared.”  There are people out there who will do their best to crush you, to drive the breath of the Holy Spirit right out of your soul.  That’s why, when the church confirms you, we lay hands on you and pray for God to strengthen your faith.  We know you’re going to need all the help you can get when you go out into this cruel world.

I remember well the first time I went out with a group of new friends after I started college in Chapel Hill. I was visiting an old friend at UNC-Greensboro.  This was back when the drinking age was 18, so in the fall of my freshman year, this friend invited me out to a bar in downtown Greensboro, with this group of mostly upperclassmen.  My friend was a sophomore, and had always been proud of being raised as a non-Christian in the Bible Belt.  Since I’d only turned 18 in August, I wasn’t much of a drinker, and my friend knew that.  So she decided it would be funny I guess to introduce me as her “little Christian friend who doesn’t drink.”  Well, you can imagine how well that went over.  Her new girlfriends were with these huge rugby players, not one of them English, but they still enjoyed nothing more, apparently, than chugging down these great foaming pints of British ale the color of used motor oil.  So as “the little Christian girl,” I provided them a lot of fun – you know, the way a dartboard is fun, for everyone except the dartboard? 

But they didn’t know me.  I had been picked on before – I had become a kind of Ninja master at dodging that high school casting call that tried to put people into cliques and categories.  I had made some unconventional choices.  I read both the Bible and Rolling Stone – do I hear an “Amen”?  I annoyed people who needed to fit teenagers into stereotypes.  So my strategy at the bar was to taste a sip or two of beer to be friendly, but then order a diet Coke with my dinner.  I just laughed it off and said that since I was not a varsity athlete in training I couldn’t afford the calories in Guinness Stout. 

When they saw they couldn’t get to me about the drinking, they started to attack on the Christian front.  This was right after Jimmy Carter was elected, so he was an easy “born again” target – along with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Marjority and Jim and Tammy Faye Baker (just down the road in Charlotte), so they lumped me in with all of them.  I tried to laugh it off, but inside I was furious at my friend for setting me up like that.  Finally, I said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about!  Do you wish The Rev. Jesse Jackson hadn’t been a Christian? Because without his faith, he might not have led marches down that street out there and a lot of you couldn’t even be IN this bar drinking today.”  That shut them up, since about a third of the team was black, but I wanted to go home, so I headed out of the bar in a way that only someone with drama training could do.  Out on the sidewalk I realized I hadn’t driven … but fortunately my friend had followed with the keys to her car – she was in no shape to drive.  She was trying to apologize, but I wasn’t listening.  I was thinking of just leaving her there, but when we got to her little Carmen Ghia – there it sat, a little tipped to one side … with a flat tire.

Later, she said she felt terrible about it, that she didn’t know what “possessed” her that night – an interesting choice of words, I think, as we reflect on a text where Jesus commands the disciples to “cast out demons.”  It seemed a demon had possessed her, because this strong and smart, California-born feminist friend of mine was acting like a helpless Southern belle.  She wanted to get one of those drunken rugby players to change her tire and drive us home, but I wouldn’t let her.  I pulled out the jack and the spare and started to change the tire, with her new friends just watching.  The guys were making nervous jokes about “the little Christian girl” not being strong enough to turn the lug nuts.  So I began to pray silently from a place deep within me, “Please Lord, do NOT let these lug nuts be machine-tightened!”  And here is my testimony:  they were not, and they loosened.  And, lo, the Lord led us forth from that place, on our way together. 

Years later, she was my first friend to tell me that I should go into seminary and become an ordained minister.  She converted when she married her husband, but she said she first started to suspect there was a God over the many meals she ate at my family’s dinner table and she could see the love and the faith we shared.  She said she first really believed in God that night in the bar, when she saw what my faith made me able to do. I was not that woman you hear about who single-handedly lifts the weight of a car off her poor crushed child to save his life.  I was just her “little Christian friend” who had the courage to be herself, preach the Gospel to a bunch of rugby drunks, change her tire, drive her home, and then forgive her for being as mean as she’d ever been to another human being.  Sometimes even our best friends do horrible things to us, but the power of God’s love can get us through it – and even loosen up our souls enough to offer forgiveness.

We forget what miracles of healing, and even exorcism, that God can work through ordinary disciples like us.  Matthew says Jesus had compassion for the crowds, because they were so “harassed and helpless” – have you been “harassed and helpless”?  I know I have.  And because he loves us, he gave us, as his disciples “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”  The problem is, most of us haven’t been trained to notice miracles of faith, or to name them as miracles – much less think we are capable of accomplishing any ourselves.  But you can be sure in doing the work of Christ, we will be given the strength we need to get the job done.

In our church Mission Statement, which is printed on the cover of our bulletins each week, we covenant together to receive and share the Good News as we seek to live God’s word in our church and in the world.  Most of us have no problem receiving and sharing the gospel within our church walls.  We just had our largest-ever group of Sunday School teachers stand and be recognized today – and what is teaching Sunday School if it’s not about proclaiming the gospel to new disciples?  Many of you have shared the gospel with us in church by leading a prayer or devotional or personal testimony at a meeting, or in a fellowship group.  Many have visited the sick, or sent a Christian sympathy card.  Our Confirmands and Youth Groups speak to each other about their faith all the time.  But going out into the world with the Good News of God’s love makes most of us nervous.  We don’t want to offend anyone with too much church talk.

But dear friends, be of good courage.  We are stewards of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We have Good News to share. As Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  I pray that the Lord of the harvest will send you out as His disciples.  You can trust God’s promise that when you need help the most, the Holy Spirit will grant you the courage and the words you need.  Jesus says, “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.