It has been several years since I had the recurring nightmare that used to waken me with a cold sweat. It came in several versions but it all boiled down to the idea that for some reason that was only revealed at the last moment I would not get to graduate from High School. It meant that I would spend all eternity wandering the high school halls until they had to wheel me around in a wheelchair. The dream usually involved some last minute discovery that I had forgotten to turn in a gym lock, miscalculated the number of required hours for graduation, or failed to pay a library fine. In one version they actually bring the police along to pull me out of the graduation line lest I put up any resistance and refuse to surrender quietly to my fate.
I imagine for most of us the high school years were a difficult time of testing and finding our way. No, I would not like to be 17 again. Thank you very much. You just feel that so much is at stake and that one slip up can leave you serving twenty-five to life in detention, walking penalty tours in the court yard, or living in perpetual exile. Now picture this. Can you imagine anyone ever waking up in a cold sweat that they will not graduate from church school, that they have been left back, or they have flunked out? Come on! Let’s face it, with all the fears, phobias and concerns that we can have as human beings, thank God that this is one that we don’t have to sweat. What would it take to flunk out or be left back? No doubt a few of us might have been a little concerned that we might be expelled for disciplinary reasons but what were they going to do? Put it on your permanent record? Would it have showed up in an interview for college? Well, I see that you failed “Prophets and Martyrs” in you first year! What seemed to be the problem? Would such a disgrace have prevented you from getting a passport, leave you cooling your heels at the gate while they made an extra search of your luggage, become the center piece of a scandal – “it was reveled today that the candidate Has failed numerous times to pass “The letters of Paul.” Hey don’t sweat it. Not going to happen. Is it? Or on the other extreme, I have yet to hear of anyone every padding their resume by including that they graduated with honors with a major in Biblical felt board figures.
So what is Christian education for? Is there anything at stake here? I don’t see any special learning centers for those who are struggling with “Church 101.” How do you measure what is going on in Christian Education in the first place?
Take a look at Paul, the writer of this morning scripture. He does not appear to be the kind of product that we would like to see come out of any of our schools. Certainly he would not be a candidate for the citizenship medal. He spent too much time in jail for that. In many ways he was not a nice person. Read his letters and it seems he has a lot of unresolved anger issues as he chastises his opponents. He was far from a successful life. All of the churches that he founded went under and disappeared from history: so much for the alumni of the year award. If this is the kind of product of a good Christian education, bring on the pagans.
Give Paul credit for he does give us the standard by which he measures himself, others, and by which he believes no one need be left behind, “There are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.” Or, first, second base, third and you get home. The truth may be that we do not waste a lot of time worrying if we are going to make the church school grade but when it comes to the things that are more about having a life than earning a living these things come into play in a big way.
Now faith, whatever else it is, comes down to trust. It will matter very, very much if you trust that life is about growing in wisdom and stature, that the fundamental plan is for you to grow up and that in everything that happens to us God is trying to give you yourself - if you are willing to accept it. No, there will be no midterm exam, a term paper will not be required, but we are going to know whether you have touched base here when you have the worst hair day of your life, the baby has a sore throat, the car won’t start, the headlines in the news won’t quit, and you forgot to put a stamp on the IRS envelope. That is going to be a day when it will come down to whether you have faith that more than life going your way, it is about walking in a way that makes a way.
Now the trigonometry you learned may not come up in conversation, you may find that it will be somewhat difficult to work the geometric theorems you learned in high school into the conversation, but there will not be a day when you will not find your sense of trust challenged and have the opportunity to grow in faith.
In 2004 and for the foreseeable future faith we will be put to quite a faith test. Given the variety of faiths on the face of this earth we will be challenged as to whether we believe and trust that we are put on this planet to engage in endless battles to try and convert each other or are we here to enrich each other with the truth that we all have. Given the jitters that the price of a gallon of gasoline gives us it is going to matter a lot whether we believe that life is about more than enough to live on or having enough to live for. It will matter very much whether our children and we trust more in our systems and kingdoms or in the one who said, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly” and that abundant living comes less from putting people in their place than being able to put ourselves in their place, less from force of arms and more from the force of open arms, less from our ability to nail things down and more from God’s power to open things up. Three things last forever and the first is faith.
Douglass Hall, a theologian, defines hope in part as the willingness to be surprised. Abundant living comes from the willingness to be surprised that history can come down on the on the side of a Mahatma Gandhi, a Martin Luther King, folks at Valley Forge, people on the picket line to end slavery and to begin to make it possible for all God’s daughters and sons to dream dreams and see visions. Hope is the willingness to be surprised that God might speak through the stranger ands the strange: of course not always. But has not the truly abundant life come from those who have been willing to be surprised that God could speak through what at first was thought to be strange and those who were thought to be strangers?
Hope is the willingness to be surprised that the abundant life can come from what God can do through us. Lord knows we know ourselves too well and we are too acquainted with our weaknesses yet through us children can be raised, the world can be blessed and though we have this treasure in earthen vessels and some of us are cracked pots still the world can be blessed through us by the One who is above all acquainted with all our ways. The question that life throws at us: “are you willing to be surprised that through him who first loved us that two young immature souls can make a marriage, that mere mortals can be church, that Easter morning means that death and decay is not the final word.” The record seems to suggest at the least that those who are willing to be surprised usually are surprised by an abundant life that seems to have no end.
But the greatest of these is love. If you know anything about Paul you know that he was far from being sentimental, cute and effusive. What makes the other two possible, unlike baseball where getting to first and second base gets you to third, it is because third pulls at you that you get to the first two. It is because of love of a teacher, a friend, that you trust and dare hope. It is because of love that somebody chooses the power not to be over you, but to be with you, for you, open to you so that you trust and are willing to be surprised. It is the greatest because all the victories that are worthwhile winning come from first surrendering to another, or to a passion. You may have it all according to Paul and if you have not love you have nothing. Without love what you have is law that becomes legalism, medicine that is mechanics and numbers, education that teaches more to the test than teaches students, or proximity without community, neighbors without neighborhood. It all sounds like a noisy clashing symbol that gains nothing and that leaves us feeling like nothing. Love is the relationships that make faith and hope possible.
What Paul is saying is that my nightmare is true: that three things last forever and that we do not get to graduate from these things after all. The whole point of Christian education is that you do not graduate but that we are always in God’s classroom. Whether we are in the boardroom, or the living room, or whether we are pondering how to make room for all God’s children we are in God’s Classroom. For us three things abide - faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. It turns out that my nightmare is true, only it is not a nightmare after all. “For the darkness is as light with thee’ O Lord.”
4:25:12 AM 
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