Commissioning Service of RE Tony De La Rosa

Sermon – Working Well

Newport Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA

May 17, 2015

Page 1 of 4

Commissioning Service for Ruling Elder Tony De La RosaNewport Presbyterian Church

Colossians 3:15-17Bellevue, Washington

John 4:4-26 May 17, 2015

WORKING WELL

Rev. Kellē Brown

We gather here today to commission you, Luis Antonio De La Rosa, to serve as the ruling elder and faithful leader of Newport Presbyterian Church. We honor you today because you honor God in Jesus Christ, and you pour your life into the places in need of your gifts, your joy, your imagination, your creativity, and your preparation.

In fact, it is the action of pouring which I bring to our attention this afternoon, for I contend that you are, indeed, a working well.

First of all, I love that when one “googles” you, they must attach the term “Presbyterian” to distinguish you from the person of the same name who was a guitarist for the band the Renegades, and other fine musicians who are also named Tony De La Rosa. And I love that once we find you, one your quote comes up first and stands strong as a definition of you: “This is a fulfillment of my call.”

You were taking on the role of interim executive presbyter for the New York City Presbytery when you spoke these words, words that could be spoken today, for every call you accept is another fulfillment of who God create you to be. You are a deep well who understands your life in connection to God and to the calls that God places upon your life. You know you have been sent.

When I considered who I know you to be, my friend, I was drawn to the story of the woman by the well, a beautiful and challenging story from the gospel of John that introduces us to an unnamed woman who came to a well to draw water. Many persons of faith have imagined that she came to that well at the time she did because she was avoiding the constant stares of those who ostracized her due to her intrinsic shame. Many believe that she was drawn to that well at that time because she could draw her water without encountering the folk who would talk about her like a dog, and still count themselves as exemplary persons of faith, above reproach. And perhaps these things are true.

However, I believe that there was a divine setup going on, and the Jesus was fishing to encounter someone unique, just as he had with his disciples. He was looking for someone to share the good news, and I mean good news particularly for her. She was someone who was used to the unkind words and stares, but knew how to continue keeping on.

Yes, I believe Jesus was interested coming to Jacob’s well, and to the woman who was a well that worked. How did she become a well? I contend her call was forged from her overcoming of the oppression she had sustained. I believe she was one whose effectiveness came out of the awareness that she knew how to live beautifully despite the presence of a community who was more concerned with to whom she was partnered, and what was happening behind the doors of her home. Jesus, who is consistently revolutionary, was vetting this woman to become a well for the benefit of the kindom.

She didn’t know that while others avoided her, while conversations of which she was not privy occurred, or while some attributed things to her without engagement or permission—Jesus was digging her, yes, perhaps like the term from the 1970s—creating her to be a working well.

The woman didn’t know that when Jesus was offering living waters, he was priming her own well so that her gifts, her resources and her gift to draw others would begin to function. She didn’t know that the overwhelming doubt of her character and the exclusion she encountered set her to be the very one to whom they would listen. She didn’t know that her particular skill of drawing water in the heat of the day was uniquely what Jesus needed in the heat of societal oppression. She indeed was a working well who had the ability to work well in circumstances that were less than optimal.

Make no mistake about it. Jesus was giving the church universal a lesson on how to forge authentic leadership. He was digging wells. He was showing us how to really do inclusion work, for it is not about having homogeneous leadership, then assuming the diversity in the pews will simply figure it out and conform to the dominant culture. It is more rightly a work of sitting by wells, and seeing who has the wherewithal to draw from them, especially when the environment is too hot for most. I also contend that he didn’t tell her about her life to embarrass her, or to out her so that he had something over on her. No. Though we focus on her husbands and that the current man she was with wasn’t one, more than likely she was a passed along wife in the Levirate culture who married a man with lots of brothers who would die early. Jesus is the one who shows us in our lives that he sees us, and reminds us that we are of honor and usefulness because of who we are and what we have overcome.

Where folk made a spectacle of her, whispering about who she was and her life’s circumstances, God was preparing her for something more lofty and needful. She was commissioned in that moment, as you are today, Tony, for Jesus saw her experience as a benefit. In the end, their judgment and exclusion meant that people knew who she was. They would listen to her, and her stigma would be transformed! Her past and present became even more meaningful in the hands of Jesus, and she became an evangelist for him. Jesus proved he knew her, and loved her, and that his commissioning was the only one that mattered.

Parenthetically, saints, the Scriptures also remind that we are not called to exposure. Is not our righteousness as filthy rags, and is not our grace by way of a compassionate God? As Christians, we are not called to aha revelations for the sake of confirming our fears, or disinviting anyone to the table—as if it is ours anyway. Instead, we must look to Jesus for a clue on how to create generous space. Jesus kindly secures privacy, sends his well-intentioned, but disruptive and clueless disciples on their way in a foreign land, and waits in the heat of the day for the very person who would see Jesus’ knowledge of her not as condemnation, but as her commissioning in ministry. Newport waited for you.

Jesus invites us to do inclusion right, to seek leadership and friendship and community with every person despite and because of who they are, and because it is a work of making peace and justice. Oh, yes, Jesus is calling us to well work and be working wells.

Tony, we are here today because we recognize that Jesus has done this work in you. You, beloved of God, are a working well, primed to do so many wonderful things. Anyone who has encountered you with an open spirit sees the eternal spring Jesus placed in your heart. Your preparation is clearly exemplary. Your gifts in leadership lie before us beautifully. Yet, it is your humility, your pastoral presence, your wise counsel, your exceptional narrative, your smile and unquenchable joy that draws us to you and makes you right for leadership in this place.

We pray every blessing for you; that you will work with the energy of Snoqualmie Falls, and the peacefulness of the Green River. We pray that you will speak truth to power, and go within to nourish your own soul regularly. We pray that Newport gifts you as beautifully and extravagantly as you gift them, and that through this commissioning you feel the hands and prayers and songs and love of each of us every day.

Let us all seek to be working wells, working well.

Amen.

Commissioning Service of RE Tony De La Rosa

Sermon – Working Well

Newport Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA

May 17, 2015

Page 1 of 4

COLOSSIANS 3:12-15

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord[a] has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ[b] dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.[c] 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

JOHN 4:4-26

4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”