My new computer (whose name is Wilhemina) does a really cool thing for the screen saver (I hope I can describe it sufficiently for you to get the idea): A picture that I have stored in my photo program appears on the screen. After a moment or two, it starts to decrease in size while other pictures appear around it, each the same dimensions as the first and each reducing in size along with the original image. All the while the computer is adding more and more pictures as they all recede together. Eventually, the screen is covered with hundreds of tiny photos, too small to figure out what they are. The size-reduction and adding of more photos continues...and this is where it gets really cool. Because if I change my focus from trying to see individual images and look at the whole screen, I realize that a new image is appearing from my file of photos made up of all those other now teeny-weeny photos; Wilhemina is creating a mosaic right before my eyes. Eventually, the new image comes into focus and stops for a moment, filling up the screen. And then, the whole process starts over again, with this image receding and other pictures starting to surround it. Magically (at least to me) my computer reads the colors and degree of light and who knows what other factors of all my photos to create mosaic after mosaic.
Somewhere along the line though, I have to switch my focus; if I want to see the new image, I have to let go of the old one. If I try to hold onto the original picture and don't look at the others that are being added, I'll miss out on the new image. Even if my vision allowed me to see pictures that small, I would be overlooking rebirth and transformation right before my eyes.
Unfortunately, I think the church desires more often than not to focus on the original image in the mosaic of the world in which God places us. We have to let go of old images of what church is; we need to blink and refocus every so often as a faith community. God is creating all around us a new image of church out of the mosaics of the pictures and stories that have made up the faith up to now. The new image isn't frightening, even though some would have us believe that. The new image comes from the files that God already has stored in us. The new image contains the pictures of lives of faith lived through centuries and centuries. We have to refocus though in order to see it. Will we do so?
Pace e Bene,
Gerry
PS--To see an example of the type of thing I'm talking about (a photo mosaic) go to this website.
Sermon, Sunday, 22 March 2009
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 (with a reference to John 3:14-21)
“Let them thank God for God's steadfast love, for God's wonderful works to humankind. “ We spoke those very same words just a few moments ago when we recited a portion of Psalm107. Those fourteen words of praise and thanksgiving are repeated in the entire Psalm several times. We only read nine of the 43 verses of Psalm 107 this morning.
The makeup of these ancient words is one in which after the introductory three verses several examples are described of the ways that God’s people go astray, and how God saves them. The six verses we read together tell of those who are sick due to their sinful ways and because of iniquities endure affliction. They were so bad off, those protagonists of these six verses, that they were almost dead, we were told. But, there, on the edge of the abyss of drifting off into that nothingness of death, their saving act was to cry out to God in the midst of their trouble and pain. And God, we’re told, sends healing.
Repeatedly through this Psalm we find the same structure: a brief description of those who have wandered from God and suffered because of it. But they turn to God and are redeemed. And over and over, those exact same words of praise and thanksgiving that I just reminded us of are repeated. From thousands of years ago, across the times of history, we can hear worshipers intoning those words that have not been diminished by centuries of use: “thank God for God’s steadfast love, for God’s wonderful works to humankind.”
The Psalms are a moving and powerful collection. They’re liturgy for those who worshiped the God of Israel all those years ago. But they’re more than that. They’re prayers; the prayers of people who cry out in distress, who are grateful for the gifts they have, who give praise and who seek justice. And yet, they’re not just prayers, not just liturgy, though those two genres combined would certainly be enough to warrant our attention to them. Beyond liturgy, beyond prayers, they are at their very core poetry; they, like all good poetry, are meant to express something more than just description or categorization. Poetry uses mere human words in whatever language to evoke emotion and intensified emotion at that. Poetry goes beyond information into realms that defy description. According to a more recent poet of our own English language, Robert Frost, “a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” (found on http://www.brainyquote.com/) Alice Walker another, even more recent, poet in fact wrote a poem about poetry. Who better to teach us about poetry than a poet and what better way to do it than in a poem? Her poem is titled “How Poems Are Made/A Discredited View.”
So we listen again to the words from Psalm 107: “Let them thank God for God's steadfast love, for God's wonderful works to humankind“ and we hear more than just thanksgiving and praise. We hear the lump in Frost’s throat, the homesickness, Walker’s place of loss and gain and leftover love. And we connect in ways unimaginable with some people who lived lives so different from ours as imaginable as they gathered for worship of the same God we today are worshiping.
Yes, we can get technical and dissect poetry and identify the formulas that make a certain style of writing a poem. The Psalms are no different; we can look at the words and see the devices used by those ancients. But we miss the point in doing that. We miss the heart-wrenching fear of those who were there on the edge of their demise until...until they cried out and a saving hand reached down and gently, ever so gently, pulled them back.
Because of this august collection of liturgy and prayers and poetry, we can see the ones the psalmist describes as they teeter on that brink between here and the hereafter there. And because it is poetry, we ourselves find ourselves on that very same brink, teetering along with them; joining countless others through barely noticed years and decades and centuries of history who have teetered and cried out in their distress and suffering.
And who among us has not at one point felt that teetering, that suffering, that lovesickness, that fear, that loss? Each of us, in our own way and in our own time has known the heart of the poet who created this psalm and been known by the psalmist. We have cried out to God; in fright, in panic, in the midst of throat-closing distress. We have known times of loss and felt that our being was ebbing away; teetering on the very edge of that abyss.
Ah, how I wish I could answer the questions that are swirling all about us right now; the questions that start with “why…” and go on to wonder about the suffering, the pain, their very existence. We query the forces of the universe as we seek to get the slightest grasp on those whys, listening deeply...deeply...deeply to the echoes of our cries that resound from the abyss trying to turn them into the answer we seek.
And yet we teeter, seesawing back and forth wanting to be saved, to be redeemed, to be kept from whatever Pit is threatening to draw us in and undo us.
And God, our God, the God of a psalmist who was doing what all good psalmists do...God reaches out. God reaches out and steadies us...slows us...breathes the breath of Spirit into us as the creating God breathed breath at the very dawn of creation. God, doing what all good gods do, draws us away from the edge we have too long wavered at, and settles us down.
“I sent you,” God says to us, “I sent you, my beloved daughter...I sent you, my beloved son...to be the light that shines in darkness. Not for condemnation and sorrow but for life and love. I need you to go to those who are also suffering, those in their own distress. Go to those on their own brinks of nothingness and help me to draw them back.”
Who knows if a poet of millennia ago, our psalmist, could foresee that any one of us, here in this time and place, would intone the words of our psalm and be reminded that “God’s steadfast love endures forever”? If anyone could do such a thing--if anyone could see us thousands of years hence...homesick, lovesick as we are...it would have to have been done by a poet.
“Let them thank God for God's steadfast love, for God's wonderful works to humankind. “ We spoke those very same words just a few moments ago when we recited a portion of Psalm107. Those fourteen words of praise and thanksgiving are repeated in the entire Psalm several times. We only read nine of the 43 verses of Psalm 107 this morning.
The makeup of these ancient words is one in which after the introductory three verses several examples are described of the ways that God’s people go astray, and how God saves them. The six verses we read together tell of those who are sick due to their sinful ways and because of iniquities endure affliction. They were so bad off, those protagonists of these six verses, that they were almost dead, we were told. But, there, on the edge of the abyss of drifting off into that nothingness of death, their saving act was to cry out to God in the midst of their trouble and pain. And God, we’re told, sends healing.
Repeatedly through this Psalm we find the same structure: a brief description of those who have wandered from God and suffered because of it. But they turn to God and are redeemed. And over and over, those exact same words of praise and thanksgiving that I just reminded us of are repeated. From thousands of years ago, across the times of history, we can hear worshipers intoning those words that have not been diminished by centuries of use: “thank God for God’s steadfast love, for God’s wonderful works to humankind.”
The Psalms are a moving and powerful collection. They’re liturgy for those who worshiped the God of Israel all those years ago. But they’re more than that. They’re prayers; the prayers of people who cry out in distress, who are grateful for the gifts they have, who give praise and who seek justice. And yet, they’re not just prayers, not just liturgy, though those two genres combined would certainly be enough to warrant our attention to them. Beyond liturgy, beyond prayers, they are at their very core poetry; they, like all good poetry, are meant to express something more than just description or categorization. Poetry uses mere human words in whatever language to evoke emotion and intensified emotion at that. Poetry goes beyond information into realms that defy description. According to a more recent poet of our own English language, Robert Frost, “a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” (found on http://www.brainyquote.com/) Alice Walker another, even more recent, poet in fact wrote a poem about poetry. Who better to teach us about poetry than a poet and what better way to do it than in a poem? Her poem is titled “How Poems Are Made/A Discredited View.”
Letting go
in order to hold on
I gradually understand
how poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
of the too full cup
and runs and hides
its too full self
in shame.
I gradually comprehend
how poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
heart.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
that season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
that crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.
(from Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful, © 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers)
So we listen again to the words from Psalm 107: “Let them thank God for God's steadfast love, for God's wonderful works to humankind“ and we hear more than just thanksgiving and praise. We hear the lump in Frost’s throat, the homesickness, Walker’s place of loss and gain and leftover love. And we connect in ways unimaginable with some people who lived lives so different from ours as imaginable as they gathered for worship of the same God we today are worshiping.
Yes, we can get technical and dissect poetry and identify the formulas that make a certain style of writing a poem. The Psalms are no different; we can look at the words and see the devices used by those ancients. But we miss the point in doing that. We miss the heart-wrenching fear of those who were there on the edge of their demise until...until they cried out and a saving hand reached down and gently, ever so gently, pulled them back.
Because of this august collection of liturgy and prayers and poetry, we can see the ones the psalmist describes as they teeter on that brink between here and the hereafter there. And because it is poetry, we ourselves find ourselves on that very same brink, teetering along with them; joining countless others through barely noticed years and decades and centuries of history who have teetered and cried out in their distress and suffering.
And who among us has not at one point felt that teetering, that suffering, that lovesickness, that fear, that loss? Each of us, in our own way and in our own time has known the heart of the poet who created this psalm and been known by the psalmist. We have cried out to God; in fright, in panic, in the midst of throat-closing distress. We have known times of loss and felt that our being was ebbing away; teetering on the very edge of that abyss.
Ah, how I wish I could answer the questions that are swirling all about us right now; the questions that start with “why…” and go on to wonder about the suffering, the pain, their very existence. We query the forces of the universe as we seek to get the slightest grasp on those whys, listening deeply...deeply...deeply to the echoes of our cries that resound from the abyss trying to turn them into the answer we seek.
And yet we teeter, seesawing back and forth wanting to be saved, to be redeemed, to be kept from whatever Pit is threatening to draw us in and undo us.
And God, our God, the God of a psalmist who was doing what all good psalmists do...God reaches out. God reaches out and steadies us...slows us...breathes the breath of Spirit into us as the creating God breathed breath at the very dawn of creation. God, doing what all good gods do, draws us away from the edge we have too long wavered at, and settles us down.
“I sent you,” God says to us, “I sent you, my beloved daughter...I sent you, my beloved son...to be the light that shines in darkness. Not for condemnation and sorrow but for life and love. I need you to go to those who are also suffering, those in their own distress. Go to those on their own brinks of nothingness and help me to draw them back.”
Who knows if a poet of millennia ago, our psalmist, could foresee that any one of us, here in this time and place, would intone the words of our psalm and be reminded that “God’s steadfast love endures forever”? If anyone could do such a thing--if anyone could see us thousands of years hence...homesick, lovesick as we are...it would have to have been done by a poet.
Our Journeys, Newsletter article from the week of 15 March 2009
So far in our Lenten Journey Storytelling times during worship, both Lisa & Phyllis have graced us with stories of journeys that explained, in an instance particular to each woman, how she got to where she is now. The eventual destination of each story, I noticed, was not expected or even sought by either storyteller necessarily. Both ended up at their destination, according to the stories they told, because of circumstances that led them there. Some would call it coincidence or fate; some might say it was the movement of the Spirit in their lives. Both Phyllis & Lisa affirmed the "rightness" of the destination now, even though it wasn't planned for.If each of us stops and thinks about the stories that make up our lives, I'm sure we could identify many surprises along the way: destinations we never set out for; routes that took us off the map we had plotted; unexpected sidekicks and unlikely attendants who aided us in times of need.
I know for myself, my experience of even a simple trip, such as taking a bus from home to downtown, will vary due to any number of circumstances: the friendliness of the driver; a question a tourist might ask; or my witnessing of a teenager offering his or her seat to an elderly rider. Imagine how magnified the importance of similar acts in the journeys of our lives is. So often, without even realizing it, we depend "on the kindness of strangers," as Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" famously said.
And as we do all that depending, we are likewise depended upon by others in their journeys. We are all on journeys that intersect and run parallel with others. We provide assistance and aid, sometimes without any intentionality on our parts, to others as they journey.
A point of the Journey Storytelling Time during our Lenten worship is to help each of us grow in our understanding of our own stories. Perhaps Lisa's story made you stop and remember how you ended up in the work that you do or did. Maybe Phyllis' recounting brought up for you your own journey to Chalice, to this denomination, to Christianity. The stories we'll hear in the remaining weeks of Lent are likely to do similar things. Don't discount your memories and the stories you recall! Reflect on those journeys that are uniquely yours and recognize the worth of each story. They are worthy because they are yours, and you are a child of God. And their worth increases because, as you examine them, you will find God in each one as a traveling companion.
Pace e Bene,
Gerry
Sermon, Sunday, 15 March 2009
<--Image to the left is Christ Expelling the Moneychangers from the Temple, by Giovanni Bernardi. It is engraved rock crystal and was created c. 1540-1549. It is from the National Gallery of Art.John 2:13-22
This passage from John is a real grabber, isn’t it? It’s a story that just jumps out at you, doesn’t it? It’s one almost anyone who’s even just glanced through the gospels remembers. It’s a real story, with excitement and passion.
Most of the stories of Jesus that we remember admittedly tend to be fairly passive. Most of the time the Jesus we encounter and remember is teaching...or discussing...or healing (which, I acknowledge, would be an important event to those healed, but you must confess there’s not a lot of pep or action in those accounts). The Jesus we remember is the cut-out, flannel board Jesus of the Sunday school rooms of decades past. We’d find that Jesus standing or sitting. Maybe even walking. But certainly never doing anything that might cause him to break a sweat.
This Jesus though...this Jesus we encounter in the Temple in Jerusalem is the action figure Jesus...in the league of G.I. Joe and any Rambo spin offs toys; not the cut-out, flat, uninspiring cut-out flannel-board Jesus. This Jesus wreaked havoc...in the Temple of all places. This Jesus--dare I say it?--got angry...teed off...hot under the collar! He was out and out indignant and infuriated and didn’t mind showing it.
I don’t know about you, but I seem to have the impression that white Protestants don’t do that. We generally don’t do the ‘A’ word. And if we do, we certainly don’t show it. We’re not supposed to, at least. It might offend someone. It might be upsetting. It might cause that other word we don’t say...conflict.
But there Jesus is...flailing about like a man gone mad with a bunch of cords he’s using as a whip, upsetting tables, causing everything to go helter-skelter, ruining a good day’s business for a bunch of people, and really frightening some livestock who were peaceably chewing their cuds just moments before.
The Gospel writer John places this account early in his record of Jesus’ life and ministry. We find it in the second half of chapter two only. John’s first chapter begins with the well-known hymn or poem which starts, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He then introduces us to John the Baptist and gets Jesus all baptized and ready for his ministry. John ends the first chapter with Jesus calling his first disciples.
Then we find our way into chapter two. RIght off, Jesus performs his first miracle; a very public one, at a wedding feast in which he, goaded by his mother, turns water into wine. Immediately, John reminds us that Jesus is divine and can do things that mortals cannot do. After a respite with his family and disciples in Capernaum, Jesus then ventures to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover feast. And right away he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work upsetting not only tables, but local religious big-wigs too undoubtedly.
If you stop to think about John’s narration and location of this event where he placed it and know anything about Jesus’ life, something might sound just a little odd to you. There’s a good reason for that; the Synoptic Gospels, otherwise known as Matthew, Mark, & Luke, all locate Jesus in Jerusalem just one single time...the week at the end of his ministry and life when he is arrested and crucified. Those three all include this Temple clearing account but it is late in their accounts. John, however, has Jesus in Jerusalem four times throughout his gospel; three of those during the Passover festival, as today’s reading was. In our minds, being more familiar as most of us are with the synoptics‘ versions, we have Jesus wandering about the Judean countryside for a few years and finally showing up in Jerusalem in time for that final week that we know so well.
John’s gospel in all likelihood was the last of the four gospels written. It’s a latecomer to the whole story-of-Jesus’-life game. Compared to the other three, he has different emphases and reasons for putting his work together. By the time that John composed these words, the early Christian movement or community was probably very different than the others knew. There were those by this point who were claiming that Jesus was only spirit, not flesh. It was Jesus’ divinity that was important to these folks and they denied the fact that he was truly human. Among other aims, John seeks to dispel that notion.
Of course, having an anger-showing, table-heaving, whip-wielding Jesus certainly goes a long way to that end. Jesus was human, John says right off, leaving no doubts or questions. Even though John’s gospel is less gritty in some ways and is more poetic, it does not equivocate when it comes to putting forth both Jesus’ divine and human natures.
And so, here we are two thousand years or so later, facing this angry, very human Jesus and we’re not exactly sure what to do with him, are we? We can happily handle the Jesus who welcomes children, cures lepers, and even hangs out with prostitutes. That Jesus, that flat, flannel-board Jesus of Sunday schools across many miles and years is easy to take...though, you’ve got to concede, really rather bland.
If we are going to embrace Jesus; if we are really going to claim that we are a follower of the Nazarene born of Mary; if we are truly willing to confess that Jesus holds a claim on us and our lives; if we are going to do those things, then we have to accept the anger that Jesus exhibited in that Temple along with the niceties that are usually ascribed to him. If we don’t, we’re in the same camp as those early followers who wanted to mask Jesus’ humanity and make him purely spirit whom John was working hard to prove wrong.
The good news is that this human Jesus is much more interesting. This is a Jesus I can talk about with others. This is a Jesus who knows and understands my anger and my tears and my frustration with the powers I encounter in my world, in my country, in my state, in my church.
I can bring this Jesus to those who find themselves at the margins because this is a Jesus still angry that more and more people do not have access to clean drinking water. I can envision Jesus storming into denominational gatherings and demanding a place at the Table for all. Jesus, I know, would be at city halls, state capitals, and legislatures and palaces around the globe demanding that attention be paid to the least of these.
Because John took the care that he did as he composed and crafted his gospel account to place this account right at the start of Jesus’ ministry, having just established Jesus’ divine nature through the water-into-wine moment, John can carry that anger and humanity of Jesus through the rest of the teachings and sayings that he writes about. We can read the rest of John’s gospel through that lens and it leaves us a little on edge because we don’t know when and if this guy will go off again.
We who claim to be followers of Jesus cannot be reminded enough that we are Christ’s body; a living, breathing, and even sometimes angry body. Our anger is holy anger; modeled after the one who cleared the Temple because it had become something far from a place of worship. Unlike the calm, placid demeanor of those good Protestant forebears who taught us to never raise our voices, we need to claim and own our holy anger. Turn the tables in the places where you know Jesus would do the same, because you are Christ’s body.
Sermon, Sunday, 8 March 2009
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 (with a passing nod to Romans 4:13-25)I love maps. I always have. I went through a phase in third grade during which I often drew the outline of my home state, Pennsylvania, and presented the drawings to my teacher. I’m not sure what Mrs. Henney thought when she received yet another crudely drawn version of our commonwealth on her desk. I think most elementary school teachers must be close to sainthood based solely on their patience. (And, by the way, I’d like to point out that the outline of Pennsylvania is not as easy to draw as you might think, especially for a third grader. This wasn’t Wyoming or Utah, after all!)
When a little older I found out that you could write to the various states and get maps from them. (This was in the 60s, so the states had the budgets to give away maps then.) Wow...I had a wonderful time. I would trace car trips we took as a family on road maps. Even today, I like to follow where I’m going on a map, even those maps on the screens of airplanes that more-or-less show you where you supposedly are in the world.
My love of maps and the related enjoyment of geography eventually grew into my still held fondness for travel. In high school, I would plan entire trips around the country based on an Amtrak schedule that I had gotten a hold of somehow. (Yes, I was an early adapter of what is now called the nerd persona.) Mind you, there wasn’t an Amtrak station anywhere near where I lived in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But I could plan. And dream.
By and by, my interest in maps and travel and geography actually led to some treks here and there. First, there were car trips, usually with my parents, somewhere on the east coast. By the time I got to seminary though, I was primed for something bigger: I had seen the U.S. east coast from New England to North Carolina and out as far west as Ohio. So when I was able to orchestrate the tiniest glimmer of an opportunity to study overseas, I fanned and cared for that tiny flame until I found myself in a plane hurtling across North America, the Pacific, and the equator. I spent most of 1986, putatively studying theology, in Adelaide, South Australia. But I didn’t stay put the whole time certainly; there were journeys to the Outback, Uluru (which you may know as Ayers Rock), Melbourne, the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney, and anywhere else I could find wheels that would get me there. I traveled by plane, train, car, and ferry. I felt, as a traveler, that I had arrived...some pun intended there.
Of course, I hadn’t arrived really. That big gulp of travel, after my prior sips, had only made me thirstier for more. I was primed to go and still to this day will gladly browse all the gadgets in travel stores. And, as you know, I still will board anything moving to see where it’s going. Travel is for me a cure for some deeply embedded symptoms, I think, which is why I’m fond of referring to our friend Marilyn as my “travel therapist”. T.S. Eliot was right, I think, when he said, “The journey not the arrival matters.” Just going is important.
When people think of the Bible these days, they think of it as a rule book or a guide or narrative or, some, as complete fiction. Few though think of it as a travelogue I would imagine. If we use that lens to view the Bible however, looking at scripture not so much as a tour book to the lands of the modern Middle East, but more as a travel memoir of the many varied characters who populate it, we might find some useful travel tips; tips that might help us as the travelers and tourists that we are in this funny, foreign land of faith.
And what better time to think about that than during Lent? Lent has so often been described as a journey (which I am first to admit I’m guilty of) that the metaphor may have become somewhat trite and overdone; a bit of a yawner, perhaps. “Oh, Lent?” we might hear ourselves responding, “it’s that ‘journey’ that we take every year for six weeks you know. I’m not sure where we start or where we end, but they keep telling me it’s a journey, so I just get on for the ride every spring when it rolls around.”
Compared to the journeys we find throughout the whole 66 books that make up our scripture, our travels today are pretty tame. We complain if our airplane seat won’t recline but Jonah was tossed off a ship in the midst of a terrible storm and swallowed by a big fish. We’re impatient if we’re delayed by an hour or two while we read that Moses led the Hebrew people through the wilderness for forty years--forty years!--waiting to get to the promised land. Paul’s missionary, evangelistic voyages are legendary and he encountered scorching heat, hunger, hostility, arguments, and raging storms at every step. Noah floated above a flooded earth with a living cargo bent on eating each other. The disciples scattered to the ends of their earth and told a remarkable story that lives on to this day. The Bible is all about journey from Adam & Eve walking out of the garden into a new and different life than they had known to the final journey that John of Patmos describes when we all end up before the celestial throne.
And so it is that we encounter Abram and Sarai today in the midst of their journey some 35 hundred years ago. The narrative that tells of their life on the road and of their descendants takes up a lot of the book of Genesis. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are more or less the story of all humanity as seen through the eyes of the authors of the Hebrew scriptures. They tell of creation and humanity’s wandering, or journeying, from God time and time again. The very first covenant that God makes is found in these first 11 chapters when God promises not to destroy all of creation again to Noah. When we reach chapter 12 though, things get a little more specific. Beginning in chapter 12 and all the way through to the end of Genesis in chapter 50, we get the tales of Abraham and Sarah and those who followed.
From these chapters last 38 chapters, we learn more and more about these forefathers and foremothers in faith. And it all begins with Abram and Sarai, not though in Canaan, the land they were to settle. They were from a place far from there: Ur in Mesopotamia or Sumeria. First they traveled to Harran, in modern day Turkey, where Abram’s father died. And there, in Harran, Abram received his call from God to go to Canaan, which we know today as Israel. So Abram & Sarai, along with nephew Lot, packed up and headed off to this funny place that was a buffer zone amidst all the big powers of the day.
Abram and Sarai were about 75 years old when they left Harran. They had lived a full life by this point. Well, not quite full because they were childless. And of course that meant a lot in those days; much more than we think of it today.
But they were 75 and setting off to do something new! A whole new journey. By the time we get to them today, they’ve had quite a few experiences; interesting experiences. Today we come to a point in the story that is pivotal. Not only does God make a covenant with them that they will be the parents of nations (that’s nations, in the plural) but to prove it, God actually changes their names--an event that occurs to people often when they encounter God and their lives are changed. This whole baby thing though; it’s wildly impossible and unthinkable. They’re both well beyond the point when having children is possible, not to mention convenient. In fact, in verse 17, just after our reading for this morning leaves off, the newly renamed, alleged father-to-be falls down laughing. In cyber speak he’s ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing). A chapter later, Sarah overhears that she’s going to become pregnant, and she too has a good chuckle over it.
Of course, the last laugh is on none other than God, who always seems to get the last laugh. And that’s often the way of our journeys, isn’t it? I’ve seen and heard a saying that Allen reminded me about this week: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God what you plan to do with your life,” or variations to that effect.
The last thing on the mind of these two nonagenarians who have traveled countless miles through the course of their lifetime is what their descendants are going to think about them. But there they were, finally in Canaan and they have to think about bassinets and the practicality of cloth diapers versus disposables. And, true to the promise, God came through and, as Paul reminded us in that letter to the Romans, Abraham and Sarah not only gave birth to Isaac and a genetic lineage that would grow and multiply, but also to a faith genealogy in which we count ourselves.
Journeying is in our roots; in our spiritual roots; at the core of our very being. We don’t, like our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, stay put. At least we shouldn’t, I believe. We need to be wary of becoming too comfortable in what we think of as our home and recall that God is constantly calling people of faith out on the road. Our journey is, clearly, supposed to be towards God; toward that center of our being. But like the journey that one takes in a labyrinth, the route is twisted and confusing often. Just when we think we’re there, the path turns and we are moving away from our goal and closer union with the Divine.
Throughout the journey of my faith life, I have had many surprises and unexpected events. But like the physical, geographical journeys I take, those surprises and unexpected events are the very things that I remember, that make the journey memorable, that are looked back on as high-points rather than the potential problems and inconveniences that they might have seemed at the time.
At one point along the way of my faith journey, in a place in which I finally felt spiritually at home, I encountered a prayer by one of the holy ones of the 20th century, Thomas Merton. Like a precious souvenir that may mean little to others but floods the mind with memories of a place or time, I’ve carried this prayer with me along the way and I want to end today with it:
"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." (from Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton)
Photo of Uluru by Peter Nijenhuis from his Flickr site.
Make Them Hear You -- Newsletter article for the week of 1 March
"Go out and tell our story, let it echo far and wide. Make them hear you. Make them hear you."* These words begin a song from the stage musical Ragtime which I used in a slide presentation at the retreat in January and to close our worship this past Sunday.
There are verbs of action in that song: go, make. And indeed that is the charge that we who are affiliated with Chalice in any way have. We are to go out and tell our story and make them hear us.
During our time on Sunday, our Regional Minister for Congregational Care and Women's Ministries, Paula Poceicha, invited each of us to pick up a footprint she had cut out from construction paper and take it home with us. On the footprint, we are urged to each write our own personal next step in making sure that the story of Chalice is heard and that we are true to God's call to us.
We spent time on Sunday looking at our current Mission Statement. We thought especially about the five actions that we state there that we are called to do:
But look at that list of verbs from our Mission Statement again and think of your next step. What are you going to do for the good of your faith community; for your own spiritual growth; for God?
One step, for most of us, is something we can do. Don't be concerned as you contemplate and take that first step about step number two, or step number 16, or any of the steps in the journey ahead. Think of the first step you can and will take.
Pace e Bene,
Gerry
*"Make Them Hear You" lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Steven Flaherty.
There are verbs of action in that song: go, make. And indeed that is the charge that we who are affiliated with Chalice in any way have. We are to go out and tell our story and make them hear us.
During our time on Sunday, our Regional Minister for Congregational Care and Women's Ministries, Paula Poceicha, invited each of us to pick up a footprint she had cut out from construction paper and take it home with us. On the footprint, we are urged to each write our own personal next step in making sure that the story of Chalice is heard and that we are true to God's call to us.
We spent time on Sunday looking at our current Mission Statement. We thought especially about the five actions that we state there that we are called to do:
- worship
- grow spiritually
- build relationships
- serve the wider community
- share this Good News with others.
But look at that list of verbs from our Mission Statement again and think of your next step. What are you going to do for the good of your faith community; for your own spiritual growth; for God?
One step, for most of us, is something we can do. Don't be concerned as you contemplate and take that first step about step number two, or step number 16, or any of the steps in the journey ahead. Think of the first step you can and will take.
Pace e Bene,
Gerry
*"Make Them Hear You" lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Steven Flaherty.
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