Sermon for June 7th

I haven't posted because of working on the Wizard of Oz and trying to devote the little bit of personal writing to finishing up this sermon for the graduation of the Education for Ministry (EfM) class. Here is the sermon I presented on Sunday June 7th. I hope to get back into the swing of writing more in this blog now that the show is open.

I can’t do this-

There have been several times in my life when I said that and yet… here am I. When God called Isaiah – Isaiah said - I can’t do this. Yet he ultimately ended up saying “ Here am I, send me.”

How did I get here. How did I agree to stand up here today? How did I agree to spend the past four years of my life in a class every Monday morning for 2 ½ hours?

Because I said I can’t do this

When I was 18 I said, “I can’t do this”. I walked out of church and thought I would never return. I had so many questions about who and what God was. The Bible seemed to be filled with conflicting answers. A dark and vengeful God, a loving God, a God who created, and then destroyed humanity. I had a very difficult time reconciling the God of the Hebrew Bible with the message of Jesus and the New Testament. I was raised in a non denominational Christian church and sang Jesus loves me this I know along with a rousing Onward Christian Soldiers marching as to war.

As I looked around at the world I saw Christians who believed in fighting and killing communists in Vietnam, I saw Christians wearing white hooded robes, burning crosses, beating and killing people because of the color of their skin. I saw Christians proclaim Aids as a just wrath of God on good people because they loved the wrong kind of person. I saw Christians standing behind rope lines screaming at women who were hurting and confused as they entered planned parenthood clinics. I read stories of Christians at the Salem witch trials, the inquisition that burned heretics at the stake.

At the same time I found myself filled with imperfections. A Christian I thought meant trying to be perfect. I was sure that as far as Christianity was concerned I wasn’t headed in the right direction. Although the Bible tells us that Jesus forgives, it didn’t seem like God was very forgiving in the stories of the Old Testament. At what point does God give up on you? “Here am I”, I shouted at God. “But who and what are you!” Why does being a Christian have any effect on this world that I live in? The world of aids, terrorism, cancer, infectious diseases, and nuclear weapons, not the world of shepherds and sheep.

I was the prodigal son who left home, left the church, left my family, left God, and went out into the world. I had a fierce desire to seek the truth. At times it felt like God had cursed me with the need to ask the question why? To want more than Sunday school verses as answers. The Christian faith that I saw around me didn’t seem to know what to do with all those questions. Thirty years ago all I knew was – I can’t do this. I can’t keep being part of faith that didn’t make sense.

Garrison Keeler wrote that “you learn most of the basic concepts of life by the time you turn 21. But you don’t understand it until after you turn 50 and have a lifetime of experiences to be able to give meaning to those concepts. My mid life crisis happened in my late 30’s. I found myself looking in the mirror and saying I can’t do this. I can’t continue to live my life without a connection to God. My wife April had just started attending Grace church in her spiritual journey because many of our friends at the theatre attended here. I still had questions, but I decided to return to the church. To go back through a door I had walked out of earlier. I decided to give it one more chance in the fervent hope that I could learn to find some new answers. Even after I returned I still found myself asking what is faith? What should I believe? What is the difference between faith and religion.

Different religions seem to me to be like diet books with each offering the sure fire way to lose those pesky doubts and find God in only 21 days. As my fellow EfM graduate, Sally Proctor, was fond of saying - We each have our own rabbit holes that we have to go down. Faith without a community of others is like chasing after that rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Reading books by spiritual writers is like being at that famous tea party with the Mad Hatter- each person telling you what God is. God sometimes appears like the grinning Cheshire cat and then disappears just as soon as you think you’ve got him treed. At other times God seems like the Queen of Hearts. Off with their heads!

Episcopalian writer and professor, Diana Butler Bass, makes the point that too often the Christian church has felt uncomfortable with its own past. We try to pretend that we have “evolved”. But what is the price for letting go of the past.

Christian Education has developed a spiritual amnesia. Is this amnesia a precursor to religious Alzheimer’s, a fatal loss of memory for which there is no cure? In year 3 of EfM one of the chapters begins with this anonymous quote- Someone once said: Everyone has a right to their own opinion. But no one has a right to be wrong about the facts. Let me repeat that. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. But no one has a right to be wrong about the facts.

EfM has taught me that there is a whole world of Christian tradition and facts that I never knew existed. When I left my Christian home at 18 it was as if I had been given an alphabet that stopped ½ way through and then jumped to the end. Like most good fairy tales the princess is in distress and the handsome prince rides up, saves her and they ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Except in this case it’s Jesus who slays the dragon, saves us and then we all ride off to heaven. Too often Christian education gets to the letter J for Jesus and then we simply jump to the letter U for Utopia and we all live happily ever after.

Bass writes that “The Christian past raises meaningful contemporary issues. We understand our actions anew; we discover unexpected spiritual possibilities for our lives.” We can see the path of those who asked the same questions we are asking today, generations ago, and they found a meaning that moved them forward. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says, “History will not tell us what to do, but will at least start us on the road to action of a different and more self-aware kind, action that is moral in a way it can’t be, if we have no points of reference, beyond what we have come to take for granted.” What should we remember? What traditions should be retained? What should we teach our children?

The Episcopal church with classes like EFM are teaching small groups of people the rest of the Christian alphabet. I am a Christian, an Episcopalian, a person who is struggling to move into the future and rediscover and understand the past. Being a Christian involves memory, fellowship, worship and understanding.

Yet when Libby Wade began to form the first EfM group here at Grace Church my initial response was – I can’t do that. I just don’t have time. I work on the average 70 hours a week at the theatre. But God was also whispering to me in a small voice telling me that if I really wanted to find the answers, to find that elusive relationship then I needed to take this class. Finally with more of a sigh than a strong voice. I said- Here am I, Send Me.

EfM is a process.

I couldn’t help but see the symbolism in the first meeting of our EfM class. We had 12 members. That is the limit to a class size. Like the 12 apostles who followed Jesus we gathered around the center of our Christian faith in Jesus to learn, to worship, and to find meaning in our lives. As my friend Nick is fond of saying. Jesus never answered a question. He always told a story that you had to figure out for yourself. Our four years were filled with the stories of faith from our own lives as we tried to discern the meaning.

Each week EfM begins with a check in of each class members highs and lows from the past week. Over the four years I have listened and learned from the lives of my fellow classmates. I have found joy in the birth of a class member’s new grandchild, in the brilliant color of the leaves outside the windows of our classroom as we start in the fall to the cold and yes- ice of winter, and then to the budding of flowers in the spring as we end each years classes. I have found joy in the power of the grace of God to redeem those in our families who are struggling or lost. I have found a deep sadness in the death of a classmates parent. I have been challenged to face my own mortality. Through EfM I have been a first-hand witness of God’s love not just as an idea but as a living breathing presence in the lives of those in my class. That is truth.

At the beginning of each year, class members must each take time and share a spiritual autobiography of our lives. I remember Ann Farrel’s story of being a child in a Japanese Prison camp during World War II with a missionary father. I remember Trish Baxter’s story of her days at Johns Hopkins and on the Indian Reservations. I remember Dabney Haugh’s story of growing up surrounded by the love of her grandparents and parents and how her grandmother would tell her bible stories. I remember Lynda Songer and the stories of her Jewish stepfather and his kind of Jewish- Christian faith. I remember the stories of Carol Ann Narozniak’s father who was a doctor and taught her what it meant to feed the hungry and take care of the sick. Each of the people I have had the honor of sharing a class with over the past four years is no longer just a face in the pew on Sunday morning. It is a deeper connection because of a shared experience. I have shared in their stories of faith lost and faith rediscovered. Like the Hebrews who journeyed from Egypt to the promised land, my EfM journey has given me a deeper connection to others in my community of faith.

In the first year you study the Hebrew Bible- The Old Testament. The second year is the study of the New Testament. The third year is early church history. The fourth year is modern thought and modern church history. Half of each class is spent sharing what we have learned from the study materials about our past.

Each week we end our class with worship led by a class member. Sometimes we used our hands to draw pictures of God with crayons while we read psalms. Sometimes we mediated silently. Each class member was required to take turns leading the worship in ways that were meaningful to them. I learned that each of us prays differently. Yet each of us is asked to respond to Christ's call to the community of faith, and our own congregation's call to ministry and mission. Our mouths may proclaim thy praise, but it is the actions of our hands and feet that do God’s work in the world.

The final part of Efm is understanding. In EfM language this is called theological reflection. I have read lots of books on faith in the world. I can quote authors and historians, theologians and great philosophers. But you can’t have only an intellectual relationship with God. At some point you have to put down the books and the history and start transforming yourself and the world around you into the kingdom of God. EFM has taught me how to feel God’s presence in the joys and sorrows of those I have shared these four years with. How to listen to their life stories and combine them with my story to create a new story written by God. A story of a God who continues to appear in the world in human form. A story that takes men and women throughout church history, some of them deeply flawed, and transforms their lives to help build the kingdom of God one brick at a time. The world will come along from time to time and knock down parts of that kingdom. Bad things will happen to good people. But I know that God is calling me personally to be connected in this world. If you sign up for EfM you won’t be asked to become a priest or get up and give sermons. (Well maybe give a sermon when you graduate.) But you will be asked to listen. To listen to that voice that is calling you when you say- I can’t do this and to find the strength to say Send me.

I have returned home from my journey. God has given me a home and a faith that I can belong to. But the story hasn’t ended yet. It is still being written each morning as I wake up and continue on my journey of faith.

EfM has taught me that when we look at the world we hold the incredible beauty and joy of God’s creation in one hand. While we also hold the intense pain and suffering of being human in the other hand. Being called by Christ is the process of being able to take those two worlds and bring them together as we form our hands together in prayer and worship to make meaning out of our lives and to build the kingdom of God one brick at a time.

I can’t not do this.

Here am I; send me.

Amen