In the early days of Tallmadge, before the church was built on the north end of the circle in the center of town, there stood an Academy building, where the children and youth of the town came for education. The Academy was built and run with the resources of our church’s founders, notably Elizur Wright, Sr., Salmon Sackett, and Rev. Simon Woodruff, who, in addition to being the first minister to serve this church, was the first instructor when the Academy was built in 1815. The Academy building was destroyed in a fire, but was rebuilt in a different location, with classes held at the Wright house in the interim.
The high value of education is great tradition in our congregation, and in the United Church of Christ as a whole. It has always been important to us to provide for the education of the next generations. In many cases, education was provided by those in the community who had the time and resources available to support it, as it was here in Tallmadge. Eventually, our nation decided that the education of our children was of such importance both as a moral value to itself, and in the national interest to have an educated citizenry, that we couldn’t depend on the ability of individuals to provide for it. Once again, it was our Christian ancestors who made public education, then called common school, available to everyone. We recognized that we could do this together, and that it was worth doing for our country’s general welfare, which is what our Constitution says that the government was created to promote.
I want to remember this story, because I believe that the Christian church has a similar calling in our time. Churches have always worked for the health of others. Many hospitals have religious roots, and today our church hosts blood drives and health screening services. But just as education was once limited to those of fortunate geography or means, so is adequate health care limited today. I believe health care should be for all our neighbors. Everyone should be able to afford the outstanding treatment and care that is available in this country. As I remember our heritage in this church, I am inspired that good people of this generation can see this come to pass. I have great hope.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sermon - The Longing For Home
Preached on October 14, 2007 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
Dedicated to Finley Marie O’Neal, on the day of her baptism; and always to the glory of God.
Psalm 137
Mark 1:1-3
Listen to the things that we say about home.
- Home sweet home.
- Home is where the heart is.
- “Homeward bound. I wish I was homeward bound.”
- Or, as Dorothy Gale said, clicking her ruby slippers: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
These words are a part of our cultural language, and tell us what we already know, that we there is within each of us the longing for home. We long for a home where everything is just right; is just as we always dreamed. I can remember what it felt like when I was away at college in December, studying for exams in the dorm lounge with Christmas decorations on the wall which were only dismal echoes of the way Christmas felt at home. I ached to be on my way to the familiar sights and smells of home. We all know the homesickness that comes when we are far away and long to be back home again.
But there is another kind of longing that we need to talk about, the kind that we feel not when we are far from home, but when the place where we live doesn’t feel like home, or at least not like the home we want. We are often homesick in this way, and the symptoms are disappointment, fear, and anger, because what we long for is a Norman Rockwell painting of a family meal, perhaps Thanksgiving, with the food glowing on it’s platters and bowls, and the children and adults beaming with clean faces and fine clothes. We long for home where everything is just right. The problem is that we are longing for the wrong home.
Often the home we long for is the home of our past. We remember how we used to sing Grandma’s favorite carol at Christmastime, but in the years since she has died, that song has too many painful memories. I remember a friend of mine, a minister in another church, who was in worship one Sunday morning when she stood to sing the closing hymn of the service. She had chosen the hymn for that day, but when she opened the hymnal, found the page, and tried to start singing, tears came to her eyes and her throat closed shut. She couldn’t sing the hymn because the last time she had sung it had been at her father’s funeral. How can we sing the old songs when that home is gone?
It’s not just our own homes and families that have changed. The world that we called home has changed. The Biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann writes that we live at a time when “Our society is marked by a deep dislocation that touches every aspect of our lives. The old certitudes seem less certain; the old privileges are under powerful challenge; the old dominations are increasingly ineffective and fragile.”[1]
That rings true to me. Our nation, once so certain to protect its citizens, now seems vulnerable to a new kind of threat. Our workforce, once proud, is caught between cheap labor overseas and unaffordable health costs at home. Even the church might long for the past, when we had almost universal influence: keeping stores closed on Sundays and even Wednesday nights free of community events. Now it is no longer the norm to attend church on Sunday; no longer is it the norm to offer Christian prayers at public events because the public is no longer uniformly Christian as it was mid-century, in the boom years after the war. Those of you who have watched generations grow up must feel as though this church, this country, is a very different place.
We long for a home as it used to be, for home as we dream of it. And we are not the first.
In the year 578 B.C., six centuries before Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, the nation of Israel was attacked by the large and powerful empire of Babylon, which lay to the east. Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple razed. The king and much of the population, including all the leading merchants, owners, priests and politicians were taken into exile far away in Babylon, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lost their home. They were conquered. This great exile is the subject of much of the old testament prophets and psalms, although it is a story we seldom tell, which is too bad, because it is a story we need. We are a people in exile. We feel that we have lost our home, even those of you who have lived in the same place all your lives may feel that the place has changed around you, and the home you had is gone.
Brueggemann makes the connection: “For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.”
Despair is the inability to see a way out. Or as my friend, the Rev. Craig Barnes puts it, the danger when you are lost in a dark wood is not that you will become more lost trying to get to the right place, but that you will grow accustomed to the darkness.[2] The Israelites in Babylon were full of despair. Here they were by the rivers of Babylon, and they wept, the psalm tells us. Some of the Babylonians, the nation that had taken them captive, wanted to hear their songs. They wanted some culture, apparently, from across the desert. They said “sing us those songs of Zion. Give us the flavor of old Jerusalem.” But the Israelites hung their harps on the trees. They said “how can we sing the Lord’s song when we are far away in a foreign land?”
So it is with us. We cannot sing the old songs, acting as if nothing has changed. The old songs are too painful, or they have simply lost their meaning. Maybe we have stopped believing that they can be true.
It was two generations later that the exile in Babylon ended. The prophet Isaiah records the words of their return home: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the wilderness.” God prepares a way for us to go home. In the wilderness God makes a way. Think of their joy, their relief, to be going home, and keep that story in mind as we turn to the gospels with new ears. This morning we heard the first words from the gospel according to Mark, and he begins with those lines from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness for God. All the gospels begin with old words that are about going home, and what they mean by this is that the way home is the way of Jesus Christ.
Forget the Norman Rockwell painting. If you want to picture home, you’d be better off with Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. You know the painting, with the long table, and everyone sitting on the same side. On the edges you can see in the disciples images of grief, confusion, and betrayal, but in the center is the savior who bears all burdens.[3] Home is not the place where every pain is eased and everything is calm. Home is found in the midst of pain and discomfort when we find ourselves at home in God who can hold all things together. That is what we long for, even as we try all kinds of substitutions: a home with God in the midst of our loss and confusion.
We need to listen more to the Hebrews who were in exile. Their story is our story. We understand them when they say that they can’t sing the old songs in a foreign land because we feel that way too; we know that sense of loss. But they didn’t stay lost. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah says to them about their time in exile, in the 29th chapter, he first tells them not to listen to false prophets who were telling them that God would fix it any moment and make everything just the way it was. It never works to wait for an instant return to the way things were. We do not worship a God of the quick fix. Jeremiah tells them this instead: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
This is a new theology! When you have lost your home, make home where you are, because God is not left behind in that other place or in that other time, God is in the midst of the confusion and fear where you are right now. Home can be found here, with Christ in the midst of us. Prepare a way for the Lord. Instead of anger or bitterness about the place we are stuck in, when we seek the welfare of this place and time, it will work for our welfare.
Isn’t that interesting about the spiritual life: that it always leads us to work and give for the good of others, and this always results in deep good for ourselves, but whenever we seek good things simply for ourselves, it brings shallow results.
We long for home but we too often search for the wrong home. Home will not take away the complexity or difficulty of our lives, but will give us a strength and purpose, will give us God’s spirit to be home right where we are. And we will be able to sing God’s songs again. Amen.
[1] From “Conversations Among Exiles.” The Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, pp. 630-632
[2] Craig Barnes, Searching for Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 21.
[3] Craig Barnes, Searching For Home, 2003, Brazos Press, page 29.
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