I apologize to regular readers of this blog (if there are any, or ever were) for the lengthy hiatus. I knew that I was behind, but didn't realize just how far. I've just put up the working text of two sermons from this summer. Audio files of almost all sermons from First Congregational Church of Tallmadge can be found on the website.
Peace, Matt
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Sermon - On The Inside
Preached on July 10, 2011 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Biblical text: Romans 8:1-11
I grew up watching Mr. Rogers on television. Mr. Rogers was trained as a minister, but he decided instead to learn about child development and to host a television show. I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that every afternoon, Mr. Rogers called me his neighbor, and he said “I like you, just the way you are.”
A journalist was interviewing Mr. Rogers some years ago, and as they walked together on a city street, they saw a young boy of about six or seven, out with his mother, brandishing a long toy sword. Mr. Rogers said to the journalist, “often when children carry weapons, it’s because they don’t feel strong on the inside.”
Paul was writing a letter to the Romans, and I think that if he had known that people would read his letter for centuries all over the world, he would have been a little less honest, and a lot more protective about the things he chose to share. Or maybe not. Either way, Paul isn’t carrying any swords. He opens up and lets it all out there. Paul is telling his secrets.
Writing to the church in Rome, he admits to them that even though he wants to be a person of righteousness, a person of integrity, compassion, generosity, a person who fulfills his potential and measures up for God, in fact he makes a mess of it. He can’t live it. Not because he doesn’t want to, and not because he doesn’t know what that life would look like. He just can’t. He tells them:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
(Romans 7:15, 18b-19a?)
Those lines come just before the part that we heard today, and he’s probably still thinking about himself when he talks about what it’s like to live in the flesh. Now, the flesh is a concept of Paul’s that needs some defining. What he means is the part of being human that gets lost even when we’re sure we know the way. He means the part of being human that breaks something by accident and then just walks away if no one was looking. It means the part of being human that is so broken, we don’t do what we want and we do what we don’t want. That’s the flesh, for Paul, so then he says:
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires…the mind governed by the flesh is death.”
To live in the flesh is to live only by what you can do on your own, and no matter who it is, Paul knows that to live on your own is a losing race. He can’t do it on his own. His own failings get in the way.
Paul tells his secrets in this letter, but I wonder if Paul is also telling our secrets.
How many times do we fail to live as we would want to, and the next week, or the next day, or even in the next moment we wonder “why did I do that?”
Someone’s cell phone rings, and the name on the screen is that of an old friend, a friend whose elderly parents have recently died, and who probably spent the day cleaning out their home. So why doesn’t this person answer the phone. Not wanting the friend’s pain as an interruption, the call goes to voicemail. Why did I do that?
A mother wonders why she screamed at her children in the parking lot after the baseball game? They were tired and she was tired, and they were late for dinner at grandma’s, and the kids just couldn’t pay attention.
A man asks himself, after a couple at church has asked if he would help them to prepare dinner for the homeless families staying at our church, why did he say “next time” when in fact that is the answer I’ve given every time.
It isn’t that we don’t want to be people of goodness and compassion, and it isn’t because we don’t know what that looks like, Paul says. It is something inside us that turns us the other way. We can see the person we want to be, and we can even pretend that we are that person, but the secret we hold inside is that we are not. We do not measure up.
When Mr. Rogers was describing that young boy with the sword, he could have been talking about any of us. We don’t feel strong on the inside, but instead of carrying swords, we put on a good show of having things together. We create an identity that is successful, and happy, and most of all, lovable. And we really do love that image that we carry around. But inside, we’re not so strong. Inside, we’re not so lovable, because we know the things that we’ve done and the things we have failed to do. But that’s not the face we show. In public, we carry the sword.
Thankfully, God has never been one to just sit back and wait for us to get it right. We do not worship a God who is keeping track of good deeds and bad deeds and assigning our names to one list or the other. We worship a God who is with us, whose Spirit lives within us. We are not on our own. At the center of our lives is not the secret of our failings. At the center of each of us is God.
Paul writes about the frustration of failure and the sickness we feel about our shortcomings. I know how it feels, he says. I can’t do it either. No one can. But you are not alone. You are not alone, because the Spirit of God dwells in you. Deep inside of you, at the centermost place, is the Spirit of God.
Listen to his words again:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free.
…You are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, since indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
…And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”
We talk about God out there, but Paul talks about God in here. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus Christ, also dwells in you, and who knows what new life will rise within you? Yes, you’re still you, you still have a mixed up human life that fails you, but you aren’t living in your failings, you’re living in God’s Spirit. There is something more within you, and the something more in you, the something more that does more than you can do alone is God, a spiritual presence working in you and with you to live more fully than you even think is possible.
In Christ, God has dealt with our failings, and they no longer keep us from God. God loves us in the midst of our broken promises and broken dreams. God loves us when we are unlovable. And God’s love actually frees us from the power that our failings have over us.
God frees us from a law we had to live up to, and the result of this freedom is that we can finally fulfill the law through the power of Christ dwelling inside. We finally do that which we want to do, not by redoubling our efforts, not by telling ourselves sternly that next time will be different, but by the outpouring of God’s spirit, the way a that a dry river bed, when the snows in the mountains melt and the spring rains fall, fills with water that splashes onto the riverbanks. It isn’t our own resources, but God’s. God sees that we are just tripping all over ourselves trying to earn God’s love, and God comes in and loves us preemptively. God dwells within us, and God’s spirit wells up from within us to fulfill all that we were meant to be.
By God’s resources, we answer the phone to share the burdens of a friend; we find reserves of patience when we are tired, and we throw our hands into service even when it makes us uncomfortable.
I think of mission trips that I have taken to meet our brothers and sisters and to be of service to them. A cluster of comfortable, middle class people like me show up at their homes, and the first thing we see is the rusting laundry machine in the yard where the children play, the soaked and decomposing sofa cushions strewn on the dirt lawn, the car battery, leaking acid, and the smell of rotten food. We show up and take in the sights and sounds, and some of the kids, and especially some of the adults have an involuntary physical aversion. They have come here to love and serve with these neighbors in Christ, but how can they do that if they feel too ill to stay more than five minutes? But there is something else within them. The desire to turn away passes, and they do love their neighbors, they embrace their neighbors, and later in the week, looking back on that first day, they say that it was the love of God inside of them.
“I would never have done that on my own, but something inside me kept me going.” That something inside is the Spirit of God, doing more in you, and more in all of us, than we could ever do ourselves.
The mother of the boy with the sword recognized Mr. Rogers. “Look, son, it’s Mr. Rogers.” And the boy slips slightly behind his mother’s legs. Mr. Rogers kneels down at the boy’s level, leans in and whispers in the boy’s ear.
Walking away, the journalist asks him. What did you whisper back there? What did you say to that boy with the sword?
What he whispered was this “you are strong on the inside.”
Hear the words of Paul, writing with such honesty, because these are words about you. Paul kneels down beside you, with your sword in your hand, and he whispers in your ear: “On the inside, in the centermost place. That’s where God lives. The Spirit of God lives in you, is a part of you, makes you who you truly are. Put away your swords. You are strong, on the inside."
- The article about Mr. Rogers is "Can You Say...'Hero'?" by Tom Junod, first published in Esquire, and collected in The Best Spiritual Writing 1999, edited by Philip Zaleski.
Biblical text: Romans 8:1-11
I grew up watching Mr. Rogers on television. Mr. Rogers was trained as a minister, but he decided instead to learn about child development and to host a television show. I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that every afternoon, Mr. Rogers called me his neighbor, and he said “I like you, just the way you are.”
A journalist was interviewing Mr. Rogers some years ago, and as they walked together on a city street, they saw a young boy of about six or seven, out with his mother, brandishing a long toy sword. Mr. Rogers said to the journalist, “often when children carry weapons, it’s because they don’t feel strong on the inside.”
Paul was writing a letter to the Romans, and I think that if he had known that people would read his letter for centuries all over the world, he would have been a little less honest, and a lot more protective about the things he chose to share. Or maybe not. Either way, Paul isn’t carrying any swords. He opens up and lets it all out there. Paul is telling his secrets.
Writing to the church in Rome, he admits to them that even though he wants to be a person of righteousness, a person of integrity, compassion, generosity, a person who fulfills his potential and measures up for God, in fact he makes a mess of it. He can’t live it. Not because he doesn’t want to, and not because he doesn’t know what that life would look like. He just can’t. He tells them:
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”
(Romans 7:15, 18b-19a?)
Those lines come just before the part that we heard today, and he’s probably still thinking about himself when he talks about what it’s like to live in the flesh. Now, the flesh is a concept of Paul’s that needs some defining. What he means is the part of being human that gets lost even when we’re sure we know the way. He means the part of being human that breaks something by accident and then just walks away if no one was looking. It means the part of being human that is so broken, we don’t do what we want and we do what we don’t want. That’s the flesh, for Paul, so then he says:
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires…the mind governed by the flesh is death.”
To live in the flesh is to live only by what you can do on your own, and no matter who it is, Paul knows that to live on your own is a losing race. He can’t do it on his own. His own failings get in the way.
Paul tells his secrets in this letter, but I wonder if Paul is also telling our secrets.
How many times do we fail to live as we would want to, and the next week, or the next day, or even in the next moment we wonder “why did I do that?”
Someone’s cell phone rings, and the name on the screen is that of an old friend, a friend whose elderly parents have recently died, and who probably spent the day cleaning out their home. So why doesn’t this person answer the phone. Not wanting the friend’s pain as an interruption, the call goes to voicemail. Why did I do that?
A mother wonders why she screamed at her children in the parking lot after the baseball game? They were tired and she was tired, and they were late for dinner at grandma’s, and the kids just couldn’t pay attention.
A man asks himself, after a couple at church has asked if he would help them to prepare dinner for the homeless families staying at our church, why did he say “next time” when in fact that is the answer I’ve given every time.
It isn’t that we don’t want to be people of goodness and compassion, and it isn’t because we don’t know what that looks like, Paul says. It is something inside us that turns us the other way. We can see the person we want to be, and we can even pretend that we are that person, but the secret we hold inside is that we are not. We do not measure up.
When Mr. Rogers was describing that young boy with the sword, he could have been talking about any of us. We don’t feel strong on the inside, but instead of carrying swords, we put on a good show of having things together. We create an identity that is successful, and happy, and most of all, lovable. And we really do love that image that we carry around. But inside, we’re not so strong. Inside, we’re not so lovable, because we know the things that we’ve done and the things we have failed to do. But that’s not the face we show. In public, we carry the sword.
Thankfully, God has never been one to just sit back and wait for us to get it right. We do not worship a God who is keeping track of good deeds and bad deeds and assigning our names to one list or the other. We worship a God who is with us, whose Spirit lives within us. We are not on our own. At the center of our lives is not the secret of our failings. At the center of each of us is God.
Paul writes about the frustration of failure and the sickness we feel about our shortcomings. I know how it feels, he says. I can’t do it either. No one can. But you are not alone. You are not alone, because the Spirit of God dwells in you. Deep inside of you, at the centermost place, is the Spirit of God.
Listen to his words again:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free.
…You are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, since indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
…And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”
We talk about God out there, but Paul talks about God in here. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus Christ, also dwells in you, and who knows what new life will rise within you? Yes, you’re still you, you still have a mixed up human life that fails you, but you aren’t living in your failings, you’re living in God’s Spirit. There is something more within you, and the something more in you, the something more that does more than you can do alone is God, a spiritual presence working in you and with you to live more fully than you even think is possible.
In Christ, God has dealt with our failings, and they no longer keep us from God. God loves us in the midst of our broken promises and broken dreams. God loves us when we are unlovable. And God’s love actually frees us from the power that our failings have over us.
God frees us from a law we had to live up to, and the result of this freedom is that we can finally fulfill the law through the power of Christ dwelling inside. We finally do that which we want to do, not by redoubling our efforts, not by telling ourselves sternly that next time will be different, but by the outpouring of God’s spirit, the way a that a dry river bed, when the snows in the mountains melt and the spring rains fall, fills with water that splashes onto the riverbanks. It isn’t our own resources, but God’s. God sees that we are just tripping all over ourselves trying to earn God’s love, and God comes in and loves us preemptively. God dwells within us, and God’s spirit wells up from within us to fulfill all that we were meant to be.
By God’s resources, we answer the phone to share the burdens of a friend; we find reserves of patience when we are tired, and we throw our hands into service even when it makes us uncomfortable.
I think of mission trips that I have taken to meet our brothers and sisters and to be of service to them. A cluster of comfortable, middle class people like me show up at their homes, and the first thing we see is the rusting laundry machine in the yard where the children play, the soaked and decomposing sofa cushions strewn on the dirt lawn, the car battery, leaking acid, and the smell of rotten food. We show up and take in the sights and sounds, and some of the kids, and especially some of the adults have an involuntary physical aversion. They have come here to love and serve with these neighbors in Christ, but how can they do that if they feel too ill to stay more than five minutes? But there is something else within them. The desire to turn away passes, and they do love their neighbors, they embrace their neighbors, and later in the week, looking back on that first day, they say that it was the love of God inside of them.
“I would never have done that on my own, but something inside me kept me going.” That something inside is the Spirit of God, doing more in you, and more in all of us, than we could ever do ourselves.
The mother of the boy with the sword recognized Mr. Rogers. “Look, son, it’s Mr. Rogers.” And the boy slips slightly behind his mother’s legs. Mr. Rogers kneels down at the boy’s level, leans in and whispers in the boy’s ear.
Walking away, the journalist asks him. What did you whisper back there? What did you say to that boy with the sword?
What he whispered was this “you are strong on the inside.”
Hear the words of Paul, writing with such honesty, because these are words about you. Paul kneels down beside you, with your sword in your hand, and he whispers in your ear: “On the inside, in the centermost place. That’s where God lives. The Spirit of God lives in you, is a part of you, makes you who you truly are. Put away your swords. You are strong, on the inside."
- The article about Mr. Rogers is "Can You Say...'Hero'?" by Tom Junod, first published in Esquire, and collected in The Best Spiritual Writing 1999, edited by Philip Zaleski.
Sermon - Now What?
Preached on June 5, 2011 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Biblical texts: 1 Peter 4:12-14 and Acts 1:6-14
Forty days after the resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven. That’s what the author of Luke and Acts tells us. Just as the prophet Elijah had ascended directly to heaven long ago, without dying, so Jesus ascends. He goes up, which is where the people of the first century understood heaven to be. As mysterious as Jesus ascending to heaven is, the really interesting part of the story is to focus on the disciples who stand there watching him. For about three years, following Jesus had been their life and their identity. Where he decided to go, they went, when he taught, they listened; what he did, they remembered. So there is this amazing moment right after Jesus has ascended when the disciples are still standing there, all looking up into the sky. And the question on everybody’s minds is this. Now what?
On the day when something that has shaped your life comes to an end, somewhere deep inside you ask this question.
On the day your youngest child begins school and the days are wide open…Now what?
Or, later, the day your last child leaves the home…Now what?
On the day you retire…Now what?
On the day after the funeral for your spouse funeral…Now what?
And, as we are reminded today: On the day of your graduation…Now what?
The disciples stood looking up in the air. Their rabbi was gone, and they asked the question. Read just a bit further in Acts, and these disciples find their answer. They couldn’t physically walk beside Jesus, but they would still walk like Jesus. The answer they found was to live the way Jesus lived. They committed themselves to the practice of Jesus-living: Compassionate, welcoming, strong in the face of injustice and cruelty, joyful and sacrificially loving. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But they also know that living like Jesus means suffering like Jesus. Peter says that suffering is not an anomaly; it is the expectation. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.” We get the idea that suffering is what God is supposed to save us from, but Peter says that suffering is what we should expect.
Now, historically, at the time that Peter writes, part of Christian suffering was from direct persecution, and we can be thankful that our lives are not in danger simply for bearing the Christian name. But beyond persecution, Christians suffered because they lived like Jesus lived, and Jesus suffered because he was willing to sacrifice his own well-being for the well-being of someone else. They did the same. If someone was hungry, they shared from their own plates. If someone needed clothing, they emptied their own closets. If others were being hurt or cast aside, they went to stand with those people and accept the same abuse. If their neighbors were sick, they would put aside their own schedules and make the journey to visit them and give them care, and they did the same for their neighbors in prison.
Day after day, they did these things, and every act of care, every act of standing up for justice, every bit of goods given away, came at a cost to themselves. But this is was what Jesus had done. Never are we more like God than when we accept discomfort, tears, and hardship for the well-being of someone else.
Any parent knows about the personal cost of caring for children.
Anyone who arranges a days off to take aging parents to a doctor’s appointments;
anyone who takes food to a neighbor after a death in the family and sits with them in silence and shares their tears;
anyone who sticks up for a person who is picked on, only to find themselves ostracized from the group as well;
anyone who casts votes on election day in the interest of others;
anyone who travels a long way to visit a friend in the hospital, even if the long journey is just around the corner, knows about the personal cost of caring for others.
You know what it is to accept suffering for the well-being of someone else. And in many of those instances, you probably don’t even think of it as suffering. It’s just what you do. It’s the right thing to do. “They would do the same for me,” you probably say.
I suggest that the reason you do these things so often and hardly think of doing otherwise is because you are in a sacred covenant relationship. A covenant binds people together in a sacred relationship of shared joy and sorrow.
We live in covenant. At the beginning of a wedding, I stand before the bride and groom and ask if they are willing to enter into the covenant of marriage. When we come here on Sunday mornings and listen to the scriptures, they tell the story of God’s covenant with God’s people. God makes a commitment to us, and we commit ourselves to God and to each other. Covenant is a commitment to others, and it is what I see people doing all the time, whether they have heard the word covenant or not.
Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and we plan to celebrate a Covenant Renewal in the worship service. We invite you to affirm your covenant with God, within this faith community. It’s not about who is a member of the church or not, it’s about all of us being in a sacred relationship, committed to one another in the spirit of God. Yes, our commitments will entail sacrifice and loss, it will mean that we give to others instead of spending on ourselves, it will mean that we turn over our “Me time,” our days off and evenings, to sing in the choir, to teach a youth Sunday School class, to maintain the church building, to go on service trips, to talk to someone after worship and really listen to them the way that maybe no one else quite listens to them all during the week.
Peter writes to the Christian church and tells them that their suffering is not strange, it’s to be expected, but he also tells them this. The source of your suffering is also the source of fulfillment and salvation. These covenantal relationships that cause us so much trouble and worry and heartache at times, and demand so much of us, are also the source of God’s greatest blessing and fulfillment of our lives. And that is why we often don’t notice the hardship so much.
So, to our high school graduates: I hope that as you seek to find your place in the world, that you will find happiness and success, but I also know that you not find these things by pursuing them just for yourselves. And so I must also hope that you will open your lives to the greater sacrifice that comes from living in covenant.
The minister Frederick Buechner, who is one of my favorite writers, talked about how we find our callings. He said that we should follow our passion and our delight, because it does no one much good to pursue a joyless life. But he also said that we will not find our true calling until we find the place where our greatest joy meets the world’s deep need.
May you find the place where your great joy meets the world’s deep need. May you find the place where you are needed by others, whether it be to represent a Congressional district of thousands, to lead a company of 300 workers, to teach a classroom of 20, to assist the six people each day who come to you for support, or to care intimately for just one person. Be needed by others.
Jesus said that we achieve greatness when we learn how to be of service to others. If you would be great, learn to serve. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for your friends. When we follow his life, when we commit ourselves to Jesus-living, we will find that in the midst of all that we give up for others, God blesses us beyond anything we could ever hope or imagine.
It was the Indian poet Tagore who captured the truth of what it means to follow Jesus. He wrote “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
Jesus showed us that the way to God is to accept whatever it costs to live in loving covenant with others. Surely, this was what echoed in the minds of the disciples as they stood looking up at the place where he had just left, as they stood their watching, with each mouth forming the silent question. Now what?
Biblical texts: 1 Peter 4:12-14 and Acts 1:6-14
Forty days after the resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven. That’s what the author of Luke and Acts tells us. Just as the prophet Elijah had ascended directly to heaven long ago, without dying, so Jesus ascends. He goes up, which is where the people of the first century understood heaven to be. As mysterious as Jesus ascending to heaven is, the really interesting part of the story is to focus on the disciples who stand there watching him. For about three years, following Jesus had been their life and their identity. Where he decided to go, they went, when he taught, they listened; what he did, they remembered. So there is this amazing moment right after Jesus has ascended when the disciples are still standing there, all looking up into the sky. And the question on everybody’s minds is this. Now what?
On the day when something that has shaped your life comes to an end, somewhere deep inside you ask this question.
On the day your youngest child begins school and the days are wide open…Now what?
Or, later, the day your last child leaves the home…Now what?
On the day you retire…Now what?
On the day after the funeral for your spouse funeral…Now what?
And, as we are reminded today: On the day of your graduation…Now what?
The disciples stood looking up in the air. Their rabbi was gone, and they asked the question. Read just a bit further in Acts, and these disciples find their answer. They couldn’t physically walk beside Jesus, but they would still walk like Jesus. The answer they found was to live the way Jesus lived. They committed themselves to the practice of Jesus-living: Compassionate, welcoming, strong in the face of injustice and cruelty, joyful and sacrificially loving. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But they also know that living like Jesus means suffering like Jesus. Peter says that suffering is not an anomaly; it is the expectation. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.” We get the idea that suffering is what God is supposed to save us from, but Peter says that suffering is what we should expect.
Now, historically, at the time that Peter writes, part of Christian suffering was from direct persecution, and we can be thankful that our lives are not in danger simply for bearing the Christian name. But beyond persecution, Christians suffered because they lived like Jesus lived, and Jesus suffered because he was willing to sacrifice his own well-being for the well-being of someone else. They did the same. If someone was hungry, they shared from their own plates. If someone needed clothing, they emptied their own closets. If others were being hurt or cast aside, they went to stand with those people and accept the same abuse. If their neighbors were sick, they would put aside their own schedules and make the journey to visit them and give them care, and they did the same for their neighbors in prison.
Day after day, they did these things, and every act of care, every act of standing up for justice, every bit of goods given away, came at a cost to themselves. But this is was what Jesus had done. Never are we more like God than when we accept discomfort, tears, and hardship for the well-being of someone else.
Any parent knows about the personal cost of caring for children.
Anyone who arranges a days off to take aging parents to a doctor’s appointments;
anyone who takes food to a neighbor after a death in the family and sits with them in silence and shares their tears;
anyone who sticks up for a person who is picked on, only to find themselves ostracized from the group as well;
anyone who casts votes on election day in the interest of others;
anyone who travels a long way to visit a friend in the hospital, even if the long journey is just around the corner, knows about the personal cost of caring for others.
You know what it is to accept suffering for the well-being of someone else. And in many of those instances, you probably don’t even think of it as suffering. It’s just what you do. It’s the right thing to do. “They would do the same for me,” you probably say.
I suggest that the reason you do these things so often and hardly think of doing otherwise is because you are in a sacred covenant relationship. A covenant binds people together in a sacred relationship of shared joy and sorrow.
We live in covenant. At the beginning of a wedding, I stand before the bride and groom and ask if they are willing to enter into the covenant of marriage. When we come here on Sunday mornings and listen to the scriptures, they tell the story of God’s covenant with God’s people. God makes a commitment to us, and we commit ourselves to God and to each other. Covenant is a commitment to others, and it is what I see people doing all the time, whether they have heard the word covenant or not.
Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and we plan to celebrate a Covenant Renewal in the worship service. We invite you to affirm your covenant with God, within this faith community. It’s not about who is a member of the church or not, it’s about all of us being in a sacred relationship, committed to one another in the spirit of God. Yes, our commitments will entail sacrifice and loss, it will mean that we give to others instead of spending on ourselves, it will mean that we turn over our “Me time,” our days off and evenings, to sing in the choir, to teach a youth Sunday School class, to maintain the church building, to go on service trips, to talk to someone after worship and really listen to them the way that maybe no one else quite listens to them all during the week.
Peter writes to the Christian church and tells them that their suffering is not strange, it’s to be expected, but he also tells them this. The source of your suffering is also the source of fulfillment and salvation. These covenantal relationships that cause us so much trouble and worry and heartache at times, and demand so much of us, are also the source of God’s greatest blessing and fulfillment of our lives. And that is why we often don’t notice the hardship so much.
So, to our high school graduates: I hope that as you seek to find your place in the world, that you will find happiness and success, but I also know that you not find these things by pursuing them just for yourselves. And so I must also hope that you will open your lives to the greater sacrifice that comes from living in covenant.
The minister Frederick Buechner, who is one of my favorite writers, talked about how we find our callings. He said that we should follow our passion and our delight, because it does no one much good to pursue a joyless life. But he also said that we will not find our true calling until we find the place where our greatest joy meets the world’s deep need.
May you find the place where your great joy meets the world’s deep need. May you find the place where you are needed by others, whether it be to represent a Congressional district of thousands, to lead a company of 300 workers, to teach a classroom of 20, to assist the six people each day who come to you for support, or to care intimately for just one person. Be needed by others.
Jesus said that we achieve greatness when we learn how to be of service to others. If you would be great, learn to serve. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for your friends. When we follow his life, when we commit ourselves to Jesus-living, we will find that in the midst of all that we give up for others, God blesses us beyond anything we could ever hope or imagine.
It was the Indian poet Tagore who captured the truth of what it means to follow Jesus. He wrote “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
Jesus showed us that the way to God is to accept whatever it costs to live in loving covenant with others. Surely, this was what echoed in the minds of the disciples as they stood looking up at the place where he had just left, as they stood their watching, with each mouth forming the silent question. Now what?
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