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To Be Continued… Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis September 20, 2009, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 44:21-28 Hebrews 10:19-25
“Imagine this,” writes essayist and novelist Marilynne Robinson, “some morning we wake to the cultural consensus that a family, however else it is defined, is a sort of compact of mutual loyalty, organized around the hope of giving rich, human meaning to the lives of its members.” Though Robinson is speaking of the family of our origin, I think the definition may, in part, be applied to the family of faith and to the home where we have arrived once more after a season of wandering. I think the church is a sort of compact of mutual loyalty, organized around the hope of giving rich, human meaning to the lives of its members. Of course, the church is certainly more than that; but for a moment consider how it is at least that. “Toward this end,” Robinson continues, “[the members of a family] do what people do—play with their babies, comfort their sick, keep their holidays, commemorate their occasions, sing songs, tell jokes, fight and reconcile, teach and learn what they know about what is right and wrong, about what is beautiful and to be valued. They enjoy each other and make themselves enjoyable. They are kind and receive kindness, they are generous and are sustained and enriched by other’s generosity.” We call this Sunday “Homecoming Sunday” not only because we show up together in the same place but also because we show up together—a family of sorts--to continue to do the things people do. And though a sociologist would identify us as a voluntary association, when seen through the lens of faith we say--without being too spooky about it--that we have been given into each other’s keeping by God. We are those who once slid through the birth canal that is the baptismal font by grace and landed not in a hand-picked club of our closest friends but rather in this bazaar assembly of the baptized. It also should be said of this assembly that, unlike the Cricket Club or the Union League but like our family of origin, we do not get to vote on who else gets to become a member. As the older sibling, I know I often tried to vote my baby brother off the island to no avail. Thank God! God’s grace rules any such humanly exclusive instinct out of order. “I am not in charge of this House,” preacher Barbara Brown Taylor declares with gratitude, “and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth….I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House.” In this one House and together again, we do what people do—play with our babies, comfort the sick, keep our holidays and remember special occasions, sings songs, tell jokes, fight and reconcile, teach and learn about what we know about right and wrong, about what is beautiful and to be valued. We enjoy each other and make ourselves enjoyable…are kind and receive kindness …are generous and are sustained by each others’ generosity. Oh, really? “This is utopian!” roars Robinson in the next paragraph. She did not need to yell. We know it is. “And yet,” she adds, backing off as if suddenly aware she has hit a nerve. “Certainly it describes something of which many of us feel deprived.” I am sure she is right. We long for such a compact of mutual loyalty, such a family, such a church and often despise the real thing on the basis of our dream. I would even go so far as to say that we sometimes expect the church to make up for [or be the family in which we act out] the love lost in the family whose name we bear. We wake on Sunday morning with the hope that here our lives will be given meaning, our loneliness will be met with fast friendships, our minds will be challenged (or as I hear it, not challenged but mildly entertained for no more than twelve minutes), our wounds tended, our children given faith, our worldview confirmed and not confronted by the gospel. Moreover and without our aid, we want the church school to be organized and exciting, the social witness to make us feel good about the difference our church has made in the world, the fellowship to surround us with warmth and welcome, the service of worship to uplift us, the budget to be balanced without our generosity. But if the community lets us down along the way, there are better things to be done with a Sunday morning. Or as a few members put it yesterday morning, “When things were exciting and electric here on Sunday morning for our children, families organized their weekends around coming to church. The last year or so, the first activity to be cut was going to church.” Instead of dwelling in compacts of mutual loyalty, “We have reasoned our way to uniformly conditional relationships,” concludes Robinson. Apparently we are not the first. When I stumbled upon our text for the morning, I was startled to read that the earliest of Christians already had quit the habit of worship—just a few short decades after the resurrection. The Letter to the Hebrews is a sermon spoken by an unknown preacher to an unknown congregation whose members were not showing up. If we read between the lines, it was not that they had better things to do or were bored, but that they had endured more than enough suffering for one lifetime because of their faith. Read on in the same chapter and you will come upon the details: hard struggle, abuse, persecution, prison, possessions plundered. The preacher implores them to hold fast to their confession, not to abandon their confidence, to put all their trust in the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Then in what has always been for me a tour de force in Scripture, he launches into a litany of the saints who have gone before them, of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fires, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness. He is saying to them that they are part of a remarkable story that began long before they were and is to be continued in them, if they hold fast to the confession of their hope without wavering and run with perseverance the race set before them. Why does it feel like that preacher had a better shot at his congregation who were weary in well-doing than the church today has against shrinking attention spans and soccer games and soon to commence ice hockey practice or a second home not that far away and a week so busy that Sunday morning is the only time when anybody can sleep in? If we are in any sense to be a family of faith, then the real issue, Robinson believes, is whether or not we “will…shelter and nourish and humanize one another.” Will you be the one who makes the church school electric, initiates a relationship with the one standing alone in coffee hour, shows up at a member’s door with a casserole even though nobody asked you, befriends a homebound widow, signs up to serve a meal at our Brothers’ Place or spend the night with our homeless guests? Will you ask Brian on your own if you could help with the youth this year or find out how you get to pick up older members for worship or stop hoarding the gift you have for music because you don’t know if you want to make a weekly commitment? Or will you, after a month of Sundays, conclude this family is not able to give rich human meaning to your life because no one has reached out to do what is necessary to shelter, nurture and humanize you either. “This is creative work,” says Robinson, “requiring discipline and imagination.” The preacher of Hebrews says more. After reminding the faltering faithful of the incredible access they have been given to God’s presence in Jesus Christ, he says, “Hold fast to the confession of your hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.” I take that to mean that we should live in hope of God’s kingdom come but, in the meantime, trust that God is doing the best God can with what God has: namely with you and with me and with this very human institution that is also Christ’s presence in the world. Live in great expectation that this community will indeed lend rich and human meaning to your life, but short of that if you find yourself thinking about something other than yourself on the way home, take it as a sign that God just may have redeemed a few minutes of your day. In the second place, the preacher asks his flock to “consider how to provoke one another to love and good works.” The synonyms that pop up when I click on provoke are: incite, aggravate, hassle, needle, goad, irritate, inflame, rouse. I have attempted just that this morning! Likewise, Sylvia Studenmund should stop being so nice when she asks you to volunteer some of your precious time to live beside the homeless and the hungry for Christ’s sake; Brian need no longer beg—he may hassle you when he calls you to teach in the church school; Mark should not feel guilty when he gives you the evil eye as only Mark can for signing out of choir. We are here not for our own good pleasure but because in baptism we entered into a compact of mutual loyalty with one another and with God. We once promised to be Christ’s disciple---which takes discipline and imagination. Therefore we need to hold one another accountable or stop pretending that we are anything much more than a country club with optional dues. Finally, says the preacher, do not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some, but encourage one another. The worship of God should become a habit, he says, as in, “I am not happy when I do not go regularly to church, and not (I think) because I am oppressed by the consciousness of wrongdoing, but because I am weightier, having missed the opportunity to meditate, express adoration, contrition, thanks and supplication in loving and dignified communion with others.” Barbara Grizzuti Harrison. Put another way, that which we do over and over again changes us. You can take the 10 o’clock hour every Sunday morning to jog, to watch Meet the Press, to get your grocery shopping done or to watch your children play soccer. These are habits that have entered in to kill the time that once was filled by adoration, contrition, thanks and supplication. Who we are, who our children are, the rest of the week is changed imperceptibly by each of these activities. I pray in the season ahead that you will encourage one another—especially those who are still among the missing--to make worship a habit, if not for the sake of your weightier soul then for the encouragement your presence will lend to those who have been coming to this sanctuary Sunday in and Sunday out—some for fifty years! You will join a cloud of witnesses who have been playing with babies, comforting their sick, keeping their holidays, singing songs, telling jokes, fighting and reconciling, teaching and learning what they have known about what is right and wrong, about what is beautiful and what is to be valued for millennia. With them, I promise, you will be changed by the habits of adoration, contrition, thanks and supplication and you will grow to be grateful that the story of God’s renovation of the world is to be continued in you! |