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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Sermon
from January 15, 2006 Scriptures: In
my first days in
Berkeley, I experienced an almost surreal sense of joy and beauty; a daze of
happiness where I found myself in a world that I didn’t yet know how to
navigate but that seemed nevertheless good-willed toward me and all the other
strangers who had arrived for their seminary career.
There weren’t any substances involved in that daze of happiness, mind
you, in spite of it being Berkeley, besides maybe a plastic cup of wine at the
welcome receptions that they organized for new and returning students. My
happiness had started back home with the welcome letter of the school’s
president that reached me before I even left Germany.
He wrote not about academic expectations and requirements, as I had
expected, but instead, he gushed about the abundance of fruit and produce at the
many farmer’s markets. He talked
about the availability of fresh seafood at reasonable cost and the opportunity
to choose among a list of restaurants as diverse as the United Nations.
Does it surprise you that my schooling led me to accept the call from a
church that prides itself on its love to eat? Beauty
met me in the form of vistas of the Pacific Ocean at the bottom of our holy
hill, in architecture that seemed to have as its only purpose to bathe in the
overflow of sunlight, in bushes and trees with oversized, fragrant blossoms, in
palm trees, of course, and then in the mind-boggling, disturbing and delightful
eruption of diversity that is Telegraph Avenue. One
night early on I found myself on the roof of my seminary dorm.
That, too, is surreal, for in Germany people only climb the roof in order
to fix it or to clean the chimney. But
here the roof was a flat expanse of concrete with a priceless view of the bay
and the city across the bay and with enough of a railing so we wouldn’t fall
over the edge. We were celebrating
a birthday and all were invited. While
somebody gave a bit of a birthday speech on the other end of the roof, the woman
next to me began asking me questions about what had brought me to Berkeley and
into seminary. “How did you find
God?” she finally asked after I had recounted my journey from Germany to the
rooftop of the dorm. The
question startled me. I had not
ever really considered that I had found God.
I wasn’t even so sure that I had searched for God.
Frankly, I had always thought that God was already there. I don’t mean that in a pious way at all; it is just that I
had grown up not with the question whether God existed, but more with the
question whether we would live lives where God’s existence made any
difference. I
still don’t think that it is us who find God.
That would make faith far too much into a man-made or woman-made
endeavor. God finds us, I am quite
certain. God’s spirit meets us
when we are ready, whether we think we are ready or not. God
found me on the walk to Sunday School when I was a child.
I must have taken that walk a few dozen times—down the hill from our
house, down the road to the end of the development, to the path that led through
some fields, then down the hill through the cemetery and back up through the
oldest part of the village where there was the church. Yet, in my memory, all those Sunday morning journeys, roughly
twenty minutes long, merged into one, on a winter morning that was as sunny as
it was cold. I have mentioned that
walk in one or two sermons before, I remember calling it a crisp winter morning,
when the grass that was covered in ice crackled under your feet, when every
breath was visible in the cold air, and when you couldn’t decide whether to
keep going because that kept you warm or to stop and look for some blackberries
that were left on the bush to be plucked by a boy on his way to church in
mid-winter. Heaven
didn’t open and there were no revelations to be had, but I was simply glad to
be on my way to a place I liked because the
people were kind and because we told stories and sang songs that had to
do with God loving us just the way we were.
Church wasn’t about proving something to yourself or to others. Church wasn’t about living up to expectations or worrying
about failure. Church simply felt
good. I decided I’d spend more
time there if I’d get a chance. I
experienced what would the beginning of my call. Today’s
scriptures are both stories of call, and it is God who is doing the searching
and finding. Samuel may be a child
designated by his mother to live in service to God, but it takes him three times
and the help of Eli before he recognizes the voice of God for what it is.
In those days God did not speak all that often or, as the Scripture puts
it, “the word of God was rare in those days.”
There are many who think the same is true today. Then
it says about the call of Philip in John’s Gospel that Jesus finds him and
simply says: “Follow me.” Then Philip, in turn, finds Nathanael. In the somewhat
typical fashion of stories about Jesus calling disciples we don’t learn any
details about Philip’s call: Jesus obviously can look into Philip’s heart to
recognize him as worthy, and Philip recognizes Jesus for who he is and therefore
doesn’t resist the call. Yet the story doesn’t even tell us this much,
instead we have to assume. Nathanael on the other hand gets a little more
airtime in this scripture, which is good because he is somewhat obscure in the
rest of John and the other Gospels. Despite his calling in this story he is not
listed as one of the twelve. Surely this means that discipleship of Christ
wasn’t limited to the Apostles even in their lifetime. I
couldn’t help this week, when I was reading the scripture, but think about our
youth ministry and our youth space. I
thought about the conversation that will follow this worship service. Before I get into that, let me refresh your memory about what
they exacty said to each other, Philip and Nathanael. Philip
found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses and the
law and also the prophets wrote: Jesus
son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael
said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Nathanael knows full well that the Hebrew scriptures talked about a
Messiah with origin in Bethlehem, not Nazareth, and that’s part of his
question. But it seems that his
disdain for Nazareth goes deeper than that.
There’s more to it. It
seems that Nathanael’s question sounds nasty regardless of what we put in the
place of Nazareth. Plenty of people
have uttered this, “What good has ever come from this generation that follows
ours?” Plenty of youth have said,
“What good has ever come from anybody over the age of 25?”
The possibilities to complete this question “What good has ever come
from …” and speak somebody’s mind are endless.
Bear
with me—the liberals, the fundamentalists, the French, the U.S., the U.N., the
big corporations, the tree-huggers, the Clintons, the current administration,
the media, the politicians, the lobbyists, the 70s, answering machines,
computers, credit cards, or Prohibition. What
is Philip’s answer to Nathanael? “Come
and see.” He says the most
powerful three words of scripture this morning.
Nathanael comes and sees and it turns out that he—who thought he knew
about Nazareth and Scripture and the Messiah—knew rather little.
But Jesus knew him, and had known him before they had even met, and was
gracious to him. Nathanael came to
know Jesus and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. I
think there are implications for our youth ministry in this scripture.
I believe that everybody, youth and grown-ups alike, needs to surrender
their preconceived notions. I think
we have to surrender even the notion that youth ministry is something we
delegate to one staff person and a committee.
Youth ministry in our church is a passion that we all have in common.
Maybe we need to surrender our preconceived notions on what works and
what doesn’t work in youth ministry and how to get the word out.
It happens only if everybody comes and sees.
Our
role is to create a place that is not about expectations as are the schools and
the sports and, often, the parents as well; a place that doesn’t involve
worrying about failure; a place that is not about pretending to be someone and
putting up a face; but a place that affirms all for who they are. I
talked about the church of my childhood as a place that felt good.
One could easily dispute that notion and say that church is about more
than just feeling good, and that faith is a challenge, and there is much truth
in that. But
nevertheless, what an awesome vision that
we might create a place about
which the youth can say it feels good, you
like going there, the
people are kind, you
are not judged there; instead
you feel welcome, you
feel loved. You
were a little concerned at first, it
being a church and all, but
you came and saw, and
it was good.
Amen. |