Readings:
Isaiah 43:1-7
Life was
not always easy for Israel. Being God’s
people did not keep them from making mistakes, and did not protect them from
suffering loss and experiencing sorrow.
One of their worst experiences as a people was when their kingdom was
defeated, they lost all their land, and they were taken away to live in exile
in a foreign kingdom. As they lived
through that hard time, different prophets helped them learn deep things about
God, and about what it means to trust in, and follow God. In today’s reading the prophet Isaiah speaks
to them of God’s promise never to abandon them, and to lead them back home.
Luke 3:15-23
In
the time of Jesus, things are not good for the people of Israel. The Roman Empire is taking more and more
control of everything around the Mediterranean Sea – including Israel, and the
people feel once again they are losing their kingdom and their land to ungodly,
foreign powers. As they learned to do in
the past, they pray for God to send them a saviour who will help them get back
their land and regain control of their own lives, so they can live in the world
the way that God – not Rome, wants them to.
Many
who believe God will do that, go to the Jordan River to renew their faith and
their commitment to God. They remember
how in the old days they came into their land by walking through the water of
the Jordan from the eastern side – first, after the wilderness journey under
Moses, and later when God led them back from exile. So now a variety of preachers call them to
the Jordan again – to leave Israel in a symbolic way, going over to the eastern
side of the river, and then come back through the water as a sign of their renewed
faith in God to save them and bring them home.
It’s
the coming back in that’s everything. John
the Baptist is one of those preachers, and Jesus is one of the people who come
to him for this ritual journey of return.
Okay, someone has
to say it. It didn’t show up in the
questions affirming the personal faith of the four confirmands. Nor in the wording of the New Creed we all
said to affirm the faith we share through the United Church with the whole of
the Christian community world-wide.
But at some point
it has to be said that this is the confirmation class of the Perfect Pancake –
of belief in and commitment to the Perfect Pancake. And if you think we’re talking only about
Aunt Jemima or Betty Crocker here, you can ask them about it and what it’s come
to mean for us.
The Perfect
Pancake is as good a Christology, anthropology and soteriology – in other
words, as good a statement about the meaning of Christ, of our own life, and of
how we are saved and made good as any I’ve heard.
It came out of
our first gathering – what was it, a year ago last September? And it wouldn’t have come up at all, and we
wouldn’t have come to it without our gathering for breakfast and conversation
together about God and us and other things that matter.
It seemed every
time we gathered was like that. As we
talked, asked questions and together explored the Bible, our own experience and
the traditions of the church, all six of us – Brynna and myself included,
learned things and grew in some way that we never would have without those
gatherings.
Gathering is
important. There’s something about faith
that’s communal and shared – that has to be communal and shared if it’s to be
real and alive at all. It means
something that the creed of our faith begins with the affirmation, “we are not
alone; we live in God’s world.” Not I,
but we living together in God’s world is what it’s all about.
And then the
affirmations, not I believe, I trust, I am called, but we believe in God, we
trust in God, and we are called to be the church. In part, because none of us is complete
enough, full enough, varied enough, self-critical enough, strong enough to
really believe and trust and follow God just on our own. Also because it’s in our togetherness and in our
ability to gather and to stay gathered over time in spite of what divides us,
and across whatever boundaries and differences exist among us, that we actually
have something to say and to show the world around us.
Christianity is
not a self-help movement we can pursue alone in the privacy of our homes and in
our spare time just by reading a book and finding quiet time to work on
ourselves. That may very well be part of
what we do. But Christianity is also and
always a matter of learning to be with other people in new ways, and of working
together at how we are human together, and how together we discover and create
the kind of community the world needs in our time to be good in the way God has
made it to be good.
I remember when I
first joined the church around the time I was twelve. We had membership classes, with a book we
studied; at the end of it there was also an interview for each of us with the
Board of Deacons to see if we were “ready for baptism” and church
membership. What I studied in the book
and was asked by the deacons, I cannot tell you. But I remember the class itself and what it
was like to study with the ten or eleven other kids my age. I also remember how we all hung out in the
lower hall of the church as one by one we were called into a room with the
deacons, and how as we waited we tried to reassure everyone that it was going
to go fine, and all would be well.
The gathering at
times is everything.
Parker Neale,
chair of Council who could not be here today expressed his regret at not being
able to be here for your big day because he said he remembered very fondly his
confirmation years ago. When pressed to
say what he remembered, he emailed back, “What I remember about my confirmation
process is going on a sleepover with the rest of the group members in the
lead-up to the big day, at another church, and getting to know them
better. Then, standing up at the front of our church, Burton Avenue United
in Barrie, on the big day.”
An overnight as a
group. And then standing together in
front of the whole congregation. The
gathering and being part of the gathering is everything.
And isn’t that
why we’re here? Not just in confirmation
today, but in worship every Sunday?
And not just in
worship. In Sunday school and in adult
education events and programs when we have them. We come together in a house of God, under the
umbrella – or, the outstretched arms of the Holy One, sharing each of us in our
own way a faith that is bigger than ourselves.
And together we express and share and work out what it means – the
different things it means for each of us, and the shared things it comes to
mean for all of us. And it’s thus that
we grow in faith, in community, in hope, and in love of God.
It’s why the
Quilt Club is about more than just quilting.
Why peeling peaches in August and making jam a week from now are
spiritual as well as practical events.
It’s why shawl ministries where people knit prayer shawls to share with
others are most effective when the knitters actually regularly meet together in
one place and one time, rather than just do piece-work at home on their
own. It’s why proxy votes are never used
and never allowed in church decision-making.
Because gathering and being part of the gathering is how we find our way
and discover our faith and learn what it means to follow Christ and be part of
God’s people in and for the world.
But how hard it
is!
One of the
reasons for the confirmation program taking 16 months is the difficulty we had
finding times we could all gather and be together. The same thing we find on Sunday
mornings. The same reason – at least one
of the reasons, why it’s hard to maintain regular Sunday school and adult ed
and other kinds of programs.
Sometimes we get
discouraged by it. Both those who are
able to be here and those who cannot feel bad about it. But that’s life. And it’s not entirely new.
Among the ancient
Hebrews attendance was never complete in Temple worship and pilgrimages to the
holy city or even at special meetings at appointed times with the divine. In fact, for seventy years during the time of
the exile no one got to the Temple at all.
Life took them all far away from the worship rituals they had known, and
they were pretty sure it was their fault.
In the Gospels,
remember how one day after the crucifixion of Jesus, Thomas didn’t come to the appointed
gathering of the disciples and wouldn’t you know it, that was the day the
resurrected Jesus showed up? Thankfully
for Thomas, Jesus was there again the following week when Thomas was able to
make it. And even in the letters of the
New Testament, it’s clear that people got to church when they could, and
sometimes they worried they weren’t getting there enough.
In this, there
are two bits of good news, though.
One is that even
when you’re away, for whatever reason, God is with you. Even if where you are is full of trouble and
your path seems godforsaken, and even if it’s your own fault, God is with
you. How does Isaiah put it, when he
speaks to a bunch of God’s people who have been away from their land and their
temple for generations already?
Do not fear, [God says], for I have
redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are
mine.
When you pass through the waters, I
will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not
overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall
not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
All of us at times in
our life feel like that – in deep water, in over our head, out on our own far from
supportive community, far from church family and maybe also far from family altogether
for whatever reason. And God says,
Do not fear, for I am with you; I am
the Lord your God,
… you are precious in my sight, and
honoured,
and
I love you …
And I will bring you home –
no
matter where you are and how far,
I will bring my children back home–
the
daughters and the sons of my heart,
everyone who is called by name, and
made for my glory,
I will gather and lead back home.
And then the second
bit of good news is this: that when we come home, no matter how or when it
happens or for how long, the response we get is not “where were you,” or “why
are you here, or that half-joking (but only half-joking) “it’s about
time.” Rather, it’s simply and only “Welcome;
it’s so good you’re here. Come in; let
yourself be enfolded by God’s love. You are
my beloved, and I delight in you. You belong.”
I remember one day
when I was in middle school (we called it junior high in Manitoba) – the one and
absolutely only day I came home late for supper. This was a severe breach of family etiquette,
because through all the years of our childhood supper was always at 5:30, and
only 5:30 because dad got home from work shortly after 5:00 and after washing
up and changing from his work clothes, it was then supper time so he and we
could then get on with whatever we needed to do for the evening.
This one day though I
stayed late after school to play football with friends and by the time we
finished playing and I walked home, it was already 5:40 or 5:45. I remember the anxiety I felt as I opened the
side door. The kitchen where we ate our
meals was up the three steps from the landing, and just around the corner to
the left. I remember the deadly, stony
silence I felt coming from the kitchen down the stairs to the side door landing
where I stood alone. I quietly and
anxiously took off my running shoes, wondering what the consequence for my
lateness would be. I imagined nothing good. And that’s when I first heard the saying,
spoken in a clipped and somber tone of voice, “You’d better throw your hat in
first, to see if it gets thrown back.”
Had that been God’s
house, had God rather than one of us been at the head of the table, had our
family at that moment been the kind of community we here at our best aspire to
be, the voice that came down from above to where I stood hat in hand at the
side door landing, would have said instead in the warmest and most happily
welcoming way you can imagine, what we have read this morning: “You are my Son – or, you are my
daughter, the Beloved; with you I am – and we all are, well pleased. Come on in, there’s a place for you as part
of us. We’re glad you’re here and we’re
together again, because the gathering, whenever we can manage it, is everything
to us.”
And maybe then as
well, “Oh, and now you’re here … can you tell us what happened along the
way? Was it good? Was it something bad? We’d like to hear it, because the story – the
story that we are together, is the best part of who we are, and of what we have
to offer to the world.”
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