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Author: Tim

Senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ. Ordained in May, 1983. Called to First Congregational UCC in August, 1994. Retired July 1, 2018.
One hundred and seventy-three

One hundred and seventy-three

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Suppose you were to meet a stranger today and suppose that stranger were to speak to you and say, “One hundred and seventy-three.” Suppose he were to say just that, nothing more, nothing less, just “One hundred and seventy-three.” What would you make of it?

Perhaps he was thinking of days, perhaps of June 22, the one hundred and seventy-third day of the year. Was he thinking of his birthday or the birthday of another? Of his anniversary, or maybe of the day on the stream he caught the two-pound salmon on a Barnes Special early in the morning before the sun had cleared the tops of the spruces?

Or perhaps he was thinking of one hundred and seventy-three days ago or one hundred and seventy-three days hence. What happened then? Or what will happen then? Does he have one hundred and seventy-three days yet to live? But how could he know that with that kind of precision, or, if he did, would knowing it be a blessing or a curse? If you happened to meet him again tomorrow, would he say to you, “One hundred and seventy-two?” And would it break your heart to know his days were so quickly slipping through his fingers, slipping away faster and faster with each sunset? Or would it make you glad to know he was counting the days, prizing each one, fully open to the wonders each day brings?

Or maybe it is not days, but years, one hundred and seventy-three years. Why would he want to remember one hundred and seventy-three years past? Why does he hold the year 1848 in his mind? Was that the year his great-great-great grandfather stepped onto the dock at Ellis Island, debarking the ship that had brought him from Markinch to a new and unknown life yet to unfold, the great-great-great grandfather whose burgeoning family would make home in Vermont and Michigan, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and now Maine?

Or maybe he has one hundred and seventy-three dollars in his wallet. Or is impertinent enough to ask if you have one hundred seventy-three dollars in yours. Or maybe it is a price, the cost of a gift, a Christmas gift, a tourmaline necklace for his wife or a remote control sailboat for his grandson.

Or maybe it is not days or years or dollars, but people, the number of people in his high school class. Was he reminded of them by the reunion he was unable to attend, remembering not just the number but the faces, the faces so dear but now fading in memory, the faces held in memory as they were: eager and ambitious and curious and hopeful and delighted, full of the unrepeatable delight of youth?

Or is it not one hundred and seventy-three people, but one hundred and seventy-three whales, one hundred and seventy-three known right whales still swimming the Atlantic, one hundred and seventy-three right whales bearing amongst so few the destiny of their species? Does he worry about them, so much that he broods on their number, speaking their number aloud so that speaking it may declare their existence, declare their right to exist, declare their need to exist?

Or perhaps it is mountains. Perhaps he counts the mountains he has climbed, remembering them as a group, but remembering each one too: the scramble up the Hunt Trail on Katahdin, intimidating and exhilarating, breathtaking and soul-filling, or the day on the Traveler Loop, the unforgettable day summiting Peak of the Ridges and The Traveler and North Traveler that he replays in his mind again and again and again, the steep and bouldery climb up Center Ridge, the brave and thrilling traverse of Little Knife Edge, the cliffside views of South Branch Pond just before the steep descent back to camp, the exhaustion and the satisfaction and the sheer joy.

Or maybe one hundred and seventy-three means nothing at all. Maybe it is something he chooses to say just because he chooses to say it. Maybe it is nothing but a number, a number that follows one hundred and seventy-two and precedes one hundred and seventy-four.

And yet, it is not one hundred and seventy-two and it is not one hundred and seventy-four. It is more then one and less than the other, not anything else other than itself. And it implies abundance. It is more than one, more than two. It is many. A world in which one hundred and seventy-three may be spoken is a world of abundance, of complexity, surely of variety, a world where if one hundred and seventy-three is possible, one hundred and seventy-four or even one hundred and seventy-five is possible!

And you, the one to whom one hundred and seventy-three is spoken: you live in this world where one hundred and seventy-three is, and where you are, more of this than some and less of that than some, not anything else other than yourself., a world where you hold dear your own memories of days and years and people and places … and possibilities. The next time you meet this stranger, what do you think you will say?

Two

Two

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A poem I wrote at this morning’s Deer Isle Writers’ Group gathering …

two leaves
two branches
two towering maples

two owls
two seals
two frolicking weasels

two moose
two geese
two chittering mouses

two wolves
two leopards
two rollicking orcas

two notes
two melodies
two shimmering symphonies

two hours
two days
two sun-drenched mornings

two words
two sentences
two soul-baring prayers

two
two
two

that there are two is a wonder
a communion
a not being alone

I am glad for two
I am glad for two
I am glad for me and you

Figment

Figment

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“I will remember that who I am is a figment of my imagination.”
      Then is who you are a figment of your imagination?
      Or is it that you too are a figment of mine?
Is it that all that I can name is a figment of my imagination?
      Homo sapiens, canis lupus, thymus vulgaris, salvelinus fontinalis?
      Mountain, forest, prairie, sea?

I will remember that who I am is a figment of my imagination,
      and that from imagination comes all the rest too:
      me, you, us, them, a world, this world.
If there were no one to imagine, then nothing would be.
      Imagination names and naming identifies and identity is being,
      a clutter of atoms becomes some thing, some one.

In the beginning all was formless and desolate and God said.
      The saying is the making.
      The naming is the birthing.
I will remember that who I am is a figment of God’s imagination,
      I and you, quaking aspen and chipping sparrow, spring tide and aurora borealis,
      all of us, all of this, a figment of God’s imagination.

Thanks be to God.

Waterfront

Waterfront

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Cedar Campus is a thin place.  A “thin place” is what George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, called the Isle of Iona, a place, he said, where the separation between earth and heaven, between things material and things spiritual, is tissue paper thin.

Iona is what it is because of its long spiritual history, fifteen hundred years of intentional Christian presence on the island marked by the now restored abbey dating from the 15th century and a carved stone cross that has stood in place since 700 CE.  But Iona is what is it as much because of the island itself, the landscape, the white sand beaches and steep-sided coves, the boggy moors and heather-covered rocks, and the sea.  And the sea, the ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-present sea: blowing winds, crashing waves, dazzling sunlight piercing deep green waters.  God speaks through the wind and waves and the light.

Cedar Campus is a such a place.  Cedar Campus has its own “long” spiritual history.  For seven decades, people have come — university students and lecturers and InterVarsity staff members, site managers and summer work crew members and families, all of them drawn by the promise of a transformative experience of God’s presence, in song and Bible study and meditation and prayer, but equally in simply being in this “thin” place.  Like Iona, Cedar Campus is what it is, not as much by what people have made of it, but by what God has made of it, a kingdom of cedar and rock, awesome sunsets and amazing night lights, stars and galaxies and the shimmering aurora borealis.  And the water, the waters of Lake Huron, deep and wide and wild, only slightly tamed by the encircling shores of Prentiss Bay.  God speaks at Cedar Campus too through wind and wave and light.

The agenda for a time spent at Cedar Campus, whether a week or a month or all summer long, is communion, communion with God and with brothers and sisters, and the spiritual growth that communion may yield.  That is the agenda, but woods and bays and shoreline are the arena where that growth is nurtured.  So it is that hours spent in the water or on the water or by the water are not incidental, but vital, to the mission of Cedar Campus.  Time on the waterfront is time for communion, too.

The ultimate purpose of the waterfront program — getting campers in and on the water — is that communion with God that comes by immersion in a space of God’s own making, a space that exhibits God’s extraordinary artistry, a space that is filled with God’s own presence.  To make that experience profitable, the work of waterfront staff focuses on safety and proficiency and joy.  If you can be safe on the water and make your way with some knowledge and skill, you will find joy!

A swimming test is the entry point for all waterfront activity.  To get on the water, you first must get in the water.  The test itself is not demanding: a twenty-five yard swim, treading water for one minute, then swimming the twenty-five yards back to the starting point.  Easy, right?  Except that you must factor in the nature of the water in which you are swimming.  You are swimming in Lake Huron, a Great Lake, with waters deep and cold.  Water temperatures in the mile-long, half-mile wide inner Prentiss Bay around which the camp is situated vary widely, as cold as 48º F and as warm as 72º F depending on weather and wind direction, but most commonly between 56º and 62º F.  That’s cold!  58º is bracing, 54º takes your breath away and 50º hurts!  But that is the point of the swim test.  Waterfront staff want to make sure that if you do end up in the water while rowing or canoeing or sailing, you know what to expect and can take care of yourself without panicking.

Tests are offered at the start of each camp and are good for two years.  A member of the waterfront staff rows alongside each swimmer to be close by if needed.  Not a few swimmers have had to grab onto the gunwales of the rowboat, either too tired or too cold or too scared to continue.  As an extra incentive and reward, each camper who passes the swim test is entitled to an extra dessert at that evening’s supper. 

But the true reward of passing the swim test is access to Cedar Campus’ fleet of boats.  Cedar Campus maintains a large assembly of boats.  Several power boats are kept primarily for the use of staff: for monitoring and rescue during open waterfront times when many campers may be out on the bay; for transporting campers for overnights on Whitefish Point or Rover Island which sits between outer Prentiss Bay, two miles long and a mile wide, and Lake Huron itself; and for shuttling food and cooks to Sandy Cove for cookouts.

The boats available for campers include several rowboats, used for rowing or fishing, a half dozen or so canoes, used for exploring inner Prentiss Bay and Prentiss Creek at the end of the bay, and sailboats, fifteen foot, sloop-rigged, open cockpit sailboats.  Later, Cedar Campus added kayaks and Sunfish, small flat-hulled, single sail craft, and several larger daysailer sloops in the twenty-six foot range used by waterfront staff to give sailboat rides to campers and families.

Campers who have passed the swim test may take out any rowboat on their own or with other passengers who have also passed the test, all wearing PFD’s, of course.  These campers may also be passengers in a canoe or sailboat.  But to sign out a canoe, to paddle solo or to take out a companion, a camper must first pass a canoeing test, and to sign out a sailboat, a skipper’s test. 

To pass the canoeing test a camper, university student or family camper, must show a basic knowledge of canoe strokes — forward stroke, reverse stroke, “J” stroke or “C” stroke, be able to paddle the canoe in a straight line, and reenter a swamped canoe and paddle it to shore.  Again, the emphasis is on safety, proficiency, and joy.

The joy comes from paddling along the cedar-lined shores of Prentiss Bay on a sparkling summer day or a serene summer evening, perhaps exploring the creek at the head of the bay, drifting among yellow water lilies and navigating tight corners, or bringing along a pole to fish for perch and smallmouth along the shoreline or above underwater rock piles.  Some paddlers have even first met their future spouses in a Cedar Campus canoe!

Canoes, rowboats, kayaks, powerboats: all provide means to explore the magnificent coves and creeks, broad bays and rocky points of Prentiss Bay.  But the best way to enjoy the water and taste its wonders of wind and wave and light is by sailboat.  The power to move a sailboat does not come from any human effort, rowing or paddling, or from any human invention, outboard or inboard motor, but from God, from the wind itself.  The skipper of a sailboat must understand the wind, its direction and force; read the wind, see gusts, cat’s paws, roiling the surface of the water in their approach; anticipate the effects of land features on the wind; and always work with the wind, use the power of wind to propel the boat in the direction the skipper chooses.  Sailing is a science, but it is also very much an art, an art that requires not subduing the forces of nature, of God’s creation, but working in harmony with them.

To access the delights of sailing a boat at Cedar Campus, a prospective sailor must show the knowledge and skill to safely pilot a sailboat and demonstrate that by passing a skipper’s test.  The skipper’s test is more comprehensive than any other waterfront test at Cedar Campus, because the demands of sailing a boat on the open bays are greater and the stakes higher.  Weather may change quickly, winds shift suddenly, and, given the right conditions, the lake can generate large waves.  Waterfront staff carefully keep track of all boats when out on the bay, and have had to rescue many a sailing crew from a capsized sailboat.

The skipper’s test requires a sailor to know the names of the parts of the boat — bow and stern, starboard and port, stays and shrouds, rudder and tiller and centerboard; the names of the parts of the sails — leech and luff and foot, head and tack and clew; and the names of the lines on the sailboat — halyards and sheets and painters.  Knowing these names matters.  Shouting, “Grab that rope!” may be met be a look of bewilderment as your boat mate looks over all the lines draped around the boat.

A potential skipper must also demonstrate a knowledge of the points of sail — reach and run, broad reach and close reach and sailing close hauled — and explain how the sails would be deployed on each point of sail. 

This first part of the skipper’s test may be done on dry land or before casting off from the mooring, but the meat of the test comes, of course, in the sailing itself.  The prospective sailor must rig the boat, securing the mainsail to boom and mast, installing the battens and attaching the main halyard, clipping the jib onto the forestay and attaching the jib halyard, and raising the sails, then successfully casting off and moving away from the mooring.  Out on the water, the sailor must show competence in reading the wind and setting the tiller and trimming the sails accordingly, be able to execute both coming about and jibing, and be able to guide the boat to a standstill at its mooring.  The procedures for piloting a boat into the wind (in irons) at the mooring are the same for rescuing an overboard crew member. 

Some campers, not many, but some, come to Cedar Campus with considerable sailing experience.  But most who wish to know the joy of sailing must be taught.  Sailing classes are one of the highlights of the waterfront program during month-long discipleship training camps.  Eager university students spend time with a waterfront staff member, first in the recreation building learning sailing terminology and tactics, and then in the boats, carefully shepherded by staff either in the boat with them or following beside them in a powerboat.  Most advance quickly; learning to sail well is a lifetime enterprise, but it does not take long to develop good basic control of the boat, enough to be able to have a great time out on the water.

Sailing classes last one or two weeks.  Often, as a reward, sailing class graduates are permitted to sail a fleet of several boats out of Prentiss Bay and down the lake seven miles to Government Island, a state-owned reserve where the boats are landed and secured to pilings and a picnic lunch is enjoyed.  Sometimes, on the return trip, the boats might choose to circle a lighthouse situated in Lake Huron five miles beyond the mouth of Prentiss Bay.

Cedar Campus is a thin place.  Few leave Cedar Campus unchanged.  The spirit of God speaks here, through faithful teachers and dear companions, through quiet moments spent sitting or watching or praying, and through the powerful witness of its landscape and its waters.  Moments spent silently drifting through reeds in a canoe or slicing through waves on Prentiss Bay accompanied only by the whistling wind leave an indelible mark on the soul.  This thin place, its memories and its marks, remain a part of every person who comes here and a part of every place to which they go.

If only

If only

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Tuesday mornings, I meet with members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. We gather at 9:00 am at the home of one of our writers. We chat and catch up with each other for about a half hour and then spend an hour and a half writing, often in response to a suggested “prompt.” At eleven, we regather and read aloud what we have written, inviting comments and critique. The prompt for this last Tuesday was “if only …”

This what I wrote …

If only she had placed her foot just a little bit to the right …
If only she hadn’t been wearing the Birkenstocks …
If only she had agreed to switch places after she told me she couldn’t see her feet …
If only I had waited until our son could help me move the bridges into the woods …
If only COVID had not meant she was teaching her last semester remotely here in
Maine instead of in person in Iowa …

If only I had not built the bridges in the first place …
If only I had not the built the trail that required the bridges in the first place …
If only we had not bought the home in Blue Hill with seven acres on which to build a
trail in the first place …
If only we had never lived in Maine and would not be drawn back to it …
If only we had never lived …

“If only” is a rabbit hole of despair. Each “if only” wishes away a little piece of my life, a little piece of me. And as the “if only’s” multiply, gratitude gives way to bitterness, anticipation is overshadowed by regret, and my once hot-blooded life turns colorless and listless while my soul feeds only on itself.

She had the better idea. Almost immediately, she began making a list, a long list, of all the good things that resulted from her accident. It was not to ignore the loss or deny the grief, but to embrace her life as it is, as it now is, because of the accident. Her list includes Jeanine, the ICU nurse who lives on our road, and Jeanine’s parents who live on our road, too, and who are now, because of Jeanine and because of the accident, counted among our friends. Her list includes tangible expressions of care from new friends in our Deer Isle church and the Deer Isle writers’ group. Her list includes a September retirement party in Iowa with both of us now able to attend which would not have happened had the accident not cancelled her May Iowa trip.< And her list includes me, shopping and cooking and washing dishes, doing laundry and prepping her shower and managing her meds, loving her in new ways because this is what it is.

“It is what it is.” It’s one of our favorite phrases. “It is what it is” is an antidote to “if only,” said not with begrudging resignation, but with clear-eyed honesty and bold acceptance. “It is what it is” embraces the here and now because it is here and now and because it is the only here and now we will ever have.

“It is what it is” is a conscious and even joyful choice for faith over despair, for hope over resignation, for life over something that may resemble life but is mere emptiness.

It is what it is … and it is good!

One People

One People

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Sermon preached on Sunday, July 18, at Deer Isle Sunset Congregational Church …

Have we ever been more divided?  I mean, we don’t even agree on who won the last presidential election!  We don’t even agree whether or not it is a good thing to be vaccinated against a deadly disease.  We don’t even agree on what we should be teaching our children about who we are as a nation.

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, George Packer argues there are four Americas, four distinct and competing and incompatible visions of what it means to be American.  There is, as he names it, “Free America,” those who espouse a “Don’t Tread on Me” libertarianism, who want to do whatever they want to do unfettered by government regulation and unimpeded by folks “dependent on the system.” 

There is “Smart America,” those who believe in the value and profitability of education, who believe they deserve everything they have earned and both pity and disparage those who somehow lack the will or the skill to succeed.

There is “Real America,” those for whom the real Americans are “the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland,” while the enemies of America are the “treacherous elites and contaminating others [that is: non-whites and immigrants] who want to destroy the country.”

And there is “Just America,” those who divide the country into oppressed and oppressors, privileged and unprivileged, for whom the only way forward is to turn everything upside down.

Packer writes: “I don’t much want to live in the republic of any of them.”

Dialogue among these groups is useless, because we don’t have the same facts (we can’t agree on what is real and what is fake) and we don’t speak the same language — freedom and justice and fairness and truth mean entirely different things in the different Americas to which we pledge our allegiance.

The last time I remember a real sense of a commonly shared American identity was in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  We were all mourning together, lamenting together, both the loss of life and a never before experienced feeling of acute vulnerability.  We were not at first angry or bitter, not seeking revenge, but comforting each other and reaffirming our dedication to what we loved most about our country: its open-armed welcome, its commitment to equal opportunity for all people, its affirmation of right over might, of law over lawlessness.  And the world mourned with us with a generous outpouring of goodwill and affection.

But that good will quickly dissipated, both outside and inside our borders, as we mounted a dubious and ill-fated invasion of Iraq.  George W. Bush became a lightning rod for Democratic mistrust and anger and the nation was more divided than it had ever been.

Barack Obama reaped the fury of a Republican backlash as Congress’ sole agenda became thwarting his proposals whatever merits they might have and the nation became even more divided.

And the just past president came to power precisely by stoking the fires of division, making no pretense of governing a united country, but finding pleasure instead in pitting Americans against each other, those who, as he claimed, love America, against those who, as he claimed, hate America.

Have we ever been more divided?  And we are not merely divided into this camp and that camp, but fragmented, splintered into a myriad of tribes delineated not by shared values or principles or dreams, but by “identity.”  We define ourselves and align ourselves by our blackness or our whiteness, by being gay or straight or bisexual, male or female or transgender or non-binary, blue collar or white collar, heartland or coasts, Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or Jew or none.  Even being a None is a thing.

Have we ever been more divided?  We believe our identity wholly determines our destiny, rather the the other way around.  Think about it!  We believe our identity wholly determines our destiny, rather the the other way around.

But enough already!  I am not called to be a Cassandra, to bear bad news, but to be a minister of the gospel, to proclaim good news.  This is why we gather here in this sanctuary, week after week, not to bemoan a crumbling world, but to hear the gospel, so we might be believe and be made glad, and so we might live what we believe.

And this is the gospel: We are one people.

We are one people.  I had a seminary professor who liked to say that in the gospel, the indicative precedes the imperative, that is, what we must do only comes after what God has done.  It’s not that we must try to get along, try hard to bring people together, do our best to overcome the divisions among us.  We are one people.  God has made us one people.  Oneness is not something we achieve, but something God gives.

We are one people.  Who is?  Who is included in this one people?  All those who believe as we do, walk in the light as we do, share the same stories and values and religious commitments as we do?

No!  We are one people.  We — look around you, look all around you, and see the “we!”  Whom do you see?  Whom can you name?  This is the gospel and this is what Paul boldly declares in his letter to the Ephesian church: God has made us one people.  God has made us one people in Christ Jesus.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a wonderfully expansive and audacious and thrilling letter.  Eventually, he will turn to practical matters, counseling wives and husbands, parents and children, even slaves and masters about honoring and respecting each other, urging them all to live lives of purity and piety, truthfulness and kindness.

But here, at the beginning of his letter, he is occupied with the big picture, with a cosmic reality.  He writes about God’s plan, what he calls God’s “secret plan,” — a plan that is certainly no secret because he tells it! — God’s secret plan to “bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth” in Christ.

All creation!  Not just human beings, but all creation!  This is Christ’s mission: not to judge, not to divide, not to separate sheep from goats, not to start a new religion or discredit the old, not to carve out a faithful remnant from among rebellious humanity, but to reconcile, to bring people together, to bring people together back to God, to bring all creation together and back to God.

This is what God wants, this is God’s dream, this is God’s plan — to bring all of us and all of creation too into the arms of God’s loving embrace, to bring us and all of creation into shalom, into peacefulness, into wholeness, into fullness of life, into joy, our joy and God’s joy.

Paul is writing in particular to Gentile Christians, non-Jewish believers.  The early church struggled with the division between Jews and Gentiles, insiders and outsiders, people of the book and the heathens, people with entirely different histories and cultures and religious practices.  But Paul declares there is no division: “Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people.”  Jews who have studiously kept themselves separate from non-Jews, and Gentiles who have habitually disparaged Jews, are one people!

How?  By Christ’s blood: “You, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

The blood of Christ.  You look upon it every Sunday.  It is the focal point of our worship, at the center of the gospel we preach — the cross, the cross on which Jesus was executed, the cross on which he poured out his blood, poured out his life.

The cross is not the emblem of an unwarranted and untimely death.  The cross is not the remembrance of a failed martyr.  The cross is not even a model for us of ultimate sacrifice.  It is the emblem of victory, God’s victory, the victory of grace over sin, of God’s love over human rebellion, of life over death.  At the cross, God wins, which means we win.

“With his own body,” Paul writes, “with his own body [Christ] broke down the wall that separated them.”  The wall is down.  The wall is down!  We don’t need to tear down the wall,.  The wall is down!

The wall is down — between you and me, between Jew and Gentile, between black person and white person, between Muslim and Christian, between gay and not so gay.  Really!  We are one.  We have been made one by the death of Christ.  His death is the death of all division, and his life is the promise of life together, as one people.

This is who we are: one people, all of us children of God, created for joy, and God gave us Jesus so that we, so that none of us, would be denied that joy.

So what are we to do?  We are called to live as if we are one people,  because we are.  We are one people!  We are called to live in the peace, out of the peace, for the sake of the peace, making the peace that God has gifted us in Christ.  The walls are down, but for God’s sake, don’t try to rebuild them!

I speak especially to those of us who are Gentiles, non-Jewish believers, and that is most of us in this sanctuary.  How dare we, how dare we, build walls between anyone else and ourselves?  How dare we presume to judge any neighbor and draw a line between ourselves and them?  How dare we ever talk about “us” and “them?”

We Gentile Christians must never forget that are the outsiders!  We are the foreigners!  We are the ones who don’t belong, who had no part in God’s promises, who were not counted among God’s chosen.  We have been grafted into God’s family tree, adopted into God’s family, welcomed home by nothing other than sheer grace, utter gift.  So how can we be anything but gracious, anything but generous, anything but welcoming to other outsiders, other strangers, other lost ones?

We are called to live as one people, to embrace our identity, our true identity, which is ours in Christ.  I am European-American.  I am male, cis-gendered as they say.  I am heterosexual, married to my wife.  I am college-educated.  I am a retired professional.  All of these parts of who I am matter, and all the parts of who you are matter, but none of these matter more than my identity, your identity, our identity, as one people, children of God, children together in a family made by Christ.

We have never been more divided as Americans, as Christians, as human beings, and yet, we are not.  We are not divided.  We are one people.  And all the bitterness, all the contention, all the lying, all the hatred do not make it any less true.

This is the gospel … we were created in joy for the sake of joy, to live in peace for the sake of peace, to embrace each other as God has embraced us, to join ourselves to Christ in his death — putting to death our pride, our prejudices, our pretensions — so we might be joined to Christ in his life, living in love as he lived in love.  We are one people, so let’s live that way!

Numinous

Numinous

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Sermon preached on Sunday, July 11, at Deer Isle Sunset Congregational Church …

Father, we adore you,
lay our lives before you,
how we love you.

Why do you come to church? Or, maybe a better way to put it is this: When you do come to church, what do you hope to find here? What to you hope to do here?

There are many reasons for coming to church, many different expectations that each of us bring with us. I cannot speak for you, but I can speak for myself and share with you some of the reasons I have for coming to church, and I expect that some of my reasons may be yours, too.

I come to church to be connected. In other words, I come to church to be with you! I come to church to be part of a community, part of a community of believers, a people joined by faith, by our common experience of being loved, of being loved by God and of being loved by each other.

I come to be connected to a community of mutual help and encouragement, where I will be welcomed and befriended and supported, and to be connected to a community of mutual dedication, where we look for ways together to support and encourage people outside these walls, to bless them as we have been blessed.

I come to church to be connected and to make connections.

Second, I come to church to hear a word, a word that is different from the many and noisy words that fill most of my days. A word that carries authority. A word that addresses me, challenges me, enlightens me. A word that puts things, everything, into perspective. A word that helps me make sense of a world that is often so confusing and bewildering, to know what I can know and to acknowledge what I cannot know.

A word that makes me look at myself and my place in this world with a critical eye, not to be critical, but to look past appearances and pretenses, to see things as they are, to know what I am and who I am, and to know what I am for and who I am for.

I come to church to hear a word, a word that puts everything into perspective, like the view from the top of a mountain.

And, third, but most importantly, I come to church to experience the numinous. Do you know that word, “numinous?” I know exactly what I mean by it, but it is hard to explain!

Numinous is what is beyond me, above me, something very real, overwhelmingly real, but at the same time mysterious and elusive and unreachable. Numinous is wonder-ful, full of wonder, awe-ful, awesome, full of awe, holy, not holy is the sense we often use it, as something surpassingly good, though the numinous can be and certainly is surpassingly good, but holy in the sense of uncommon, set apart from the everyday, something heavy, deep, glorious, overwhelming, awe-ful.

Numinous is what Moses encountered in the fire and cloud and thunder atop Mount Sinai. Numinous is what Isaiah saw in his vision of the Lord Almighty filling the Temple. Numinous is what Job heard in the voice that spoke to him out of the whirlwind.

The numinous is the One who cannot, must not, be seen, the One whose name cannot, must not, be spoken. The numinous is God, the God who is. When I come to church, I come to encounter God, to experience, be touched by, come close to, the presence of the living God.

If God is, then God is, and God is who God is, not whatever we might wish or want God to be. God is something, someone, standing over against us, apart from us, awesome, awe-ful, wonder-ful, holy, beautiful, overwhelmingly real, more real, more substantial, simply more there than any of us, more real, more substantial, simply more there than the universe itself. God is something, someone to find and to be found by, someone to acknowledge, to worship, to love.

The Covenant Box is numinous. The Covenant Box, also called the ark, was built by Moses according to God’s instructions. The stone tablets on which the laws binding the people of Israel to God and God to the people of Israel were placed inside the box and two winged creatures adorned each end of the lid of the box. That place atop the lid between the two winged creatures was thought to be God’s throne, the place where God met the people of Israel, the place from which God spoke to them.

Sometimes both fable and parts of the Bible itself seem to attach “magical” properties to the Covenant Box — think “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — but it has nothing to do with magic. It is not that the box contained God or that God lived there or that the box itself is God. The box is simply the emblem, the reminder, of God’s presence among them, and the place where God, by God’s own choice, chose to meet them, just as God may choose to meet us here.

When the people of Israel tried to use the box as tool of magic, when they tried to control and manipulate its supposed power, they failed miserably. They carried the box into battle with them and were utterly defeated and the box was captured by the Philistines. The Covenant Box is no talisman, no good luck charm, no magic wand. God is no tool, no idol, to answer to our beck and call.

The ark was absent from Jerusalem for some twenty years, and now, as we heard read in the scripture, David is ready to bring the Covenant Box home, to “put” God back at the center of their lives. David leads the procession, all of them singing and dancing and playing musical instruments to honor the Lord, and then …

And then, suddenly the oxen pulling the cart on which the box was laid stumble and Uzzah reaches out to steady the box and … he is struck dead.

Oh, my!

You should know, my friends, that this text from 2 Samuel is the designated Old Testament reading for this Sunday, that is, most of it. The lectionary lists 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19 as the Old Testament reading, omitting verses 6-11, conveniently leaving out — timidly leaving out! — the whole part about Uzzah and the stumbling oxen. That’s not right! That’s not fair! We should have to deal with the hard parts of scripture, too, shouldn’t we? I saw that this was the text for the Sunday I was preaching and said to myself, “Oh, no!” But I knew we had to read the whole story!

So what’s going on? What sense do we make of this? Perhaps we can’t. Perhaps we cannot make sense of this. And that is okay. We do not have to have everything figured out to our own satisfaction to be able to put our trust in the God who is.

In my mind, this is not about some moral transgression on Uzzah’s part or some capricious, vengeful act on God’s part. It’s about a God who cannot, must not, be seen or touched, who cannot, must not, be trifled with, a God who cannot, must not, be treated as we might treat anyone or anything else, a God utterly holy, wholly numinous, a God who is not “safe,” a God who is … God.

Would you want a God who was “safe,” harmless, innocuous, impotent, toothless, entirely understandable, entirely predictable, entirely controllable? We do often want such gods! And I call them gods (lowercase “g”) because the gods of our own choosing are not God.

There are parts of the church that treat God almost as a cosmic “buddy,” a friend who gives me whatever it is I want, whose sole purpose is to make my life better, happier, more fulfilled.

And there are parts of the church that use “God” as an emblem, a symbol, a name to lend credence to our own political and social ideologies, whether conservative or liberal. This “god” becomes a means, to motivator, to use in the pursuit of our own political ambitions.

There are parts of the church that see God as a guarantor and defender of the lines they have already drawn, between friends and enemies, insiders and outsiders, good guys and bad guys, a god who is always conveniently on their side.

And there are parts of the church that see God everywhere, God in everything, indiscriminately endorsing and approving of whatever it is we want to endorse and approve, asking nothing of us, not asking us to change anything about ourselves.
There are many, many, many more such “gods,” but what all these gods have in common is that they are a means to an end — money, power, health, wealth, happiness, fulfillment, control, peace of mind — ends of my own choosing. What all these gods have in common is that they are not God, but idols.

God is … and we can only come into the presence of the living God as David did, with fear and with joy. Fear and joy? Can these, do these, belong together?

They do! Fear, because God is fearful, awe-ful, glorious, powerful, mighty, all-mighty, and joy because God is — because God is! — because God is the source of all that is, because God is the source of all that is good, because God is good.

What happens when people come into God’s presence? What happened to Moses, to Isaiah, to Job? They are humbled … and healed. They are overwhelmed with their own insignificance … and they are made to understand their true identity, their true calling, their true value as children of God. In getting a glimpse of who God is, they better know who they are, finally leaving behind that endless compulsion to have to be the ones in control, pulling the levers, manipulating the strings, fashioning the future, ensuring the outcome.

My friends, we are not God … thanks be to God! And we are doomed to misery and to failure whenever we try to be God or to worship a god of our own making. We are not God, but God chooses to come among us, to be among us, to grant us access to God’s own life-giving presence, to invite us into relationship, into covenant, into communion, into life.

Fear and joy. May we come to church expecting to meet God here and may we come to worship in that spirit, the spirit of fear and joy. May we tremble like David trembled and sing like David sang and dance like David danced. With all his might! With all our might. That’s how Jesus said we were to love God … with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might.

Father, we adore you,
lay our lives before you,
how we love you.

Peace be with you

Peace be with you

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A sermon for the Sunday after Easter, based on John 20:19-23 and Acts 4:32-35

It was late that Sunday evening and they were gathered together behind locked doors because they were afraid. They were afraid and they were distressed. They were distressed because in just a few days — just days! — the world as they knew it had ceased to exist.

Because he had become their world. It was their life to follow him, to listen to him, to learn from him, yes, maybe even to try to emulate him. Just days ago, they had still been with him in the lake country, moving from town to town, house to house, synagogue to synagogue, he astonishing the people with his air of authority and his healing touch and his urgent message — “The time is now! God is on the move among you now!”

They had warned him, urged him, begged him not to go to Jerusalem, not this time, not this year. They knew who and what was waiting for him there. They did not doubt that he knew too, but he went anyway and they went with him. The people saw him as he neared the city. The people saw him and recognized him and hailed his arrival with shouts and enthusiastic praise.

But then … it all unravelled … so fast. Judas — one of them! — Judas and Roman soldiers and Temple guards accosting him in the garden, taking him, binding him, hauling him off. Hauled before the high priest and then a Roman tribunal. Questioned and mocked and beaten … and executed.

And executed …

He was gone, he was dead, and the world as they knew it was gone. They had no one to follow now, no one to listen to now, no one to learn from, nowhere to go, nothing to do. They were afraid, they were distressed, they were at a loss, looking for answers, looking for peace.

And Jesus came among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”

It is Sunday morning and we are gathered, not together, because we can’t be together, but gathered virtually, seeing each other, hearing each other, but not touching, not being together. We are afraid and distressed. We are distressed because in just a few days it seemed — days that became weeks that became months and now a year and more — the world as we knew it ceased to exist.

An infectious and deadly virus has put all of us at risk, but even when it has not touched our bodies, it has
ravaged our souls. Some of the rhythms of our lives are seemingly the same. We sleep, eat, read, check the news, take a trip to the grocery, maybe take a walk in the woods, but so much is not, so much has been lost. No long-planned trip to Scotland, no trips to the museum or the art gallery, no concerts, no dinner parties, no going to the movies, no going to a game.

All these may seem extra, expendable, superfluous, but it is so much of our humanness that has been taken away, so much of what we do in community, so much of what we do with each other: the work we do together, the things we create together, the holidays we celebrate together, the new places or new ideas or new adventures we discover together. There is no being together. Our lives have become like our computer avatars: virtual, two-dimensional, insensate, isolated. There is no singing, no hugging, no handshakes. There is no communion.

Relaxed restrictions and accelerated vaccinations bring us a glimmer of hope, but we don’t know, we just don’t know. Infection rates are widely increasing, not decreasing, and new variants provoke new worries. So we are at a loss still, we are distressed still, and we are afraid still, looking for answers, looking for peace.

And Jesus comes among us, and says, “Peace be with you.”

Peace be with you …

Peace is Jesus’ gift to you, right here and right now. Not to some of you, but to all of you. Not because you have earned it or asked for it or even believed it, but simply because he gives it.

Peace be with you, peace that far surpasses all human understanding, peace that keeps you safe, peace that makes you well, peace that fills you up with every kind of good thing, peace that brings you every kind of blessing.

Peace be with you. It is his gift, and because it is his to give, you cannot lose it. This peace is unshakeable. No one and nothing can take it away from you. It is yours, it is ours, for always, today and tomorrow … always.

Peace be with you … in the midst of doubt, in the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of distress. This peace is not absence, not absence of conflict or absence of struggle or absence of pain. This peace is presence, the presence of Jesus and all he brings with him, the presence of endurance, the presence of strength, the presence of wisdom, the presence of joy, the presence of life that is full and meaningful and good.

Peace be with you. Peace of mind, yes, but more than that, so much more than that. Not inner peace, but human peace, peace of mind and soul and body, peace of the whole of us, and peace between us, peace as we eat and sleep and walk and work, peace as we watch and listen, peace as we think and feel and choose, peace as we vote and as we give and as we offer help, peace as we believe and as we live what we believe, peace as we speak words of peace, and peace as we make peace. For peace is also a way.

Peace is a gift and peace is a way.

There was no one among them who was in need. Do you hear? There was no one among them who was in need! All had enough, all had enough to live and to live well.

Because Jesus made them one. It wasn’t me against you anymore or me in competition with you or even me alongside you. It wasn’t me taking care of myself and mine anymore, but we, we taking care of each other, not merely caring about each other, but caring for each other, not sharing what we can spare, but sharing what we have.

There was no one among them who was in need, because Jesus made them one, and because the resurrection of Jesus set them free, free from fear, free from the need to store up in barns, free from having to make personal security priority #1, free to be generous, free to be wildly generous, free to be in love with this life, free to be in love with each other.

Resurrection is not just a spiritual reality; it is a human reality. Resurrection is not a promise for another life; resurrection is a promise for this life.

Resurrection is the promise — no, resurrection is the fact — that what is best, what is most precious, what is most beautiful, about the life we have, here and now, cannot and will not be taken from us.

Today we are not promised joy, we have joy, because Jesus lives and has made us alive with him. And today we are not promised peace, we have peace, because Jesus gives it. Because Jesus gives it.

Peace is his gift and peace is our way.

Peace be with you.