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A sermon
by Tom Hunter
WHEN OUR SHOES
ARE TURNED AROUND
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
First Congregational Church UCC, Bellingham, Nov. 8, 1998
I want you to know first of all what an honor it is to be invited to share
a sermon this morning; it's a bit like the wandering minstrel comes home.
I also want you to know that the irony of being invited to share a sermon
on this particular Sunday is not lost on the preacher of the morning.
My own relationship with pledging is one of struggle, so for me to
preach this morning is not only ironic, it's another piece of evidence
of God's grace. As I have wrestled with what to say (and believe me, I have
wrestled), one thing has become very clear: if you are going to preach
on stewardship Sunday, you'd better put your money where your mouth is.
When it's appropriate later this morning, I will. Let's keep some silence together.......... May the
words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O God. I think a journey and a trip are two very different things.
A trip has a particular destination, probably with
particular directions on how to get there. It's more
straightforward, somehow, clearer, like when I was growing
up and we would take trips to the beach or the mountains, or
to my grandmother's house -- clear destinations, clear ways
to get from here to there. A journey is more meandering than that, less tied to a
particular destination, more important somehow, with
exploring, with an inward component, with discovery
involved, maybe self discovery, more epic. Going to
college for me was a journey. There was a destination
alright -- from Claremont, CA to Amherst, MA and it was
clear how I would get from one to the other. But that trip
was much more than geography. It was a whole new chapter of
my life, away from home, a long way away from home and also
toward some sense of finding home, both, together, and
therefore a journey. I will never forget standing on that
street corner in Northampton, MA with a box and a suitcase
on Labor Day afternoon 1964 as I asked a policeman how to
get to Amherst. As I waited for the bus, homesick, alone,
heading for a place I'd never seen before, my prayer was
simple and as vivid as yesterday: "Please help me God.
Please support me on this journey."
We use the image of journey easily and often. The journey
of faith. LIfe's journey. A journey through marriage, I
heard someone say the other day. A friend says her sister
who just died is taking a journey to the great beyond. The
astronauts just returned from another journey into space.
The Exodus was a journey, of people moving out of slavery
into freedom, into a time of wandering and struggling to
find themselves and losing themselves again on their way to
the promised land. Paul journeyed to places around the
Mediterranean to nourish the beginnings of the church. And
here, in this place, the theme of our own stewardship season
tells us that we are sharing a journey. What kind of journey is it? Where is this journey to? where
from? how do we get there? or do we ever really get there?
are there good directions? good places to stop from time to
time to look around and wonder about where we're going and
who else is going and to get a good cup of coffee? A journey by its very nature may not have a clear
destination, but I think it does have a clear direction.
Journey suggests moving, going somewhere, a direction toward
something, a direction that may shift now and then, but
there is a direction, and sometimes the direction needs
reminders, which is why I like the story of the man who once
upon a time left his own home to seek the great city of
light far away. He walked and walked all day until just
before the sun went down, he thought he'd better prepare
himself a place to sleep for the night so he'd be refreshed
for the journey in the morning. He made a little bed beside
the trail, and before he went to sleep he put his shoes
beside the bed facing the direction he was going so in the
morning he would have a reminder of the proper direction
toward the great city of light far away. He then went to
sleep.
In the middle of the night someone came along and turned his
shoes around. In the morning, he awoke, put on his shoes
and set out on his journey again, toward the great city of
light far away, or so he thought. He walked and walked all
day until not long before the sun set, he looked up ahead
and saw a city that looked kind of familiar to him. He
entered into the city and found a neighborhood that looked
kind of familiar to him. He entered into the neighborhood
and found a house that looked very familiar to him. He
entered into the house and lived happily ever after. The theologian Henri Nouwen writes that the direction of
faith is the direction homeward. Maybe this journey then,
this journey you and I are sharing, is the journey to our
own homes, no matter how far we wander, no matter how often
our shoes need to be turned around, a journey to the homes
of our own lives because it's there, after all, that God's
word resides, right here, in me, in you. That's what
Christmas is about -- the Word becoming flesh to dwell among
us, right here, and in John's Gospel the language used to
talk about the Word becoming flesh suggests the sense of the
Word finding a home, taking up residence in Jesus, in us.
I believe that you and I are called to be stewards of God's
love, a love that has found a home right here in our own
lives. Maybe this journey you and I are sharing is a
journey that enables us to become better and more faithful
stewards of these homes of God's love.
Now I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have a clue what it means to
be a good steward of this particular home of God's love were
it not for the people I've shared the journey with, so I
want you to meet 3 of them. My hope is that these fellow
travelers of mine will remind you of some of yours. I say I'll mention 3 but it's really 4 because the first two
are my parents. I grew up in a family that kept the
Sabbath, literally. We did no work on Sundays, except for
work of necessity and mercy, like cooking and cleaning up,
and work of ministry. School homework and chores had to be
done by midnight Sat. night and Sun. was an enforced day for
family activities. We had a lot of fun on those days. I
also remember that often we didn't like it much, my brothers
and I, but I have no question to this day that a large part
of my sense of being a child of God came from being a child
of Mary Louis and Willard, parents who insisted on a weekly
discipline that continually reminded us that we were to be
good stewards of these homes of God's love. No matter where
we wandered during the week, we knew our shoes would be
turned around on Sun., turned toward the home of faith. The second person is Judith, an improvisational dance
teacher for whom I did music for a couple of years after I
graduated from seminary. Judith was a master teacher,
intent on helping her students find their own dance and
intent too on giving them a vocabulary of movement so they
would know what to do when they found it. I had begun
writing songs a couple of years before that, and one day I
shared with Judith several new efforts. She was quiet for a
long time, and then she said bluntly, "These aren't your
songs. It sounds like you're writing to please someone else
and it just doesn't work. You can do a lot better than
this." I remember being devastated; I valued her response.
But I also remember that little by little over the next
weeks, I began to hear extraordinary support in what she
said -- you can do better, don't settle for this, you are
not being a good steward of your own gifts. My shoes were
turned around so they could head me in the direction of the
home of my own creativity. The third person is Ed Meury, the minister of the First
Congregational Church UCC in Claremont, CA where I grew up.
Ed was something of a legendary preacher for many in the
UCC, intense, dynamic, a fighter whose sermons were full of
passion and honesty. When he preached, you could often hear
his own battles with the Word of God. Preaching was his
gift, his craft, and he was good. I can still quote lines
from his baccalaureate sermon when he told our graduating
class in 1964 to "please do disturb." During my college and
seminary years, we'd visit in his backyard whenever we
could, in Claremont and then in Durham, NH when he was
called to another church. We'd share theology, poetry, and
the latest books we had read. It was an important
friendship to both of us, and Ed rarely missed a chance to
encourage me to preach. "Make it good," he'd say, "make it
good; the Word of God deserves that." About a year after he died, his wife Skip called me, out of
the blue one day, to say she had finally found the strength
to deal with some of Ed's more important possessions. "I
want to send you his robe," she said. "It was important to
him and I think he'd want you to have it." You don't have
to know me very well to have noticed I don't often wear
robes. This morning I do. I wear Ed's robe, partly because
I know as he did and as every preacher knows, we need all
the help we can get to stand up here and do this, and partly
because I am very grateful for the way Ed as my fellow
traveler would now and then turn my shoes around to head me
toward the home of my faith, and how I might share and
preach that faith. Which brings us to this place. Not some metaphorical place,
but right here, this place, this church with its doors and
windows, foundations and roofs, its floors and ceilings and
pews. Journeys need places where fellow travelers can come
from time to time to share the journey. The Hebrew Bible is full of the details of places. God's
love is not just revealed; it's revealed in places, and
often people would build altars to honor the place and what
happened there. When those places are destroyed, it's
horrible, as we hear in what we read this morning in Haggai.
The temple had been wiped out, the place where people could
find comfort and nourishment for the journey was gone.
Imagine, then, the power of God's promise that the temple
would be restored, and to more than its former glory. A
place restored so that once again fellow travelers could
find comfort and nourishment and energy and courage in that
place, so that once again they could offer comfort and
nourishment and energy and courage to others. A place where
the arms of love were wide enough to hold everything those
people were, where they could hear the word of God and know
who they were because of it, where forgiveness went deep and
new life really was abundant. A place for all that, like
the temple in Haggai's time, like this temple too, this
church, right here. It is amazing to think of how often and in how many ways,
this place has offered itself to us that we might become
better and more faithful stewards of these particular homes
of God's love....... All the celebrating here, the weddings,
baptisms, births, achievements, learning and growing.......
All the grieving too, and we have shared some extraordinary
pain in this place, the deaths, the tears....... All the
prayers and the healing, the candles and communion and
singing and sermons....... All the hearts touched and
struggles embraced....... All the times our shoes have been
turned around so that we are once again headed the direction
homeward....... In a world that so often hurts, that so
often longs for a home, that so often is disconnected and
fragmented and numbed, it is a big deal what happens here
week after week, a very big deal indeed.
Today is the day we make decisions about how we want to
support this place and what it means to us and our fellow
travelers on the journey. The ushers will soon pass out
cards and we will all have a chance to pledge our support,
to put on these cards our names and how much money we can
give. Take your time as you fill it out. You may want to
be grateful for a moment, or consider how your giving is an
act of your own faith, or you may want to remember someone
who has helped you know what it means to be a good steward.
Take whatever time you need; we have time this morning. And
when you're ready, bring your card forward to the altar.
Come alone if you'd like, or come with a partner, or with
your family, or with a friend. Come, even if you are not
yet ready to pledge; bring a blank card or bring a note.
But please do come, and let your coming forward be an act of
commitment.
And as you come, you might want to look around. You might
want to notice that you are in good company here. We are
not alone. We have God's promised presence. And we have
fellow travelers too, fellow travelers with whom we share a
journey, fellow travelers with whom we have laughed and
prayed and celebrated and wept, fellow travelers who might
even have turned our shoes around a time or two, so that we
could be headed in the direction homeward once again, toward
being better and more faithful stewards of these lives we've
been given, these homes of God's love. Go well, friends. Travel safely, and God be with us all. Let us pray: Please help us, O God. Support us on our
journey. Give us clarity and give us courage that our
pledges of money and commitment this day may help this place
support many journeys into more faithful stewardship of your
love. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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