Today's Sermon

 

"This And That”

 

First Reading
Isaiah 43:18-19
¹⁸Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
¹⁹I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

When a mentor of mine took a new congregation, in his first Sunday he read the passage you just heard on his first Sunday.  He also read this passage:

Second Reading
Isaiah 46:8-9
⁸Remember this and consider,
   recall it to mind, you transgressors,
⁹  remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
   I am God, and there is no one like me,

THIS TOO IS HOLY WISDOM, HOLY WORD.  THANKS BE TO GOD.

 This And That

            “Do not remember the former things…”  The past can bind you.  There can be a need to break free of old habits, dysfunctional patterns and relationships. 

           “Remember the former things....”  The past can also bless you, not just with fond memories, but insight to avoid repeating mistakes.  To claim no past is to be adrift with no sense of where you come from, blown about by prevailing winds. 

            Wisdom is not regurgitating some Bible verse unthinkingly, for you will find verses with contradictory messages.  Wisdom is knowing which piece of knowledge applies to what situation. In some cases, it means discerning when it is good to hold fast to the familiar and when it is good to break free. 

           Wisdom is about avoiding exclusively binary ways of thinking.  If you are familiar with dialectical theory, you will understand this. Holding two poles in tension can lead to a far more interesting and vital equilibrium, than rushing exclusively to one pole.  To use the prior example, all memory, all past, and you get stuck in stale traditionalism, with no room for growth, evolution, learning, change, adaptation. All novelty, on the other hand, all newness, and there’s little time to develop any depth.  It’s shallow, untethered, random even, and ironically often narrower than the tradition it seeks to escape.  Held together, the two poles create a powerful dynamic interplay, rooted and alive, deep and moving. 

            I bring all this up because as we continue our series exploring our Christian Identity Statement, today we focus on three sets of polarities that we have chosen to hold together:  We treasure our beliefs andare open-minded.  We are traditional andevolving.  We are reverent and joyful.  The power is in the “and.”  

            Let’s take them one at a time.  We treasure our beliefs as followers of Jesus Christ.  That’s who we are, and we treasure our beliefs, those we share as Christians and those we hold dear as individuals.  Our beliefs ground us.  We are also open-minded, recognizing we can learn from others, be blessed by others and others’ beliefs.  If we are truly grounded, then another’s belief is not a threat; it’s an opportunity even if only to affirm more strongly what you are about.  If we are only about our beliefs, we fall into the trap of fundamentalism, absolutism, a kind of rigidity that misses some opportunities for expansion.  Have you ever noticed that fundamentalist movements have come and gone and the one thing they don’t agree upon are the definitive list of the fundamentals?  Only being open loses all boundaries altogether, and when you are about everything you are really about nothing.  My guess is your beliefs have retained some continuity throughout your life while embracing a degree of change, and that is the faithful journey. 

            Second, we are traditional and evolving.  Here, we were thinking not only of theology, but of style.  Just last week, we walked into Patty playing Pachelbel’s Canon on the organ.  Then, minutes later it’s a contemporary folk song on guitars.  That captures it.  Either one can be beautiful.  Held together, they not only appeal to a wider crowd, but they make for a richer and more layered experience, pleasing and stretching us regardless of our preference.  Our order of worship is fairly traditional, deeply rooted in Reformed Christianity, our garb traditional; I like to think we inhabit traditional forms with a fresh energy.  We don’t speak in Latin, with our backs turned from you as was done in the past. More than that we try and speak in a way that connects.  Only tradition and we grow stale, disconnected, irrelevant.  Only evolving and nothing the same week to week, there’s nothing reliable, no rituals that hold us, no familiar or beloved hymns, nothing to rely upon, and in attempt to be hip and trendy we pass as fast as any superficial fad.

            Third, we want to be reverent andjoyful.  Reverence is a way of interacting with the world that expresses passion, care, and appreciation.  It’s a recognition of the miracle of it all, the weight and substance of things.  I am in a group of civic and religious leaders wrestling with the very weighty matter of the environment, and one of the tools we’re claiming is that of reverence, to restore a sacred appreciation for the created world.  Reverance is a lost art.  This is why when we teach in our sacred stories class to our young people, we teach them how to walk gently, how to put the materials away softly, intentionally.  It’s a reverence for the stories themselves and for all God has made. If we can be reverent to one thing, we can to another, and hopefully to one another.  One of the lessons Jesus embodies is recognizing what deserves our reverence (often what is discarded by society), and what warrants our irreverence (often misplaced values of the dominant culture).

            Our reverence, however, does not come at the expense of joy.  Joy is a marker of faith, not unending happiness for that comes and goes, but joy.  Laughter can be holy.  If reverence recognizes weightiness, then joy understands the blessing of lightness.  Think of those who hold these two together. Our Spiritual Life book group is currently doing The Book of Joythat chronicles the friendship of The Dala Lama and Desmond Tutu, very reverent figures, and yet their connection is marked by joy and laughter.  Only reverence and everything feels heavy.  Only joy and we fail to honor the full weight of the human experience.  

            The challenge for all of you who make this church is to hold all of these in tension.  As you lead things, plan things, participate in ministry, you can ask, “How are we being reverent and joyful?  How are this rooted in the best of our tradition and how is it open to evolving ways of doing things?  How are we honoring the commitment to our beliefs and being open-minded to new learnings?”  We may lean toward one pole at any given moment and that may be appropriate, but if as a whole we can keep these in healthy tension, then we will bear the most fruit.

            I have now talked about this for a while.  Let’s practice it now with the notion of being traditional and evolving.  In a moment we will do communion, one of the most ancient of Christian practices, instituted by Jesus himself, and practiced continually for close to 2,000 years.  How could we hold some poles together on this? 

            Let’s use our church’s communion table, a reminder of that first table, but I wonder rather than how we usually do it, would one of you like to break the bread when it’s time?

            We will say some of the prayers, but would any of you like to pour the cup?

            And there are words that are said before we do that.  Would anyone here like to do that with us?  We will talk you through it. 

            And I wonder…we still are not quite serving the elements yet, though I think that is coming sooner rather than later, so maybe we could try something new.  Might we have a few people who would just stand around the sanctuary, offering quiet prayer for those here and this this sacred ritual we are sharing together?

            This isn’t the way we’ve done this.  Well, don’t remember the former things.

            This is a really sacred ritual, passed down by generations, the essence of which is sacred.  Well, remember the things of old.  

            Amen.