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A Stand of TreesFebruary 11, 2007 Sixth Sunday after Epiphany So what’s the point in joining a church? I get that question with some regularity. Sometimes, if it isn’t stated explicitly, I know it rides just below the surface of many conversations when I’m out and about. People who are not members of a religious organization often have crinkled brows when they’re looking at me, trying to figure it out. How is it that I came to do the thing that I do, in the place that I do it? I imagine their thinking goes something like this: “How is it that this reasonable and personable man, who seems to fall within the bounds of ‘normal,’ wound up being a minister?” And by minister they’re meaning, in part, a professional within the church. I know that some of you have asked yourself the church question. I know this because you’ve spoken to me about it. I suppose, if I were not doing my minister gig, I’d ask it of myself. It’s a very valid question. God knows the church demonstrates an imperfect example with a rich catalogue of sins to its credit over the centuries. Even today it struggles in its many parts and factions to fashion a proper identity. Sometimes I think that, given the array of conflicts and problems the collective church exhibits, it’s rather remarkable that it flourishes with such seeming vitality within our culture. But as for that, it’s useful to remember that the church is only people. Yes, people who supposedly listen for the voice of God, but people nevertheless, with their full range of potentials from the great to the depressing. Still, for all of the members’ foibles, the church has managed to promulgate the essential way of Jesus for centuries. It remains a glorious repository of sacred wisdom forged in humanity’s dynamic and complicated relationship with God, as well as with one another. So, those of you who have thrown in here, on a day we receive new family members, I’m thinking it’s a useful exercise to consider the point of all this. I mean, all this extravagant architecture, and music, and whatnot. All the programming you see advertised in your bulletin, even something as routine as Coffee Hour that follows on the heels of worship. What does this all actually mean, anyway? Where has the motivation come, such as it is, for attaching yourselves to this particular group in this particular place? Even if you’ve grown up in church, at some point, if your religious association will have robust vitality, you will ask these sorts of questions. So what if you grew up Methodist or Catholic or something else entirely? What did that association mean? What does it have to do with what’s deeply important about life? I’ve now been here long enough to be able to say that my presence on this spot predates more than 95% of the people who now fill this room. I look around in wonderment sometimes, thinking that surely you wouldn’t have chosen to assemble the people here on your own. You wouldn’t have picked the people who share your pew as your unlikely siblings, right? You took something of a gamble, I suppose, when you staked out your pew here. At least, some may have thought about it like that. Of course, others hang out at the edges, conflicted about the meaning, or better yet, the commitments of belonging. Often, I find these persons are very interesting in this way: they take the matter of membership very seriously, sometimes more so than those who’ve joined. Of course, some might perseverate in their questions forever. For, at the end of the day, joining a church requires a decision. It concerns matters of meaning and life direction. It is staking a claim, and a rather important one at that – potentially, among the very most important one could make. And I don’t mean that in some narrow, parochial sense. I mean it in a fundamental, life-orienting sense. For instance, you came to church today and you heard an ancient text read, a text that’s close to 2,800 years old, that was attributed to someone named Jeremiah. On any given Sunday, you may or may not be paying attention to all the goings-on in here; but today, we had an opportunity to hear Jeremiah announce poignant and fundamental wisdom. In essence, he said there is an elemental choice to make in life – trusting ourselves, or trusting God. He likened those who fundamentally trusted themselves and their own powers and abilities to a shrub in the desert that lived in the parched places of the wilderness, an arid salt land. He said persons who made that choice were cursed. Why? Because they cut themselves off from life-giving water. On the other hand, those who trusted God were like a tree planted by a stream, sending out its roots to the water. This tree “shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought, it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” [1] Jeremiah says that people who choose to be planted by this stream are blessed. Note that he does not say there will never be a drought again; instead, he says that come what may, their roots will always have true water – that’s the blessing – and even in the time of drought they will still have the ability to bear fruit. I find this a simple, beautiful, and powerful image. Trusting ourselves, or trusting God. Pretty basic, I know. But then, as I often say, we often lose track of the basics, even those of us who have hung around places like this for the better part of our lives. And yet, where else in our culture, where else in our daily and mundane affairs would this sort of wisdom be routinely accessed and affirmed? Do you hear that at work? On the street? In the media? At school? Addressing these questions, we begin to approach the reasons for our fellowship. To stretch the image a bit, we could think of ourselves as a stand of trees that have been transplanted by the stream of life-giving water. That sounds rather ennobling, doesn’t it? At least, it does to my ears. If this image does speak to you, it probably means you’ve made a life choice about your fundamental orientation in this matter of ultimate trust. We live in a culture that values individual autonomy and self-sufficiency above all else. Now, to a certain degree, autonomy and self-sufficiency is healthy and useful. But the self is not god. The individual ego can never really stand alone successfully. By ourselves, each of us makes for a very weak and puny god – as Jeremiah says, like a shrub in an arid desert cut off from water. So when we’re at our best in here, “joining the church” is way to put a tangible and symbolic action to this fundamental choice. In this way, it matters quite a lot. We are staking a claim. On the one hand, we’re saying the self, even, myself, is not the center of the universe. On the other hand, God is. I’m indebted to our friend and theologian, Christopher Morse, for pointing out that whenever we stake a claim like this, we are announcing what we believe as well as what we disbelieve. As an example, in his book, Not Every Spirit, [2] he references the earliest Christian confession “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Those words are overly familiar to most of us, maybe reduced to a platitude, and surely quite removed in meaning from anything particularly political. “But the term ‘Lord’ had a secular [meaning] in the Roman world. Only Caesar…could be Lord. The loyalty oath, the pledge of allegiance, throughout the empire was expressed in the words, ‘Kyrios Kaisar’ (‘Caesar is Lord’). Baptism in such an environment was a radically political act, for the confession ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ represented a subversive claim.”[3] Baptism was claiming a life orientation that included some things, but excluded others. It was identifying ultimate loyalties. Interestingly then, Christians were persecuted less for what they believed than for what they disbelieved. They got into trouble by their absence from the imperial shrines. We have different imperial shrines today, different competitors for our allegiance, but you see the point. I want you to understand the stakes in our activity here. When we choose to be among a stand of trees by living water, we cannot be standing elsewhere simultaneously. We are here, not there. You know exactly how this is on any given Sunday. You cannot be here physically and somewhere else simultaneously. Yes, of course, once we affirm our ultimate loyalties, those loyalties attend us wherever we are. Having staked my claim here, if I find myself in Timbuktu, my roots still drink from living water. But staking the claim becomes a rather crucial activity. For some this is quite dramatic. For others, it’s a quiet and slow acceptance. Still others find it a very great struggle. But whatever the case, there come moments to affirm the choices that have been made, whatever they may be. And we all know from personal experience that not to choose, is, paradoxically, a very definite choice. In just a moment, we’ll be welcoming new sisters and brothers into our family. They are making a choice; if you look carefully, you will see them standing near to living water. Some will even receive this water for the first time. It is no coincidence that baptism is a ritual with water. As we’ve heard, the metaphor is ancient and elemental. To bless and honor this holy occasion, let me offer the hymn-prayer on the front of today’s bulletin. It comes from the Iona community in Scotland and captures some of the content of the choices that are being made today: Come, Host of heaven’s high dwelling place, come, earth’s disputed guest, find in this house a welcome home, stay here and take your rest. Surround these walls with faith and love, that through the nights and days, when human tongues from speaking cease, these stones may echo praise. Here may the losers find their worth, the strangers find a friend, here may the hopeless find their faith and aimless find an end. Build from the human fabric signs of how your kingdom thrives; of how the Holy Spirit changes life through changing lives. So to the Lord whose care enfolds the world held in his hands, be glory, honor, love and praise for which this house now stands. Previous sermon: A Thin Place • Next sermon: Holy Encounters All past sermons |
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