Sunday, October 28, 2012

The undiscovered country


Psalm 23; Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8; John 14: 1-3
First Church of Christ, UCC, Woodbridge, CT
October 28, 2012 – Reformation Sunday
 
Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun, Vincent Van Gogh
 
 
             For the first time in a long time I am diverging from the lectionary.  Normally I like to receive an assignment from the Holy Spirit:  “Here, preach on this!” and then struggle with what I’m given.  In this way the scripture has a way of working on me even as I am working on the sermon.  In spite of this, the Holy Spirit seemed to have another idea.
 
            Last week I attended the funeral of a long time member of my church in Monroe.  Marie had four sons, one of whom preceded her into God’s glory.  The other three spoke in turn about their loving mother, of how she raised her boys into men who loved their mother, each other and what it means to be a human being in this world.
 
            The three scriptures for today’s worship came from Marie’s service.  As I sat in the pew and read them in the worship bulletin, I saw words and phrases that spoke to me of this church, right now.  “He restoreth my soul.”  “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”  “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”  “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”  “…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”  “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”
 
            And then the sermon title came to me:  “The Undiscovered Country”.  Some of you may recognize this phrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  In his famous soliloquy that begins “To be or not to be”, Hamlet contemplates taking his own life but cannot find the courage to carry through—not because of any fear of divine wrath but because of the great unfathomable unknown that awaits him.
 
“Who would Burdens bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.”
 
(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, 76-82)
 
            But those few of you who may be Star Trek fans will recognize the phrase ‘the undiscovered country’ from the sixth movie of the same name, where it refers not to death, but to the future—itself a great unfathomable unknown that awaits us all.
 
 
            There are times we human beings approach the future in the same way we approach death.  Both can make us feel more than just uncomfortable but vulnerable, defenseless.  We’d rather not talk about it but if we do, we do so with some measure of dread.  Some days we do all we can to forestall it.  There are days that thoughts of the future “make us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of”.  We fear it because we don’t know what lies ahead, especially in this ever-changing world.  Yes, we have faith, we have trust in God but in truth we really don’t know.  When the old mapmakers reached the end of the known world, they wrote “beyond here there be dragons”.  No one has traveled to the future or to death and returned to tell us what is there waiting for us.
 
            What we do have is Jesus’ reassurance, that in God’s house there are many rooms and that Jesus goes ahead to prepare a place for us, not only beyond death, but also into our future.  Jesus has gone ahead of us, like a guide building and lighting a bonfire in the distance, so that weary travelers can find him and come to the place that been prepared.
 
Walk with me, Lord
Walk with me
Walk with me, Lord
Walk with me
While I’m on this pilgrim journey
I want Jesus to walk with me
 
 
            Meanwhile we are on our pilgrim journey, looking for those still waters, that promised green pasture in which to lie down just for a while.  We tend to wander off the paths of righteousness from time to time, sometimes stepping off the path just so we can find it anew.  Because it’s not an easy path, is it?  Righteousness isn’t something we come by naturally.  Sometimes we stumble across it like a gift.  Most of the time it comes from perseverance, from striving in our daily living to align our actions with the will of God.  And we need God’s help to do this.  All the time.
 
Hold my hand, Lord
Hold my hand
Hold my hand, Lord
Hold my hand
While I’m on this pilgrim journey
I want Jesus to hold my hand
 
            In order to sit at that table with our enemies that God has prepared, we need God to help us stay at that table, to not leave until both we and our enemy have been fed and satisfied, for that is what God intends.  Rather than God helping those who help themselves (which is not biblical), God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, even what seems impossible.
 
 
            Even when we cannot imagine the way forward through the valley of the shadow of death, the place has not only been prepared, and the way, but Jesus promises to come again, to take us to where he is, that we may be there also.  Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, through the surprising grace of the Holy Spirit, God is willing to do whatever it takes to get us to where God is.  God is not yet done with us, for God is still speaking.
 
Be my guide, Lord
Be my guide
Be my guide, Lord
Be my guide
While I’m on this pilgrim journey
I want Jesus to be my guide
 
            But it doesn’t mean we get to walk around Good Friday and the time in the tomb, that valley of death.  Our way to that future that Jesus has prepared leads straight through the way of sorrow.  When Jesus said, “Pick up your cross and follow me”, we knew where he was going but did we really think we were going anywhere else?[1]
 
            There is a season for everything, and seasons mean that there are cycles, ebb and flow, phases of light and darkness that are intended for growth.  And growth includes dying as much as planting, birth, and harvest.  We can’t have one without any of the others.  Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it bears no fruit.”  There is no growth, there is no harvest if the seed does not die.

 
 
We are the Body of Christ, something altogether different from another non-profit or an organization or a club or even a family.  Jesus came to change human lives: to heal, to forgive, to love unconditionally, to show justice, to be fearlessly generous with himself that everyone would know the love of God that has the power to transform us into something new.  It doesn’t mean that the way we are is bad or not good enough but that God is still creating us, shaping us, renewing us because that’s what a Creator does.
 
The purpose of being the Body of Christ is to be Christ in the world:  a living, breathing body doing the work of Christ—healing, forgiving, loving unconditionally, working for justice, being fearlessly generous with ourselves that everyone would know that the love of God has the power to change human lives.  And we are called continually to seek out how to live that purpose in our own lives and in our life together as a community.
 
Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and author, writes that “[seeking] depends on the willingness to let God lead us through the deserts of a lifetime, along routes we would not go, into the Promised Land of our own lives.”   How willing are we to be led to that yet undiscovered country called the future?  How healthy is our trust in God?  For surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, yes?  Then though we may have everything to fear, we have nothing to lose and all to gain.

 
Nobody but you, Lord
Nobody but you
Nobody but you, Lord
Nobody but you
While I’m on this pilgrim journey
Nobody but you, Lord
Nobody but you
 
Amen.


[1] Thanks to J. Barrett Lee for his reflection, A Growing Church is a Dying Church

Lizz Wright, "Walk With Me, Lord" - live, Soho Revue Bar
 


Star Trek VI - "The Undiscovered Country" trailer
 

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