Text: Exodus 12:1-14
Date: September 4, 2011
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
© Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
So Shawn, an Irishman, meets his friend Paddy on the way to church. “You’re looking sad this morning, Paddy,” says Shawn. “What’s troubling you so?”
“Well, I’ve been to a funeral,” says Paddy.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” answers Shawn. “A friend of yours?”
“Oh, yes, a fine friend,” says Paddy. “A loving husband, a devoted father, but an atheist.”
“An Atheist. Is that why you’re so sad?” asked Shawn.
“Yes,” Paddy answers. “I looked down at him in his casket, dressed in his finest jacket, shirt, and tie, and I thought to my self, ‘Poor Seamus, all dressed up and no where to go.”
Well, I’m happy to leave the eternal destiny of Seamus to his creator, but his predicament begs the question for all who do profess a belief in God, are we expecting to go anywhere? I was entering family birthdays into Google calendar the other day, and with each addition I was given several options:
Is this a recurring event? Yes
How often will this event occur? Yearly
For how many years will this event reoccur or will it reoccur forever?
That’s the question, isn’t it? I’d like to think that I’ll be having a birthday 20 years from now, but I’m pretty sure 100 years from now is pretty optimistic. Although I did read an article from a reliable source last month that suggested that the first human beings to reach the age of 150 have almost certainly already been born. So be nice to the kids in the nursery; they may be around for a while.
All dressed up and no place to go. Maybe you saw the cartoon of the three angels in heaven, one sitting on a cloud with a laptop computer close at hand, weeping profusely. “What’s wrong with him?” asked one of the angels. The other answered, “No Internet access.” The point is that heaven is going be a dreadfully boring place if we don’t live now like we expect to be living then. Do we really expect to live eternally checking our Facebook page, watching Soap Operas, and looking for good buys on Ebay? We had a reminder of our technology dependence last week as power went out across the region, and then came back slowly, for some not until Friday or Saturday. And as I saw folks later in the week or as they got back on-line, some reported that they had had the worst time of their lives, while others--even with all the difficulties--described the experience as life-changing. Tracy Cochran, who’s a blogger on Word Press, wrote about how the dynamics of her family and community life began to change.
“For days,” she writes, “I collected sticks in the yard to burn as kindling in the wood stove, and hauled buckets of water into the house to flush the toilet and wash the dishes. It was strange, being so cut off in one sense yet feeling so intimately connected with life and with the way much of the rest of the world lives. Instantly, I was aware of how precious clean water is, and how much I usually waste. Suddenly, I became aware that a house grows dark and cold at night without someone to build a fire and tend it. I became the fire builder, the keeper of the hearth. Anthony, my daughter Alex’s boyfriend from England, cooked food on the cast iron stove. We all learned how long it takes to cook over a fire—hours! And yet this was the center of the evening, the light and warmth from the fire, the promise of warm food, the common talk of how it was coming along, and then stories we told as we ate. We all learned what is elemental and crucial, and that these basic things can be hard work, yet there is something inherently good and right about it. All beings deserve to eat and be warm and safe, and being mindfully engaged in this work can bring wisdom about life. ....
“As the third day dawned to no hot coffee or tea (unless I got up and built a fire and waited for three hours), it began to feel like an ordeal. Alex was sick with a bad cold, our water supply was almost exhausted–and I discovered that those little moments of good humor—that impulse to forget ourselves and help someone else are as crucial as fire. On the third night, as I was struggling to light a fire with damp kindling, the neighbors came by with big pales of fresh water: “We wanted to give you the gift of being able to flush the toilet,” they said.
“...I...marveled at the way this common humanity–this pulling together–just arose spontaneously. We innately know we can’t go it alone. We neighbors who rarely have the chance to stop and talk stood outside together laughing and talking (for hours). We even looked up at the stars that we commented were so clear without ambient lights....” (http://parabolatracy.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/irene-lessons/)
I don’t want to romanticize life without technology. The memories of last week are too fresh for that. But it is clear that something emerges when the lights go out that is closer to our heavenly life than our typical everyday existence. We appreciate the value of our relationships, we marvel at natural wonders that we’re inclined to ignore, we appreciate the simplicity of warm food, adequate portions, and shared responsibility.
I read these words with today’s Scripture lesson close at hand. Moses is told to prepare the people for Passover, that wonderful yet terrible night when the angel of death will smite the first born of their oppressors. In order to preserve their families from this terrible fate, the Hebrews are asked to distinguish themselves from the society in which they live by gathering for a meal, a Passover meal. They are to roast a lamb and to find someone to share it with (Passover is a community event and doesn’t come in single serving containers). They are told to dress as those who expect to be delivered from slavery by morning--shoes on their feet, staff in their hand. There are to be no leftovers, because surely tomorrow morning we will be free.
Likewise, we are called to gather here this morning for this meal set before us. It is the foretaste of the heavenly life that will envelope us when we run out of birthdays. It is communal, and lived in real time, when we are gathered together. It can’t be shared electronically or experienced historically, it can only be eaten now, here, and together. It is more powerful than the darkness which will surround us tonight when the sun goes down, it is more powerful than the hunger as we wait for fire to warm our food; this altar is the hearth around which we gather so that our story may be told to those who haven’t heard it, as well as those who have, but who don’t mind hearing it again. This altar has been here for mere decades, but it is also ancient. It has been the gathering place of our ancestors since Jesus first broke bread upon it and said to his friends, “This is my body, broken for you.” Indeed, it is the same table upon which a roasted lamb was placed, as mothers told their children, “Eat all of it, because tomorrow we will know freedom.”
All dressed up, and someplace to go. Have your staff in your hand, and your shoes on your feet this morning, for this world is not our home. Amen.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Sermon for Homecoming Sunday
Text: Romans 8:26-39
Date: July 24, 2011 (Homecoming)
© Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
Homecoming. What a wonderful word, and a wonderful day. To see faces that we haven’t seen in a long time, to feel once again the power of place in our spiritual journey, to experience in a small, miniscule way what it must be like to arrive at our heavenly home, whether five minutes from now or a century. Homecoming.
I’ve had a number of Homecoming experiences this year. In part due to my Dad’s illness, I’ve become nostalgic for places that I have left behind, places that he and I have shared. We lived for five years in Marlborough, Connecticut, outside of Hartford when I was seven or eight years old, and I diverted on a journey last fall to go see my old house, and school, and church. It all seemed so small, and the distances so much shorter than I remembered. My school was gone completely, swallowed up by an expansion project now 20 years old. But as I drove slowly from school to my old home on Chapman Road memories came flooding back: the house where we used to trick or treat twice and the owner would pretend not to remember. The backyard studio where I took music lessons, now become a tool shed. The store where I bought sour apple chewing gum on the Fourth of July one year, just before the parade started. The Library where I read every Hardy Boys book ever printed. The Little League field where I sweated and prayed that the ball wouldn’t be hit to me, or if it was that I wouldn’t do anything stupid like get hit in the face with it. The house of a friend, whose father worked for Hostess; the pantry in the home had a magical Twinkie box that never ever hit bottom. I had to stop myself from ringing the illuminated doorbell and asking for a Yodel or Drake’s cake. Strangely enough one of my good friends from my Pennsylvania college now lives two doors down from this home in the tangle of relationships that we weave over a life time.
My old home was different. The deck was now a sunroom, the shingles painted rather than weathered. But the old apple trees out back were still there, along with an ancient grape arbor that was old when we lived there 40 years ago, the remnant of a farm long since subdivided. The church continues to thrive, now nearly in its 200th year; I know that because I was there for their sesquicentennial celebration in the early 70s, and my mom had to explain that it meant 150 years. There is still a wrought iron boot scraper at the front door of the church, beckoning those with mud on their shoes to nonetheless enter the house of God, fresh from the fields and the morning milking. The dairy farms have long since gone, of course, but the boot scraper remains; it used to fascinate me as a kid; I’d forgotten that. I went around to the back door, which was locked, but recalled the Sunday we left my brother at Church. I don’t know how, but we went tearing back to get him and there he stood with the pastor at the kitchen door waiting for us, secure in the knowledge that we’d be back. No one greeted me on this little trip down memory lane. After 40 years, most everyone I know there has moved on or would be unrecognizable to me, and I to them. Do they know that the kid in the back row of the Sunday School class who asked all those pesky questions wound up in the ministry? Probably not. We have, to use the usual term, “lost touch.”
Probably while I’ve been speaking the last few minutes, you’ve taken your own nostalgic trip, to that home that you left behind, the church where you grew up, the school, or job, or place of natural beauty that you’d love to visit just one more time. If so, perhaps you learned—as I did on my detour that day—that while places may hold a fascination for us or remind us of old times, it’s the people that we miss. We go home to where we are remembered because we don’t want to loose touch, to re-establish touch, to share a handshake or a hug or a story of long ago, to reinsert ourselves into the story of a place and a people that we miss.
Paul, in the eighth chapter of Romans, reminds us that there is no touch in our life that is ever completely lost. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks. “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No….” I love it when Paul answers his own questions; it saves so much time. “For I am convinced,” he writes, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When I lead Young Adventurer’s Camp at Mechuwana, my co-dean Todd shares a story by Max Lucado with the kids, a story of the Wemmicks, a puppet people who are strangely similar to some non-puppet people that you might encounter from time to time. The Wemmicks often find themselves in some self-inflicted turmoil or another, but their most profound problems are usually solved by a visit to Eli, the master craftsman who fashioned the puppets long before they could remember. “Return to the workshop,” they are told, return to your Maker, and all will be well.” And it is. I watch the kids while Todd reads, and at some point, usually about half way through, most of them get it. I don’t explain that Eli is Hebrew for “My God.” That would ruin it. And for those who don’t get it right away, there’s that moment in the middle of the night when the brain puts the pieces together. “I know who Eli is,” a girl said to me the next morning a few weeks back. “Should we keep it a secret?” I asked. “Of course not,” she answered. “I’ve already told five people!” “Good girl,” I answered. “Good girl.”
I love Homecoming. I love seeing familiar faces and welcoming strangers home for the first time. I love the food that is brought from homes and shared, reminding us that we are one family who are gathered in the house of the Lord, the home that always waits for our return, patiently, persistently, without judgment. But most of all, I love what Homecoming has to teach us, that the master crafter waits for us as well, waits for us in the door of the workshop where we were fashioned with our odd noses, bald heads, creaking joints, or shocking red hair. It is inevitable that we will leave places and people behind as we make the journey of life. Time or distance or both will see to it. We can always go back, but it’s never quite the same. God’s workshop, however, isn’t like that. God has traveled with us on every moment of the journey, from our newborn cries, to the many homes of our childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and even through and beyond death itself. God is the constant presence in our life, who knows us completely—the good and the bad, the public and the private, the recent and the ancient. But still God stands in the doorway, arms outstretched, eyes trained on the horizon, breathing slow and shallow, desperate to see that familiar face appear over the hill, a child of God come home. Amen.
Date: July 24, 2011 (Homecoming)
© Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
Homecoming. What a wonderful word, and a wonderful day. To see faces that we haven’t seen in a long time, to feel once again the power of place in our spiritual journey, to experience in a small, miniscule way what it must be like to arrive at our heavenly home, whether five minutes from now or a century. Homecoming.
I’ve had a number of Homecoming experiences this year. In part due to my Dad’s illness, I’ve become nostalgic for places that I have left behind, places that he and I have shared. We lived for five years in Marlborough, Connecticut, outside of Hartford when I was seven or eight years old, and I diverted on a journey last fall to go see my old house, and school, and church. It all seemed so small, and the distances so much shorter than I remembered. My school was gone completely, swallowed up by an expansion project now 20 years old. But as I drove slowly from school to my old home on Chapman Road memories came flooding back: the house where we used to trick or treat twice and the owner would pretend not to remember. The backyard studio where I took music lessons, now become a tool shed. The store where I bought sour apple chewing gum on the Fourth of July one year, just before the parade started. The Library where I read every Hardy Boys book ever printed. The Little League field where I sweated and prayed that the ball wouldn’t be hit to me, or if it was that I wouldn’t do anything stupid like get hit in the face with it. The house of a friend, whose father worked for Hostess; the pantry in the home had a magical Twinkie box that never ever hit bottom. I had to stop myself from ringing the illuminated doorbell and asking for a Yodel or Drake’s cake. Strangely enough one of my good friends from my Pennsylvania college now lives two doors down from this home in the tangle of relationships that we weave over a life time.
My old home was different. The deck was now a sunroom, the shingles painted rather than weathered. But the old apple trees out back were still there, along with an ancient grape arbor that was old when we lived there 40 years ago, the remnant of a farm long since subdivided. The church continues to thrive, now nearly in its 200th year; I know that because I was there for their sesquicentennial celebration in the early 70s, and my mom had to explain that it meant 150 years. There is still a wrought iron boot scraper at the front door of the church, beckoning those with mud on their shoes to nonetheless enter the house of God, fresh from the fields and the morning milking. The dairy farms have long since gone, of course, but the boot scraper remains; it used to fascinate me as a kid; I’d forgotten that. I went around to the back door, which was locked, but recalled the Sunday we left my brother at Church. I don’t know how, but we went tearing back to get him and there he stood with the pastor at the kitchen door waiting for us, secure in the knowledge that we’d be back. No one greeted me on this little trip down memory lane. After 40 years, most everyone I know there has moved on or would be unrecognizable to me, and I to them. Do they know that the kid in the back row of the Sunday School class who asked all those pesky questions wound up in the ministry? Probably not. We have, to use the usual term, “lost touch.”
Probably while I’ve been speaking the last few minutes, you’ve taken your own nostalgic trip, to that home that you left behind, the church where you grew up, the school, or job, or place of natural beauty that you’d love to visit just one more time. If so, perhaps you learned—as I did on my detour that day—that while places may hold a fascination for us or remind us of old times, it’s the people that we miss. We go home to where we are remembered because we don’t want to loose touch, to re-establish touch, to share a handshake or a hug or a story of long ago, to reinsert ourselves into the story of a place and a people that we miss.
Paul, in the eighth chapter of Romans, reminds us that there is no touch in our life that is ever completely lost. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks. “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No….” I love it when Paul answers his own questions; it saves so much time. “For I am convinced,” he writes, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When I lead Young Adventurer’s Camp at Mechuwana, my co-dean Todd shares a story by Max Lucado with the kids, a story of the Wemmicks, a puppet people who are strangely similar to some non-puppet people that you might encounter from time to time. The Wemmicks often find themselves in some self-inflicted turmoil or another, but their most profound problems are usually solved by a visit to Eli, the master craftsman who fashioned the puppets long before they could remember. “Return to the workshop,” they are told, return to your Maker, and all will be well.” And it is. I watch the kids while Todd reads, and at some point, usually about half way through, most of them get it. I don’t explain that Eli is Hebrew for “My God.” That would ruin it. And for those who don’t get it right away, there’s that moment in the middle of the night when the brain puts the pieces together. “I know who Eli is,” a girl said to me the next morning a few weeks back. “Should we keep it a secret?” I asked. “Of course not,” she answered. “I’ve already told five people!” “Good girl,” I answered. “Good girl.”
I love Homecoming. I love seeing familiar faces and welcoming strangers home for the first time. I love the food that is brought from homes and shared, reminding us that we are one family who are gathered in the house of the Lord, the home that always waits for our return, patiently, persistently, without judgment. But most of all, I love what Homecoming has to teach us, that the master crafter waits for us as well, waits for us in the door of the workshop where we were fashioned with our odd noses, bald heads, creaking joints, or shocking red hair. It is inevitable that we will leave places and people behind as we make the journey of life. Time or distance or both will see to it. We can always go back, but it’s never quite the same. God’s workshop, however, isn’t like that. God has traveled with us on every moment of the journey, from our newborn cries, to the many homes of our childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and even through and beyond death itself. God is the constant presence in our life, who knows us completely—the good and the bad, the public and the private, the recent and the ancient. But still God stands in the doorway, arms outstretched, eyes trained on the horizon, breathing slow and shallow, desperate to see that familiar face appear over the hill, a child of God come home. Amen.
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