Scripture: Philippians 2:1-11
I haven’t preached in a while, and I’m not going to preach too much today, since we have other things to do and we need to allow ourselves time to do them. But I do feel the need to preach a little bit, not because I’m addicted to it and can’t go another week without it, but because (to paraphrase a saying I never liked very much) today is the first Sunday of the rest of our life.
We have a couple of decisions to make today, or whenever we are able to make them. These are just the first of many decisions that are awaiting us these days, and not all of the decisions we face by any means are related to land, location, or potential building projects in the future…though in a way all the decisions we need to make are related to each other because they are all part of deciding who we want to be as a congregation, what kind of a community of faith we want to be. So in a way, in a very real way, any decisions we may make about whether or not to pursue the purchase of real estate are related to decisions we may make for instance about Christian education, and not so distantly related at that. And it’s not just what facilities we think we need for Sunday School. In a more profound sense, who we think we are, who we believe ourselves to be and who we want to become all will influence decisions we make about both land acquisition and what a Christian education program ought to consist of. And likewise the decisions we make will in turn determine, piece by piece who we are.
And so the first thing I have on my mind to say this morning is just this basic thought: that these decisions we will need to make are not just business decisions and the questions we need to deal with are not just pragmatic ones. Of course there are pragmatic considerations that need to be taken into account. Can we afford to do what we might like to do? But the more basic question always is what values inform us? What beliefs and commitments are being expressed? Who do we want to be? Who is God calling us to be—this people, at this time, in this place? These aren’t business decisions or practical decisions. They are heart decisions, faith decisions.
I wasn’t at the worship committee meeting where Mo first presented her idea of a design for the banner. I don’t know what she said or what the worship committee said as they were choosing this design. When I saw it this week though as it was nearing completion, it was “the morning after” This Far By Faith. It was the morning after the play that included a scene where Cassidy played the part of a tree under which it was recalled the constitution of the church was hammered out and where church committees were decided upon. Of course, I wasn’t there for those meetings either, but without being there I know that there was a lot more involved in those discussions than how many committees there would be. A tree was one of the places where we first decided who we were going to be. So it’s appropriate that we meet under a tree again today, and often in the future.
Actually, trees often play significant roles in Biblical stories as well—so much so that I couldn’t begin to talk about all the “great trees” in the Bible. Some of them just naturally started going through my mind when Mo showed me the banner this week. Of course, there’s the Garden of Eden and the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but I decided I didn’t want to go there today.
What did occur to me though is how often in the Biblical stories trees are places where people meet up with God. They are places of worship. People who are sojourning set up altars around trees and return to that place as a kind of shrine where you go when you’re in need of feeling God’s presence or discerning God’s will, or that reminds you of important events or important markers along the journey.
But sometimes people who think they are running away from God, or who think God has abandoned them, or who are just plain fed up with God are found after all by God under a tree. I think of Elijah. I don’t have time to review Elijah’s whole story with you this morning. We’ll do that some other time. Elijah’s worth—oh, five or six sermons anyway. But let’s just say that Elijah was in trouble with no less than the king and queen. Big trouble. He had gone to the king and queen and said to them, right to their face, that this war they were intending to make on Iraq was wrong, and he probably called the king and queen some names while he was at it. He had pointed out to them how the poor were just not making it in their kingdom and how this compassionate conservatism they were always talking about was a joke. He had told them that their use of religion to justify themselves was not only misguided but sinful. Elijah had done all this on the basis of his understanding of who God was and as a result he was a wanted man. He had the FBI and the CIA out to get him. He had done his best to do what needed to be done. He didn’t just go along to get along. He spoke up where someone needed to speak up, and the thanks he got was to have his picture posted in post offices. So he was on the run and he got tired and sat down under a tree and said out loud that he’d had enough—not just enough of fighting the good fight—enough of life period. So he went to sleep under this tree, hoping he would just not wake up. No such luck. Instead he is awakened by an angel and told to eat something because he has a journey ahead of him. He is not told that he should not be discouraged. He is not told what the meaning of life is, so that he will suddenly see that life is worth living. He is not told what the meaning of his life is. He is just told that there is a long journey ahead and he better have himself something to eat. The miracle is not that an angel appears out of the blue in the wilderness or that Elijah has a meal waiting for him when he wakes up. The miracle is that Elijah says o.k. Which is not to say that he is done with discouragement forever, but just that some mysterious power has given him the strength to go on.
I don’t want to make too much of this story in relation to Sojourners. There are some things that might be similar, some things that aren’t. It actually just occurred to me when I saw Mo’s banner as one of dozens of tree stories in the bible. What it suggested to me was that we don’t simply have some decisions to make as a congregation. Elijah didn’t sit down under a tree to think and plot strategy. He had been led to that spot because he was doing what a voice inside said he needed to do. It’s true that he was weary and discouraged and depressed and feeling like God didn’t much care, and I’m not suggesting we as a congregation are in that position or that we should ever hope to be. But I identify with Elijah, with the story, because it is not so much that Elijah makes a decision to go on but that whatever outer visions or inner voices had driven him in the past take hold of him again. His decision making process as it were is not driven just by weighing pros and cons but by an encounter with God in which his sense of who he is and of God’s call is the driving force. We have some encounters with God ahead of us. Whatever decisions we make, whatever issues confront us, it all needs to happen in this context. It needs to happen in the context not of our trying to figure things out, but in the context of wondering what direction God is calling us.
In line with this, I have to make a comment about the presence of Sojourner Truth in the banner. For me, having Sojourner at the center of the tree is not to have a kind of icon that we admire, though she is certainly admirable person. I have sometimes said that we share something with Sojourner Truth because we both chose the name Sojourner. Some of you have suggested to me that the connection is more than that, that although we didn’t explicitly name ourselves Sojourner Truth, U.C.C., that the connection was openly made in discussion and that we were in part motivated by that connection in choosing our name. The importance of that for me is as I say not that she is a great woman, but that we pray to be motivated by what motivated her: a deep sense of the injustices of the world and a courageous willingness to do something about it. To have her spirit in our midst is to be, like Sojourner, unable to rest until justice is done.
And in a similar manner to have Jesus in our midst is not to have someone we admire or worship. It is not that Jesus is admirable, holy, Godly, or God. We are called not to pay homage to Jesus but to follow, or as Paul says in the reading: “Have this mind among yourselves that was in Christ Jesus, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant…” At the very least Paul asks us to consider what it would mean for us to empty ourselves of ourselves, taking the form of a servant, in the manner of Jesus. It’s a good question for any of us. A good question to ask of ourselves as a church.
We are a successful new church start and we successfully celebrated that last Sunday. That is thankfully who we are, in part. It is a good thing to be. But it is also who we are not, because it’s important not to get caught up in ourselves. It’s important to feel the tap on the shoulder from the angel who says you better have something to eat. You have a journey ahead of you. We have, in the course of ten years, established a pretty solid sense of who we are—thank God. But if we think we “got it”, it’ll go away. And if we think that whether we move in the direction of buying property is the only question, or the most important question, before us, we will have lost our life in the process of gaining it.
Elijah didn’t know what next. We know some of what’s next for us. Not only today’s business, which is clearly part of what’s next. I have some other decisions that are part of our “what next” that I’ll talk about next week. But truly we don’t know what next. Not if we focus on being dreamers, and prophets, and laborers for justice and lovers of God and God’s people. May we set out on our journey again with such things as these as our goals. All the rest is secondary. Amen.
Jim Bundy
September 29, 2002