United Congregational Church in Norwich, CT
Worship is where welcome begins. Jesus’ life was shared with friends and his welcome was extended to children, to women, to men, to those who needed help, to those who needed healing.
Worship at United is a mix of modern and traditional styles we hope will enhance the spiritual life of everyone present. From classic hymns to modern songs, from ancient prayers to inclusive language, we try to fashion a service each week that will help and heal.
Everyone is always welcome to participate in worship, whether it’s sharing a prayer request or taking communion. Rev. Eaton’s sermons are drawn from real life and meant to let the bible speak to real lives.
Come join in, this Sunday, any Sunday, every Sunday!
© 2006 United Congregational Church All Rights Reserved
UpdatedJuly 12, 2006
Would you rather have an endless buffet or just one great meal? That's something like the choice that faces worship planners: we can focus on one part of the Bible and know it deeply or try to tell the whole story, realizing that we can't spend as much time on one story along the way.
For the last 11 years, our worship has had at its center a set of three Bible readings set by the Common Lectionary. The Lectionary is an arrangement of scripture lessons so that over the course of three years, we hear the whole Bible.
But this summer we are going to do something different. This summer, we're going to focus on just one book of the Bible, and a short one at that: the Book of Jonah. In worship, in preaching, in Sunday School, from the Nursery to the sermon, we'll wrestle with the meaning of Jonah.
Are you ready to meet Mr. Jonah? You can read the whole book now and hear about it beginning July 2.
Do you walk through dark places? There is a reason we are afraid of the dark when we are young. Walking through a dark room, we bump into things; we trip. Darkness prevents us from seeing threats and it allows us to imagine dangers that may not exist.
The solution to darkness, of course, is light. Today we are so accustomed to the availability of light, we forget it is a gift. The only way ancient people could light their way after sunset was by burning something, often something costly. Fire gave light in camps and in hearths. Lamps and later candles were lit as well. But it was clear their light was a fragile, temporary affair and outside a small circle, darkness crouched.
Epiphany means 'manifestation' and light is its symbol. The great opening affirmation of Epiphany is "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2). It is the proclamation of the light of God's love; it is the practice of the faith that even in darkness, the light is waiting.
All during Epiphany, we will explore God's light. A series of teaching sermons will introduce images of Jesus. All our candles will be lit each Sunday.
Can you use a little more light? Come Sunday and gather around the fire of the Spirit.
Stewardship—the word word can make veteran church goers stop in their tracks. Stewardship commonly has meant discussing how much money we give and when we give it. It's the greasy details of how the church gets fuel into its system and just like the heating oil fill pipe, we'd like to keep the subject out back.
But for Jesus, stewardship is an up front, in the center question. His gospel is full of stories that involve stewards and others that picture people responding to opportunities and occasions. Over and over again, he lifts up those who have the courage to risk, to give, to hope. The Sower wildly sows his grain and finds a miraculous, ten-fold harvest; the prodigal son hopes beyond reason on the forgiveness of his father and the servants who use the resources committed to their care effectively are rewarded while the one who simply hangs on to them is cast out.
So we can't avoid the question of stewardship. This fall, we will think about it in a series of sermons in late October. The first is The Man With Empty Pockets; others will include a reflection by Michele Dean on what the church means and Trading Tassels for Aprons this Sunday.
These are not sermons about money; they are about treasure: what is true treasure? where is its source? what should we do with it? Come share the treasure hunt!
In our house, there is an endemic disease called "Sunday-itis". It's that resentful, slightly depressed, pouty feeling that comes from having had a lot of fun going to the mall, seeing friends, maybe a party, kicking b ack at youth group all weekend, only to realize that tomorrow is Monday and the Regular Week begins again. The Regular Week is not fun. The Regular Week is...regular. It might have some fun moments. But mostly it's the Regular Stuff which is by defnition the antithesis of fun. The Season After Pentecost is a bit like the Regular Week for the church.
I think it starts with the fact that this time doesn't even have a real name. Advent! Epiphany! Lent! Easter!—those are real seasons, those are seasons you can get your teeth into. You can explain the meaning of their names at Childrens Time, build themes out of their emphases. "After Pentecost"...it's not even Pentecost, it's just After.
Yet there is a lesson here. Just as we do not live our lives on the weekend but mostly during the Regular Week, the church lives much of its life when it is alive out in the world. The Lord has come, the Lord will come again; so much we may affirm. Our problem is what to do in the mean time.
An old song asks, "Now that we love, how do we keep love alive?"; the same problem might be stated for faith: beyond the excited, falling in love, festal moments, what does faith mean? What can it mean in the Regular Week?
The texts, the worship, the time After Pentecost is meant to allow us to learn to live our answer.
Yesterday I was in a friend's car. It's a big Lexus SUV and it has a feature that was quite striking: a screen showing a constantly updated map with our location pinpointed. For once, we knew exactly where we were all the time.
Where are you? Where are we? In liturgical time, we are in the season of Easter, a time when we hear and reflect on the stories of Jesus' appearances after his death. Sometimes we collapse the story into one day but in fact scripture tells many stories of Jesus' appearances. Paul offers the earliest account in 1 Corinthians 15. According to Paul, Jesus appeared not only to the disciples as the gospels mention but to "500 brothers" and of course to Paul himself.
One clear effect of Jesus' appearance over and over again is to create hope. The New Testament speaks of hope again and again; it's infused with hope. Over the next few weeks, in this season of Easter, we're going to explore what hope means for Christians and how it can locate us in life so we know where we are and where we are going.
For many of us, Easter feels like a destination. Certainly that's true of ministers. We start planing Easter way back; some started last summer, some in the spring, some in January. We plan Easter and then arrange Lent to get there. It'w where we're going. By the time we get there, we'll be ready for a nap, but we'll have arrived!
Easter is a destination for the church. We start planning Easter events long in advance and they occupy a good deal of energy. Around here, we've had the two of our three Boards spend most of their March meeting making plans for Easter: breakfast, egg hunt, egg dying, etc. By the time we get there, we'll be ready for a nap, but we'll have arrived!
The striking contrast to this is the testimony of our worship and scripture. There, Easter is not a destination, it's a beginning, a jumping off place, a start.
Matthew's gospel makes this point: Jesus is not just risen, he's already departed when the women come to the tomb. My reflections on this are found on the weblog but it's important here to simply point out that Easter is not something which happens at the end: it is the beginning of a new time. Jesus' disciples experience his resurrecvtion when they get up and get going.
We do have some reflection of this in the arrangement of the church year. Easter Sunday is not the end of Lent; it is the beginning of the Easter Season. Of course that's only as important as we make it. What will you do: make this moment a beginning—or the end?
I grew up on Palm Sunday. I didn't know much about Lent but long before I had heard the word "liturgy" I knew I liked the one Sunday when they gave us a piece of shrubbery and encouraged running around with it and making a little noise. That was my kind of church! I guess my childhood church might have had Good Friday too and some other services but we didn't go so I don't remember those.
Sometimes in the early 1970's, when I was an intern at a Methodist Church, I enountered Passion Sunday. I don't know if it was the invention of the minister, Ned Watts, or something he heard of or a Methodist thing (remember Kingdomtide?) but it happened the Sunday BEFORE Palm Sunday. Ned was big on the Cross and every year it was something different but always focused on the Cross. Partly the impulse came from the fact that we didn't have much in the way of Good Friday going on; this was our one big day to deal with the Cross. But we still ran around with palms the next week on Palm Sunday.
That didn't make much sense to me but I liked Ned's emphasis on the Cross so I kept the two when I got my own first church. We had Maundy Thursday communion at Pine Hill Congregational when I was a teenager so I added that in. The local churches had Good Friday, so we ended up with a pretty full schedule, none of it tied together, all of it trying to tell some piece of the story.
Then I discovered the lectionary. There, on Palm Sunday, was something called "Passion Sunday" but it wasn't Ned's Passion Sunday, it was just a longreading, so long there was no way anyone could fit a sermon in anywhere. I ignored it for a few years but attendance was dropping on Good Friday, people were asking why we had the cross before the palms, and finally one year I decided to try just reading the whole story. We couldn't let go of the palms, so I tacked that on at the front, gave up on Passion Sunday before Palm Sunday and tried it out.
The results were stunning. Some people cried. Some people said later they had never heard the whole story. A few complained: where was the sermon? why did we have to make everything sad? how come we didn't reead about Easter?
It's more than 20 years since that first time and most of the Sundays before Easter since, I've read the whole story. This year the kids will help. There will be palms, there will be running around. That's part of the story.
But there will be more: there will be a rooster crowing and nails in wood. Those are part of the story too. And Easter? That's coming: come back next week. Everything in its own time.
Jesus doesn't write sermons. Oh, I know, the heading in part of Matthew's gospel says, "the sermon on the mount" and there's a long section in Luke called, "the sermon on the plain". All the gospels summarize what he does in the beginning as preaching in synagogues. But the fact remains: we don't have a single connected sermon from him. The things we call sermons seem to be later compilations of his sayings. But sermons--those long, one way statements which amplify and build from a Bible text--not one seems to exist.
Mainly what Jesus does in the gospels is talk to people. He asks them questions and comments on their reply. They ask him things and he gives them answers, though not always what they wanted to hear.
This year during Lent, all the gospel readings focus on a conversation between Jesus and someone. It starts in the wilderness: Jesus and the tempter back and forth, moves on to a smart, rich guy who can't imagine being born from above, includes a Samaritan woman, a man born blind and finally gives us his conversation with a dead man.
I'm not sure what to make of all these conversations yet. But if I had to characterize them together, I'd say what he seems to be tallking about is living on purpose. What I mean is that instead of bouncing from one thing to another, Jesus asks each person to honestly look at their spiritual center and make that center show all day long.
We're starting an experiment here: a weblog where I'll try to write some notes more or less daily as thoughts develop. You can join the conversation and I hope you wil. Let's think about it together. Let's have a conversation.
I'm still reeling from yesterday, a day full of contrasts. Last fall, I began to feel our worship had gotten into a comfortable rut: a formal liturgy, three scriptures readings, an order that hadn't changed in three or four years. So I decided to change things for Epiphany. We'd focus the whole service on one reading and add some bits of drama.
Yesterday was the first real outing for the new set up and it went well. I asked a couple of young women to help out. One was to play the part of a social worker, outraged and interrupting to save children from the 'drowing' of baptism; the other came dressed in a bathrobe, innocently asking where the bath is, since she had heard baptism was about getting clean. Both worked. The whole congreation came alive as I began the famliar introduction to the scripture only to be interrupted by the shouts of interruption. It was a good service but not many attended. I have a hard time not counting. I know intellectually that I should preach "as unto the Lord"-- but it's hard to look at all those empty pews. Then, after the service, as I talked to some visitors, I was just buoed up when they enthused about how friendly and welcoming our congregation is. They loved being there, they said.
So I was on a kind of high when I went to a meeting of our Connecticut Fellowship, called to discuss the fact that despite our invested funds account of over $1 million, we are "out of money". Our church is one that previously contributed substantially and has shifted money away because the Fellowship doesn't do much. After a lot of unfocused wrangling, the group voted not to touch their invested funds. Two friends will lose their jobs as a result. There were impassioned appeals to the Gospel and to the wisdom of not spending down inheritances. Most people seemed to want to talk about money, not ministry. Near the end, someone stood up and directly accused me and by implication United Church of wanting to control the Fellowship through our contributions. It was all so dispiriting.
I rushed from the meeting to a community prayer service for the victims of the recent tsunammi in southeast asia. Community services tend to have a least common denominator status but this one really moved me. It's strange and wonderful to be able to just sit with my wife in worship and there was plenty of space to reflect and pray. A colleague sang beautifully.
Near the end of the service, near the end of this whole day, I was asked to read from Matthew 25, the story of the judgement when the defining issue is whether we visited people in prison, fed them, clothed them, healed them.
What counts? What really counts?-- our participation, our presence, our funds, our work, our ministry? This week culminates in the Gospel proclamation, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" and the historical celebration of the life and dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. What really counts?
This is a strange article to write. It's still a few days before Christmas. I have a couple of presents to buy, several to wrap. I'm still feeling good from the wonderful Christmas Pageant the children put on last Sunday; I'm getting ready for Christmas eve, one of my favorite services: candles, songs, a special story.
All of this is joyful; all of this makes a secret smile even as I rush around. But there is nothing to smile about in the gospel text for Sunday and that is part of my day too. The story is abrupt and different: baby Jesus is found by Herod who sends troops to kill him. That's how kings deal with threats. A carol describes Jesus as "asleep in the hay" but while he's asleep, his father is getting the worst news any parent can hear, that someone is about to hurt his child.
Run away: that's all Joseph can think about the next day. Running away is how Joseph and Mary and Jesus spend their season after Christmas. Running away from the violence, running away from the threat.
So much of Christmas is about victory; so much of Christmas is joy. But if we are faithful to the story of Jesus and not just the newspaper advertisments, we must also speak of this violence.
Perhaps part of the message is simply that we live in such a world. News channels are running heart warming stories of American soldeirs in Iraq making a place for Christmas joy in their camps. This is a good thing but we should remember that there are families fleeing as well, families running for their lives.
What can Christmas mean in a world where some celebrate and some flee? We'll think about it on Sunday.
We have a lot of kids in our congregation, so we have a lot of questions. They range from the very practical ("Can I get a piece of candy in your office?") to the judgemental ("How come there's no hot chocolate today?") and sometimes include the theological ("We're going to Maine, is God there too?").
We all have questions and apparently the people around Jesus were just the same. This reading from Luke asks us to imagine Jesus being questioned on a technical point. Mosaic law provided a system for making sure family lines were not extinguished and wives and children were protected. The brother of a man who died was required to treat his widow like a wife.
The Sadducees are a party of well to do people centered on Herod's court. They don't believe in resurrection; they can't imagine God reaching beyond what they can see. So they've picked this technical point to trip Jesus up. Seven brothers, dying in sequence: imagine how ludicrous it would be for a wife if you had to figure out whose wife she was after death.
I love Jesus' answer. I love it for its simplicity; I love it for the way it treats their question seriously and turns around their intent. You're not thinking big enough, he says: imagine more.
Some churches don't much like questions. Jesus seemed to love them. Here, we try to answer the ones we can—but we also remember God is bigger than our answers. So the ultimate answer about God is just what Jesus offers: Thing bigger, imagine more.
It's fall in New England. As I write this, the sun is shining and we are having one of those spectacular, bright, warm days sweetened by the underlying knowledge that before long such days will be only a memory.
My neighbors are out protecting their driveway; I should be putting in storm windows. We are getting ready for winter. Gardens are brown and wilted, memorials to former flowers and vegetables. It's the time for battening down, not planting yet this week we are asked to hear about sowing seeds.
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. (Jeremiah 31:27)
Here is God, looking at the remnants of the garden of Israel and briskly saying, I'm going to replant; it's gonna be great, wait and see.
When I step back from the verses and individual stories of the Bible, what most amazes me of its sweep is God's sheer stubborn persistence. Over and over again, people set out along God's path and then wander off, get lost, slip, stumble, bark their shins, sit down and cry when they are lost. And over and over, God sets the game counter at zero and says, "Try again."
This is certainly not how we deal with each other. We are great believers in the theory that people don't change: we say it to each other. Truth is, I've said it.
What if we truly believed in do overs? What if we truly forgave? Who knows what would happen? We only know this: when God does it, the result is amazing. This little shattered remnant of exiles will create a spiritual community that creates the text of our Bible and provides the seedbed for both Judaism and Christianity. This little grown over garden will bloom in ways no one could have predicted.
All it takes is grace: amazing grace, God's amazing grace. All it takes is people willing to let the seed grow. Are we?
When ministers of churches our size get together, one topic is always near the top of their minds: how can I do the One Big Thing that will make my church explode with energy and people? Marketers know this so almost every day someone sends us a catalog or a flyer offering the One Big Thing we can do to make this happen.
Maybe that's why Jeremiah's letter speaks so powerfully to me. The prophet writes to the exiles in Babylon. Recently, they've heard some rousing preachers who have been telling them they should get ready for One Big Thing that will transform them and return them to remembered glories. They want out of exile, they want to go back to their old lives and their old religion. They remember when the pews were full and the temple was glorious.
Jeremiah is direct. "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says....Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce." He goes on to tell them to live their lives where they are, in exile. They are even to pray for the prosperity of the alien, gentile city where they live.
No big thing. In fact, the passage is remarkable among prophetic words for its focus on the small and daily. Live out your lives where you are with God's blessing, the prophet says. Believe in God's blessing where you are; don't look somewhere else for it.
One of my favorite moments here occured a few years ago on World Wide Communion Sunday when the Deacons were left without seats.
It's become a tradition on this Sunday to hold an intergenerational service with the children invited to communion. At first, we had them in the pews but one year we decided to set special tables in the chancel for the kids. We sweated as we brought up several child size tables and a bunch of small chairs and set them up surrounding our regular formal communion table with the big antique chairs so like thrones.
Sunday came; I gave the invitation and called the children forward. They came eagerly but before we knew it, they had taken the seats meant for the Deacons at the central communion table. They loved the red velvet seats, their legs swung at the high chairs. The Deacons were a little slower getting to the front and by the time they did, all they could do was stand there. I realized one of the kids had taken my seat at the head of the table. The Deacons and I looked at each other and slid into the child sized chairs, feeling just a little silly.
I love this moment because it so wonderfully, spontaneously, represented the gospel. We don't exclude children from communion ever, but most times they are busy in Sunday School. This one Sunday the ones usually absent had taken the best seats. God smiled; I swear I could see it.
This week's gospel reading follows Jesus' instruction to the disciples to forgive endlessly. Their response is "Increase our faith!". But he points out that they don't need more faith, just some. Even a little faith, as much as a mustard seed, can work miracles.
That day in our church, the children came forward with the innocent faith that they were welcome to the best seats at the table. And they were. God smiled: isn't this the goal of all our worship?
We are pregnant with the possibility of love. Just a little faith that we are God's—that's all it takes.
My daughters are forcing me into the future. The younger one just started high school. We visited Norwich Free Academy nervously a few weeks ago; at least I was nervous. She seemed to take it all in stride. Sure enough, the first day came, the first week ended, and now it seems normal. Having her in high school of course makes us think of what's next. Of course we've talked about college; suddenly it's beginning to dawn on Jacquelyn and I that not too far down the road, there will only be two of us at the dinner table.
"So what?", you may be thinking at this point. We all face these transitions. True: but how do we face our futures? The scripture readings this week all ask that question. Jerusalem real estate is at an all time low when Jeremiah sets out to buy a property; they're in the midst of a losing battle. It makes no sense to think about a new house when the ones around you are about to be torn down.
Paul faces up squarely and simply says don't put your hope in money, put it in heaven. I'd love to see him talk to my friend who has a T shirt that says, "The man who dies with the most toys wins." Future perfection is a wonderful goal but having some good toys now is fun.
I tried to make this point to my older daughter last summer. We were about to visit Toys R Us and as a fairly new grandparent, I had visions of all the great stuff I could buy my granddaughter. But the granddaughter's mother put her foot down. "She doesn't need any more toys; if you want to buy something, put the money in her college account," she said in a tone I remember well from arguing with her when she was 16: the "I'm right and I know I'm right" one.
Toys now or future hope: how do we choose? Where do we invest?
We'll think about it Sunday.
Before Jesus does anything else, he goes and makes some disciples, telling them right from the start that they are going to have to work hard, use their existing skills, and find others.
Before we do anything, we have a meeting, discuss the idea, table it, wait a month, come back think about it some more, talk about what it will cost, ask about how it fits the budget, maybe have a Congregational Meeting and then try to do it in a way that doesn’t ask too much of our volunteers.
Maybe it’s time we learned something from the kids. They don’t have meetings. They don’t discuss ideas. If they think about a picture, they just paint it or get out the crayons. If they think church is going to be fun, they just invite friends. No discussion. No committee. Just fishing.
I know someone has to provide the crayons. I know there are good reasons for the careful process: we want everyone to have a chance to add their ideas. I know all about being prudent.
But I also know with all our prudence, we don’t always do things with sheer delight. That’s the quality I see in our children and it amazes me.
My first recollection of church is being about six or so, wanting to go play in the kindergarten Sunday School room. The kindergarten room had all the cool big wooden toys. Our Sunday School room had tables and chairs. You sat at them and a lady spent most of the time telling you to sit up straight. No toys: no fun.
We’ve come a long way from those days here. It’s a significant fact of our church life that after Children’s Time, we have to restrain the kids from running downstairs to Sunday School.
I have a dream about our church. My dream is that we would be running here, not able to wait for Sunday, because it would be more about joy, less about meetings; more about sharing God’s love, less about budgeting resources.
On Children’s Day, we celebrate the children and the Sunday School. Maybe we should also learn from them. We need some meetings, some prudence, some process. But even more we need to keep our eyes on the prize: the sheer delight of discipleship with Jesus Christ.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. -John 16:12
A few years ago, a minister I had always looked up to was asked to give a presentation on his faith journey. I knew him to be a very intelligent, thoughtful man and I looked forward to hearing how events, thought and study had shaped a life long journey of faith. I wondered what he believed when he was starting out, how he had been shaped by seminary and years in ministry. I wanted to know what had changed for him over the years. Imagine my surprise when he began by saying that as he had started to reflect on the topic, it occurred to him that he hadn’t really changed his views at all. .
So often we treat God’s revelation as a fixed, unchanged and unchangeable box, a present whose contents never alter. But here’s this verse, here’s Jesus saying flat out: you haven’t heard it all yet. There are still some surprises; there is more to come. You just aren’t ready yet. .
Psychologists speak of developmental stages and accomplishing developmental tasks. Some things are more easily learned at some times. Some may be virtually impossible to learn later. What we can hear is a function of where we are. .
I think of this when as I talk to people. What can someone hear? What can they hear now? Last Christmas a girl in our Montessori school arrived for the Holiday Concert only to discover the other four year old girls had all dressed up; she was in every day clothes. No Hollywood star ever faced a more difficult fashion moment. In the midst of trying to help set things up, I saw her dissolve in tears as her mother took her into one of the Sunday School rooms. I put down what I was doing and went to see if I could help. .
When I found out about the problem, I tried to assure her it didn’t matter but of course she wasn’t buying it. This was not a moment for teaching about how little fashion counts. Then it occurred to me that up in the choir room, we had angel costumes from an old Christmas pageant. So we took her there, found one her size and in a few moments she was transformed into a smiling girl wondering if she could also wear t he halo. .
We can’t always fix problems. We can always listen to hurts. We can believe that when we listen, God hears and will find the right word. What can we bear today? What can we hear today? The first step may be to stop talking and just listen.
I still respect my friend who thought he had been right in the first place and never found any reason to change. But I wonder: if we have only heard what we could hear at one stage, have we missed something? John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church, said he was persuaded that God had more light to break forth. Perhaps the most important spiritual discipline of all is not to believe what we have seen but to believe there is more to come.
This coming Sunday presents two contrasting emblems. In the church calendar, it’s Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost: tongues of fire, street preaching, people lit by a heavenly light set like lamps in a dark world. In the US calendar, it’s Memorial Day, a holiday first created to honor the Union dead of the Civil War, now extended to cover all those who have given their lives in service to their country.
I suspect around the United States this week as preachers come close to that final moment when a title has to be finalized for the church bulletin, lots of thinking is going on about which of these two paths to choose. Memorial Day is particularly resonant in a country at war. Pentecost is the foundation story of the church. What’s a preacher to do?
One thing we all ought to do is look behind the curtain of these days. Memorial Day is filled with flags but the flags are emblems for a set of values. Among those values are freedom of expression, the rule of law in an open court, the right to be undisturbed if you don’t disturb anyone. Jefferson and the other members of the Continental Congress (including Norwich’s Samuel Huntington) called these ’;Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’; in the Declaration of Independence.
Pentecost is an emblem too. All too often, church people have settled for doing the dance of Pentecost instead of playing the music. I mean: in many churches, a requirement is to be able to utter something that sounds like nonsense and is called speaking in tongues as a concrete example of your spirituality. But the real heart of Pentecost isn’t the sound of the speech, it’s the message of the love of God, said so powerfully that everyone heard in their own way.
Whatever else we do this Sunday, we ought at least to do this. We ought to remember the values which make the sacrifice of lives in battle meaningful. We ought to embrace the vision of Pentecost for our own congregation.
Memory, Memorial Day—vision, Pentecost. Perhaps there is time enough for both. Perhaps if we do both, we will find everything God means to give this weekend.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End
-Revelation 12:13
Cal Lord, the Pastor of First Baptist Church here, is a good friend who has a special relationship with me. He’s the only mainstream Protestant minister who has been in Norwich longer than I have. Cal and I have attended a lot of welcoming services for others and even more goodbyes. It’s not just time that binds us together, though, and although I’d like to say it’s our common commitment to Jesus Christ, the truth is there is something else.
We are mirrors for each other. Not many people understand what it means to be a minister here for a long time. Cal does. He can get more information out of the way I roll my eyes at the standard, "How are things going?" than the fastest internet connection. And when Cal says something, I listen up. He’s not just a colleague; he’s a veteran of the same battles.
The other day we ran into each other over coffee. To be honest, I’ve been having a bit of a low moment. My wife is sick; my office is busy. My staff have had some distractions. A girl threw up during my sermon last Sunday: hard to recover from that even though it wasn’t precisely meant as a comment on the preaching. So when Cal asked how are things going, I wasn’t ready to let it go. "Not so great at the moment," I replied. He let me whine for a couple moments and then he said, "You know, you’ve really accomplished a lot at that church, there’s the school, the way you’ve gotten them to be more welcoming and so on."
I had to stop. I haven’t been feeling very accomplished lately. Day after day it seems like I come in and work all day trying to get things going and the next day we’re still stuck in the mud. It made me step back and think about where I am, where we are together and what accomplishment means.
My father was an engineer and I see his ghost in my approach to life. Engineers like to fix things and they tend to think in terms of problems and their solutions. What I’ve been trying to accomplish, I think, is the solution to problems: not enough people in church, not enough kids in the school, not enough money in the collection plate.
Trying to accomplish solutions leads to an even greater problem: not enough me. I’ve run out: there isn’t any more of me. And I don’t know how to solve that problem.
When I thought about what Cal had said, it began to dawn on me that accomplishment is very much a matter of perspective. When I read the scripture readings for this week, especially the self-description of God as the "Alpha and Omega", the beginning and end, it hit me that what I am accomplishing for God is less important than what God is accomplishing in me.
We all ask, "Are we there yet?" on our journeys. What if we asked instead, "What’s going on here? What is God doing here? What could I do here?"
We’ll think about it Sunday.
When [Lydia] and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us. - Acts 16:15
What amazes me about the story of the early church is how much they seem to have stumbled around. No one ever thought of telling the Gentiles about Jesus; it happened by accident. No one ever thought of going as far as Greece to preach. It was an accident. No one thought of starting a church in Lydia’s house: she had to persuade them.
I think of this as I sit here in the midst of a stack of unread magazines with articles urging me to plan. We’re drawing near the end of the church program year. Children’s Day signals the beginning of a more informal, slower time here and it’s coming up in June. For many that means stepping back; for me it means starting to plan the next year.
Sometimes all this emphasis on getting ready makes me wonder about what we’re doing. One of the real challenges of faith is trusting the future. Can I trust that God will be there, guiding me then? —or am I dependant on my on ability to create a blueprint and a to do list and follow through?
The scripture readings for this week ask me to trust God’s plan. Revelation offers a vision of the ultimate community; Jesus tells his disciples he’s going to send the Spirit to help them, that they are not going to be on their own. Acts pictures a new convert persuading the church’s greatest evangelist to take a new direction. Together they are a reminder that our plans are nothing without an underlying willingness to change and see God’s hope for us.
What does this mean for my plans? What does it mean for our church plans? I’m not sure today. But I am sure that the plans we make will be far less important than the surprises of the Spirit. So today I determine again to make a place in the plans for God to reach in and change them, change me, change us, and surprise us in the Spirit.
Preaching
Organist and Choir Director
The Deep End
Jonah 2:1-10