To Everything There Is a Season
(The sermon Laura preached at her installation.)
Scriptures:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 NIV
Luke 24:13-35 NRSV
Ephesians 4:1-6, 25-27, 31-32 MSG
Let’s pray.
Help us to know you, God. Open your word to us in this gathered body that we might see you face to face in the form of your son, Jesus. Amen.
We go through seasons in the life of the church, district, denomination. Seasons of loss and upheaval, seasons of rest and renewal, seasons of growth and new life. Seasons are the God-given way of things – we come around and around again to lessons we need to learn, and each time we learn a new layer of the same truths. Though God does not change, the way God chooses to reveal Godself in each season is different because our needs and capacities, our awareness and openness are different. God can shift, not because God needs it, but because we need it… and because we need the seasons, the shifting to ease us deeper, God is constantly working, within each season, to make everything beautiful in its time.
In the past not-quite-three months, as I have been serving you and learning to know you and us in different ways, I have been tracing the seasons of this district as I have known them in my lifetime. I have been wondering what season we are entering, what the qualities of this particular season will be, what this season together will require of us. And I have been listening for God’s call to me in the midst of this particular season.
Many of you have heard me say that I come to this calling with my primary lenses of chaplaincy and spiritual direction. I come as a spiritual director with a fascination for the questions that don’t have answers yet, with the longings that don’t have fulfillment yet – because in my experience when we find ways to encounter those honestly we stumble upon, if not answers, potent reminders of God’s presence and creativity. I come as a chaplain, convinced that God is always working healing and reconciliation somewhere, even where we don’t expect it or can’t imagine it. Our job is not to bring it by our own will, but to notice, name, claim and nurture those places of healing and reconciliation already happening.
So here’s what I see in this district. We have been through struggle, conflict, deep hurt. We have found ways to respect each other even if we don’t agree with or understand one another. We have doggedly returned to the table, but sometimes we have been weary of the same conversations that we can’t seem to find our way through. We sometimes have consciously ignored our differences, valuing togetherness, which has sometimes meant that we are not as able to weep together or laugh together as we long to be. But we also sometimes have intentionally set our differences aside to join in song and food and fellowship and finding God in our midst.
It’s early days yet, but here’s what I think I see: I see congregations across the district doing amazing things. Some have found new ways of doing ministry and church, not simply because they “had to” but because they were following God’s leading toward a new expression. Some have reached out to form partnerships with other congregations that are mutually life-giving. Some are steadfastly stewarding a small church, confident that God isn’t done with them yet. Some are raising up leaders in their midst, calling and teaching and encouraging. Many are finding ways to be Jesus in the neighborhood, taking seriously the challenges people in their communities are facing and finding courage to serve even when the problem seems insurmountable.
On the district level, the sale of the Greenwood building because of the choice of the Christ Our Shepherd congregation to go online, has meant new financial possibilities for the district. Part of that money went immediately to help an immigrant congregation buy the building. Part of that money is paying for a full time District Minister for these 5 years. And the rest of that money is going to congregational and district renewal, through a new grants and loans program (Paul Schrock from Northview, our current Mission and Ministry Board representative, will say more about that toward the end of the service). I sense God is saying to us, “You have been faithful with a little, now I am entrusting you with much,” not for our own sake, but for the glory of God and for our neighbor’s good. What will we do with this gift?
And in each season of our life, individual and corporate, these questions arise: What will be asked of us in this journey? Who will we become as we travel this road?
The scripture Sister Audri and Brother Chris so creatively put before us today has been offering to my imagination some answers to these questions. The disciples were in an in-between place just after the resurrection. A conflicted world had been their context, and when Jesus came they overflowed with hope for something new. But then Jesus had died and they did not know what to make of it. These two were walking together trying to make meaning, trying to figure it out. They were not hidden, like other disciples, behind closed doors. They were not separated from the world by their suspicion. And when this stranger approached them asking, “What are you discussing?” they immediately looped him into the story.
So much in our culture tempts us, lures us to separation and suspicion. We know who “us” is and who “them” is. We know who we’re supposed to be seen with and who we’re supposed to stay away from. But both Jesus and these disciples can be an example for us to choose trust, to choose connection, to reject fear and suspicion. “What are you discussing?” the stranger asks. And the disciples engage. Curiosity and trust.
And then begins what I imagine to be a passioned discussion around the scriptures. This stranger offers an interpretation they’d never heard before. I wonder if they knew what to make of it. But we know that they felt their hearts strangely warmed – burning within them, even. And the discussion could quickly have turned to argument or rejection or contempt. The disciples knew their scriptures… who was this stranger to tell them they didn’t? But it evidently did not – because at the end of the road, the disciples were eager to invite the stranger to dinner.
Studies have shown that anger in conflicts is not necessarily a problem. Conflicts with anger present can be resolved. What completely derails conflict, causes division that resists reconciliation is not anger – it is contempt. Our passion about the scriptures, about justice and righteousness, about God’s calling and Christ’s word and example, we do not need to be afraid of those. We can disagree, even be angry, and still not sin – still find our way to love and God.
But I think about what would have happened if the disciples had felt contempt for the stranger’s different way of looking at things. If they had been disgusted with the conversation enough not to invite him into their home. If they had been suspicious enough not to be willing to eat with him.
They would have missed him.
Although Jesus was in their midst, even warming their hearts, on the road, he was not revealed to them until they invited him in, sat down with him, and watched him break bread to give to them.
Jesus is in our midst during our passionate explorations with one another of God’s word and Christ’s call. If we are especially attentive, we may even notice our hearts warming. But Jesus is revealed, again and again and again, when we welcome each other into our homes and hearts, when we choose a path beyond fear and suspicion, when we choose to remember that Jesus is in our midst.
I suspect our call in this time, brothers and sisters of the South/Central Indiana District of the Jesus followers called Church of the Brethren, is to bring our passionate faith to the journey but to choose to be unafraid of each other. I suspect our call in this time is to walk with each other and talk about the hard stuff even when we don’t think we can ever understand each other, because we trust that it is not by our own merit or efforts that unity will come. True unity, deep love replacing simple niceness, will come by God’s grace and Jesus’ bread. And somehow, strangely, our hearts will be warmed. And then, when we invite each other in, we can be delighted when we recognize Jesus in our midst.
This is my longing for our district in this season.
I wonder if this is God’s call to us – each of us and all of us together in this season, in this place, among these people.
May it be so.