Bread and Darkness
Psalm 27; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
October 2, 2011
I like to ask people God questions: When do you feel God’s presence, and how would you describe that? What does God feel like to you? What times or places or circumstances open you to the presence of God? What are thin places for you, places where the luminous presence of the divine shines through?
More than one person has described to me those moments of pure contentment when they have felt fully alive and when, in their words, “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
Sometimes, in the same manner as Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire fame, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure” even if God did not make me particularly fast. Sometimes, when I’m standing on a mountaintop or at the edge of the ocean watching the inexorable tide roll in, I know myself as a spirit open to the thrust of grace, and I feel that grace wash over me.
I get that, and it makes good sense to me that when we feel most fully alive, most fully the creatures we were created to be that, at such moments, we would feel particularly connected to the one who created us.
But what about in the darkness? I don’t mean literal darkness – like caves or the middle of the night, though sometimes there and then. I mean figurative and emotional darkness. I mean depression. I mean grief. I mean failure. I mean loss. I mean death.
I’ve found that the wisdom of Psalm 27 lies in its final lines, “wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.” For, when I wait through the darkness, the light comes. Even, sometimes especially, in the midst of the darkness, when God feels most like an absence, I feel even that absence as compassion. It is as if God is suffering too, alongside me, letting me know that though the pain is real and the darkness thick and there is no clear end of it in sight, that I am not alone in it, and that it will, in the end, simply be all right.
Why meditate on the darkness on this World Communion Sunday, this Peacemaking Sunday? Well surely the weather for the past month in these parts would bring on thoughts of darkness to all but the most passionate lovers of London fog or Seattle rain. But it’s not been the weather, nor even the state of the world that’s got me connecting with the patient suffering of the psalmist.
I blame it on the Bible. Scripture is filled with the stories of people who find God most fully present in the midst of their deepest valleys. In the times of trial God is present.
This could begin to sound like little more than Hallmark card sentimentality if we leave it at that, but scripture is not a greeting card, and the New Testament passages in the lectionary this morning insist that we think more deeply about profoundly difficult circumstances.
Paul, in writing to the Philippians, claims and confesses his own troubled, dark history. Born to all the privileges of empire and having achieved rank and authority in the religious institution of his people, Paul comes to a stark realization on the road to Damascus: the institutions which have given him life and to which he has given his life are dying. The movement of Jesus is calling forth new life, and Paul has been utterly transformed, such that he is giving his all, even his life, to that resurrection movement.
The gospel passage, the strange parable of the tenant farmers who kill the master’s slaves and then his son when he sends them to collect the harvest, speaks directly to the dire condition of the religious institutions of the time. Jesus’ listeners would have recognized, in the economic relationships that the parable describes, the role that the religiously powerful played in their lives, and would have heard Jesus calling for the death of the religious institution that dominated those lives.
In other words, both the gospel reading and the reading from Paul center on the end of particular faith communities, and as we sit here this morning in a small, struggling congregation that is part of a much larger, struggling denomination, that is part of a tradition that is fast losing its hold on an entire generation of North Americans and has already forfeited its position across the entire continent that was home to its greatest glories, I cannot help wondering if there is a word from God for us in these passages.
Session met for several hours yesterday morning to consider the congregation’s budget for 2012, and we are contemplating major changes that may include the end, the death really, of some longstanding ministries. That’s ministries, not ministers. That said, while we certainly aren’t planning for any physical deaths, we are also contemplating some major changes in staffing patterns.
Our texts this morning insist on the necessity of change, but they do not pull punches in pretending that change is simple, without pain, without loss and letting go, without the experience of mourning and grief, without time in the darkness.
I’m not saying any of this to scare you or despair you, but rather to invite you into the process and the conversation through the rest of this month as we head toward presenting a preliminary budget to you at the end of the month.
By dent of circumstance – or grace – this evening Cindy Bolbach, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), will be with us for unchurch. Cindy is an incredibly wise and intelligent woman who, through her travels as moderator, has a far broader perspective on church than any of us. Come tonight and listen, and ask her questions.
For the next three Sundays of unchurch, again by circumstance or by grace, two of the initially planned guests have had to postpone and we’d intended an open forum for the third already. So, we have now three scheduled evenings that we will use for an open conversation on the future of Clarendon Presbyterian Church.
Why now? Last spring we celebrated together the passage of amendment 10-A, the change in our denomination’s form of government that, frankly, catches the rest of the church up to where we’ve been for almost 20 years – ordaining gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church officers and empowering them to leadership in the church. Thanks be to God.
Over those 20 years this small congregation has played out outsized role in changing the Presbyterian Church, and we’ve also played a significant role in shifting the culture. When I came here a bit more than eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of Presbyterian congregations in National Capital Presbytery with openly partnered gay or lesbian elders serving on its session. We were one of 17 churches in the entire denomination on the “watchlist” of the conservative Presbyterian Layman. The Layman doesn’t even keep such a list anymore because it just got too long to keep track of. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of congregations – of any denomination – in the metro area where a same-gender couple could walk in for the first time and no one in the sanctuary would think anything other than, “hm, new folks. Nice.” Today, there are dozens and dozens of congregations – Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, even Baptist – where that is true. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia was preparing to pass an amendment to its constitution to ban same-gender marriage. In the face of the passage of that amendment, we were in the news across the country for the stand that we took on marriage equality. Today that amendment would not pass the popular vote in the Commonwealth, and our own policy is no longer particularly noteworthy. Thanks be to God.
We have so much to be thankful for in the parts that we have been able to play in helping to bend the arc of the moral universe a bit closer to justice over these past two decades. Thanks be to God.
We have run the race with perseverance, and we have fulfilled our calling. With have lived fully into our ordination. Thanks be to God.
If this were a movie, we could roll the credits, collect a few Oscars, and gather at the wine bar to celebrate.
But this is not a movie. A central part of why we existed has, plain and simple, changed dramatically and, frankly, far more quickly than most of us dared to dream even five years ago.
And all of that, which is to be celebrated wildly, also leaves us in a far different cultural and even ecclesiastical context than we were in eight years ago. It leaves us facing, as a community and as individual leaders within it, the fundamental questions of ordination.
If our ordination – our calling to help transform church and culture – has been fulfilled, do we have a new calling?
If the answer is “no,” then how do we move with faithfulness, to a grace-filled ending of this ministry.
If yes – if we have a new ordination, a new calling – what is it precisely, and how do we begin to live into it with grace, and with excitement, transformative passion, energy, imagination and love?
Friends, I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know three things:
First, we must ask them now, or time and circumstance will answer them for us in ways that we will not like.
Second, this is a grace-filled community in which love reigns and we will ask the questions well and hang together as we do.
Finally, and most essentially, God is with us as we ask these questions and will be with us we live into the answers no matter what those answers are.
At the beginning of this sermon, I asked “why raise this stuff on World Communion Sunday?” Well, what better day to think about the ordination of the congregation than the day when we celebrate the fact that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and that we do this work of the people as a people fed always on the bread of life and the cup of salvation.
Let us pray.
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, grant us the wisdom and the courage for the living of these days. Amen.
October 2, 2011
I like to ask people God questions: When do you feel God’s presence, and how would you describe that? What does God feel like to you? What times or places or circumstances open you to the presence of God? What are thin places for you, places where the luminous presence of the divine shines through?
More than one person has described to me those moments of pure contentment when they have felt fully alive and when, in their words, “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
Sometimes, in the same manner as Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire fame, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure” even if God did not make me particularly fast. Sometimes, when I’m standing on a mountaintop or at the edge of the ocean watching the inexorable tide roll in, I know myself as a spirit open to the thrust of grace, and I feel that grace wash over me.
I get that, and it makes good sense to me that when we feel most fully alive, most fully the creatures we were created to be that, at such moments, we would feel particularly connected to the one who created us.
But what about in the darkness? I don’t mean literal darkness – like caves or the middle of the night, though sometimes there and then. I mean figurative and emotional darkness. I mean depression. I mean grief. I mean failure. I mean loss. I mean death.
I’ve found that the wisdom of Psalm 27 lies in its final lines, “wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.” For, when I wait through the darkness, the light comes. Even, sometimes especially, in the midst of the darkness, when God feels most like an absence, I feel even that absence as compassion. It is as if God is suffering too, alongside me, letting me know that though the pain is real and the darkness thick and there is no clear end of it in sight, that I am not alone in it, and that it will, in the end, simply be all right.
Why meditate on the darkness on this World Communion Sunday, this Peacemaking Sunday? Well surely the weather for the past month in these parts would bring on thoughts of darkness to all but the most passionate lovers of London fog or Seattle rain. But it’s not been the weather, nor even the state of the world that’s got me connecting with the patient suffering of the psalmist.
I blame it on the Bible. Scripture is filled with the stories of people who find God most fully present in the midst of their deepest valleys. In the times of trial God is present.
This could begin to sound like little more than Hallmark card sentimentality if we leave it at that, but scripture is not a greeting card, and the New Testament passages in the lectionary this morning insist that we think more deeply about profoundly difficult circumstances.
Paul, in writing to the Philippians, claims and confesses his own troubled, dark history. Born to all the privileges of empire and having achieved rank and authority in the religious institution of his people, Paul comes to a stark realization on the road to Damascus: the institutions which have given him life and to which he has given his life are dying. The movement of Jesus is calling forth new life, and Paul has been utterly transformed, such that he is giving his all, even his life, to that resurrection movement.
The gospel passage, the strange parable of the tenant farmers who kill the master’s slaves and then his son when he sends them to collect the harvest, speaks directly to the dire condition of the religious institutions of the time. Jesus’ listeners would have recognized, in the economic relationships that the parable describes, the role that the religiously powerful played in their lives, and would have heard Jesus calling for the death of the religious institution that dominated those lives.
In other words, both the gospel reading and the reading from Paul center on the end of particular faith communities, and as we sit here this morning in a small, struggling congregation that is part of a much larger, struggling denomination, that is part of a tradition that is fast losing its hold on an entire generation of North Americans and has already forfeited its position across the entire continent that was home to its greatest glories, I cannot help wondering if there is a word from God for us in these passages.
Session met for several hours yesterday morning to consider the congregation’s budget for 2012, and we are contemplating major changes that may include the end, the death really, of some longstanding ministries. That’s ministries, not ministers. That said, while we certainly aren’t planning for any physical deaths, we are also contemplating some major changes in staffing patterns.
Our texts this morning insist on the necessity of change, but they do not pull punches in pretending that change is simple, without pain, without loss and letting go, without the experience of mourning and grief, without time in the darkness.
I’m not saying any of this to scare you or despair you, but rather to invite you into the process and the conversation through the rest of this month as we head toward presenting a preliminary budget to you at the end of the month.
By dent of circumstance – or grace – this evening Cindy Bolbach, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), will be with us for unchurch. Cindy is an incredibly wise and intelligent woman who, through her travels as moderator, has a far broader perspective on church than any of us. Come tonight and listen, and ask her questions.
For the next three Sundays of unchurch, again by circumstance or by grace, two of the initially planned guests have had to postpone and we’d intended an open forum for the third already. So, we have now three scheduled evenings that we will use for an open conversation on the future of Clarendon Presbyterian Church.
Why now? Last spring we celebrated together the passage of amendment 10-A, the change in our denomination’s form of government that, frankly, catches the rest of the church up to where we’ve been for almost 20 years – ordaining gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church officers and empowering them to leadership in the church. Thanks be to God.
Over those 20 years this small congregation has played out outsized role in changing the Presbyterian Church, and we’ve also played a significant role in shifting the culture. When I came here a bit more than eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of Presbyterian congregations in National Capital Presbytery with openly partnered gay or lesbian elders serving on its session. We were one of 17 churches in the entire denomination on the “watchlist” of the conservative Presbyterian Layman. The Layman doesn’t even keep such a list anymore because it just got too long to keep track of. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, Clarendon was one of a tiny handful of congregations – of any denomination – in the metro area where a same-gender couple could walk in for the first time and no one in the sanctuary would think anything other than, “hm, new folks. Nice.” Today, there are dozens and dozens of congregations – Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, even Baptist – where that is true. Thanks be to God.
When I came here eight years ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia was preparing to pass an amendment to its constitution to ban same-gender marriage. In the face of the passage of that amendment, we were in the news across the country for the stand that we took on marriage equality. Today that amendment would not pass the popular vote in the Commonwealth, and our own policy is no longer particularly noteworthy. Thanks be to God.
We have so much to be thankful for in the parts that we have been able to play in helping to bend the arc of the moral universe a bit closer to justice over these past two decades. Thanks be to God.
We have run the race with perseverance, and we have fulfilled our calling. With have lived fully into our ordination. Thanks be to God.
If this were a movie, we could roll the credits, collect a few Oscars, and gather at the wine bar to celebrate.
But this is not a movie. A central part of why we existed has, plain and simple, changed dramatically and, frankly, far more quickly than most of us dared to dream even five years ago.
And all of that, which is to be celebrated wildly, also leaves us in a far different cultural and even ecclesiastical context than we were in eight years ago. It leaves us facing, as a community and as individual leaders within it, the fundamental questions of ordination.
If our ordination – our calling to help transform church and culture – has been fulfilled, do we have a new calling?
If the answer is “no,” then how do we move with faithfulness, to a grace-filled ending of this ministry.
If yes – if we have a new ordination, a new calling – what is it precisely, and how do we begin to live into it with grace, and with excitement, transformative passion, energy, imagination and love?
Friends, I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know three things:
First, we must ask them now, or time and circumstance will answer them for us in ways that we will not like.
Second, this is a grace-filled community in which love reigns and we will ask the questions well and hang together as we do.
Finally, and most essentially, God is with us as we ask these questions and will be with us we live into the answers no matter what those answers are.
At the beginning of this sermon, I asked “why raise this stuff on World Communion Sunday?” Well, what better day to think about the ordination of the congregation than the day when we celebrate the fact that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and that we do this work of the people as a people fed always on the bread of life and the cup of salvation.
Let us pray.
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, grant us the wisdom and the courage for the living of these days. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
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