A Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Listen to the Sermon…

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

It has been quite the week around here. If you happened to come in through the Parish House doors, then you know that we are doing some much needed repair on the structural work in that corner of the building. It is amazing what you can find — or what you can find missing — when you remove the clapboards on and old building and look inside. And, if you have not heard the news, last Sunday we had an unexpected change to the building. We were, in fact, spared a great misfortune. It was around noon, after everyone had left and no one was out on the front steps, when the large wooden cross that used to hang from our tower came crashing to the ground. Yes, there was some damage to a car, but thanks be to God, no one was hurt. So it feels a little bit like a construction zone around here.

As one of you wrote in an email after reading News and Notes this week, it might be a good idea to think about wearing a football helmet when coming to the church. Or perhaps a hardhat. Now I have not instructed the ushers to hand out hardhats as you come in the door. And we are mistaken if we believe that somehow, hardhats or not, God will prevent any harm from ever coming our way. We live in a world where God supports us, but does not magically protect us from the inevitable accidents and hardships of life. As William Sloan Coffin, a longtime pastor of Riverside Church in New York City preached after his 23-year-old son died in a car accident, what God gives us is minimum protection, maximum support.[1]

Still, perhaps hardhats in church are not such a bad idea. You see, we do something rather audacious here each Sunday. We gather and presume that we can engage our hearts and minds with the Holy One the Creator of all things. We come to know the love of God, to hear the call of Jesus Christ, and to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. The events of the last week reminded me of an observation the author Annie Dillard made in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk. She suggests that maybe we really should think about our headgear. She notes that as Christians, we can have a tendency to go about our worship with a casual disregard for what it means to encounter the divine in our midst. Here is how she puts it:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. [2]

The waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Today, we heard a story about a community that had beheld the mighty power of God. They had seen the hand of God move against the mighty Pharaoh of Egypt. They had seen this God lead them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They had watched as this God parted the waters of the Red Sea and led them to freedom on dry land. And yet now, in the midst of the wilderness, they are complaining bitterly. Complaining because they were hungry, and fearful, and they thought they would die. Suddenly, the old fleshpots of Egypt looked appealing and comforting. Yes, they were hungry. Yes, the wilderness was not a comfortable place. But perhaps a deeper source of their complaint was this:

God had drawn them out to where they could never return.

The result of their liberation from Egypt was not just their human freedom, but also the establishment of a relationship, a covenant with God. Yes, this was a God who would minister to them in their need: there would be manna in the wilderness: bread sufficient for each day of the journey. But perhaps it dawned on this community of sojourners that their new life would be more than about sustenance for each day. They were not really free: their life as a people would be shaped and defined by the One who was making them into a people. And they would learn that to be God’s people was to always be aware of the neediest in their midst – the widow, the orphan, the foreigners and aliens who resided in their midst.

The Jesuits have a program for young adults called the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. It is not unlike the Peace Corp: young persons just out of college devote a year or two of their lives to working in this country or in Jesuit missions abroad. They live in community, and work in impoverished areas, guided by four values of the Jesuit tradition: community, spirituality, simplicity, and social justice. A few go on to become Jesuits themselves. But most go on to have secular careers of one sort or another. But there is a phrase, half humorous and half ironic that persons use to describe their experience in the program. If you have been through it, they say, you are “Ruined for Life.”

Ruined for life: live intently the Gospel values of Jesus Christ for two years as you are setting out on life’s journey, and it will shape the rest of your life. And it will ruin you, if your hopes and dreams were about a life inconsistent with the values of the Gospel, a life that has little room for the love of a neighbor or the love of God. Life would be easier without the demands of the Gospel being planted in your heart as you come to maturity.

And such a life would also be impoverished. You know, last Sunday afternoon, I spent a fair amount of time giving thanks that no one was hurt in the accident last week. And as images of each of you came to mind, streaming in and out of church, I was filled with a deep sense of gratitude that each of you was all right. And then later in the week, I realized this: such gratitude can be a part of my afternoon prayers every Sunday, for the simple and wondrous gift that we are given: that we are with one another, that we have been given each other, and that we are doing all we can to follow and listen to the one who has called us together, who hears our praise -and yes, also our complaints – and who works wonders in our midst. Who provides the simple sustenance we need for each day, and who draws us out to places from which we will never return. What power. What blessing. What a gift.

So, no hardhats at the door. But maybe we should put some signs up around here designating this place as a construction zone.

For a lot of work is going on.

It is the work of God shaping and making a people, forming a community in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.

It is the work of being built up in love.

So dress accordingly.

Amen.

Preached on The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
By the Rev. Thomas N. Mousin, August 5, 2012

[1] William Sloane Coffin, Alex’s Death, preached at Riverside Church, New York City, on January 23, 1983. (Download pdf).

[2] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.