|
|
The Holy Way
Home
by the Rev. Rich Smith
December 16, 2007
Isaiah 35
In one of his books about Lake Wobegon, LEAVING HOME,
Garrison Keillor tells some stories about people COMING home -- the
Exiles, he calls them -- folks who'd left Lake Wobegon for more
exciting places, but who now come home for Christmas. "Dozens of
exiles were back," he writes, "including some whom their families
weren't expecting because they'd said they weren't coming, couldn't
come, were sorry but it was just out of the question. But
Christmas exerts powerful forces. We turn a corner in a wretched
shopping mall and some few bars of a tune turn a switch in our heads
and gates open and tons of water thunder through Hoover Dam, the big
turbines spin, electricity flows, and we get in our car and come back,
like salmon."
Of course for some who have been away a very long
time, going home is not without pitfalls. Keillor tells about one
family, who as they approach the town, the father decides he'd better
give the kids some orientation. "You need to know," he says,
"that when we sit down to dinner, before we can eat, Grandpa will ask
the blessing."
"What's a blessing?" the kids ask.
"Well, that's when Grandpa says a prayer of thanks
to God."
"Who's God?"
At which point Dad decides he'd better take the long
way into town, so as to have more time to explain things.
In many ways, Christmas is the time for exiles to
come home.
Our scripture lesson for this Sunday, so poetically
capturing the promise of this season, also speaks of exiles coming
home. It comes from a time some five centuries before the birth
of Christ, when the leading citizens of Judah and Israel were captured
by the Babylonian army and sent off into exile, tp present-day
Iraq. Cut off from their homeland, their center of worship and
all they held dear, they could only dream of the day when they would be
released and be free to come home. Isaiah's words gave them the
hope that this would indeed happen, that they would not have to be
exiles forever, that God would bring them back. (Kind of the
reverse of what is apparently happening now, with refugees returning to
Bagdad.) And the prophecy employs images that I with my Southwest roots
have always resonated with: "The wilderness and the dry land shall be
glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom... For waters shall
break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning
sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the
haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and
rushes." In those years when there are good winter rains, that's
exactly what we saw -- the desert rejoicing and blossoming. That,
according to Isaiah, is what it's like to return from exile. The
equivalent here is April – bulbs springing in full flower, cherry trees
bursting with color, leaves returning to the trees after a long dreary
winter.
Isaiah uses other images as well: "Strengthen the
weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a
fearful heart, 'Be strong, do not fear! Your God will come and save
you.' ...Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of
the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the
tongue of the speechless sing for joy."
It's not just the land that will blossom, but the
people as well -- those who have been oppressed in any way, symbolized
here by the blind, the deaf, the disabled and the speechless, will be
liberated. They will hear and see and sing and dance with new
freedom and joy. That's what it's like when exiles come home.
It is significant that when John the Baptist began
to have doubts about Jesus, as reported in the Gospel reading often
used on this Sunday, when John began to wonder if he really was the one
to save them, and sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, "Are you the one
who is to come, or are we to wait for another?", Jesus answered them in
words that reflect Isaiah's images of the restored kingdom: "Go and
tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them."
One of the surest signs of Christ's presence, of
God's liberating activity, is when exiles come home, when those who
were somehow excluded, or shut out, or oppressed, are brought home,
welcomed, accepted, made part of the community. Christmas is when
exiles come home. Not just family members who have been away for
a while, but members of the human family who have been exiled,
especially by the church itself.
I have a pretty long list of folks whom that might
include.
I think of the disabled, or differently-abled, as we
sometimes put it. We have taken some steps to make our buildings
more accessible – there’s a ramp on the front steps, special cut outs
for wheels chairs in the pews, wider stalls in the restrooms – but
there’s so much more we can do! It is noted in our historical
records how a ramp was constructed at our old Mt. Pleasant Church so
that President Roosevelt could attend a wedding and a funeral. In
that spirit we need to do more – have more accessible entrances on all
levels, a bigger elevator, easier access to the chancel, a better and
more reliable sound system. All these will be considered as we
contemplate a capital funds campaign in the new year.
Next on my list would be those of diverse races and
cultures. The UCC is challenged to be a multi-racial,
multi-cultural church, and on the whole we are, as you will find
worship being conducted in some 16 different languages this morning
throughout the UCC. As a denomination we are quite diverse.
Individual congregations are another matter, of course. And we at
Westmoreland are working at being more multi-cultural, especially in
our music. How much more can we do to not just accept others, but
embrace them?
Next on my list are the unchurched, in many places
now the largest segment of the population. We pretty much do
things as if everyone in attendance has grown up in the church and
naturally knows what to do. We assume they know how to worship as
we do, what a Doxology is, that the asterisk next to something in the
bulletin means "stand up". How can we be more user friendly,
without spending too much time on mechanics? Is our attitude one
of "Well, we're here, and when they're ready to come in, we'll still be
here," or is it one of doing what Martin Luther and others of his day
did to take the church to the people, to make it a place that reaches
out -- doesn't just bring them into the circle, but widens the circle
to include them?
On the other side of the unchurched is another
group, known variously as the over-churched, or the church alumni
association. Bishop Spong calls them "believers in exile."
These are the folks who grew up in the church, who were steeped in its
culture, its language, its music, its ethos, but who now find the
church failing to live up to what it is called to be. They find
the church clinging to a world view that is outmoded, a rigid orthodoxy
that is more a religion about Jesus than the religion of Jesus, an
exclusivism and imperialism and judgmentalism that says "this is the
only way and all others be damned." They see a church bogged down
in institutional concerns, a church whose main goal is survival, a
church that is spiritually dead. They see a church that in its
insistence on possessing the "truth" has exiled those who would dare to
question and doubt and seek un-orthodox answers. I believe that a
church like ours would be especially appealing to these particular
exiles, as we seek to be a church that goes beyond orthodoxy, a church
that tries to bring the challenging findings and insights of scholars
into the pews, that encourages folks to think for themselves, and to
put their faith into action. It may be our special calling to
reach out to these exiles and help bring them home.
And one more on my long list of exiles who we can
help come home would have to be gay and lesbian persons. The
United Church of Christ has been especially welcoming of this group, in
contrast to other denominations who have been pointedly less so.
When our General Synod passed, in 2005, a resolution calling for full
equality in marriage for everybody, it did upset some people, and quite
a few churches left the denomination. But even more people
came. In Dallas, the Cathedral of Hope with some 4,000 members
joined the UCC, because of our welcoming stance, and became the largest
UCC in Texas. Our “God is Still Speaking,” TV ads, with there
message “Whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you are
welcome here,” brought in many more. When I was out in California
a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with the chaplain of our university, who
told be that he had recently transferred his ordination to the
UCC. It was the ads that did it, he said – it was like coming
home! He and his family are thrilled to be part of an Open and
Affirming Church.
Well, I’m sure you could think of many other persons
for whom the church could be home, perhaps a home they never knew, but
for which they always longed. And we can find ways to say to
them, welcome, there is a place for you here.
And maybe even there are some of us here who are
still feeling exiled, in one way or another, and the Christmas message,
represented so powerfully by Isaiah’s words and images is that there is
a home for us in God. It’s like that old gospel hymn, “come home,
come home, ye that are weary come home....softly and tenderly Jesus us
calling...come home!”
Or if not 19th century gospel music, there’s John
Denver. Remember his autobiographical anthem, Rocky Mountain
High, which begins, “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming
home to a place he’d never been before...” I suppose I could
write a similar one about coming to Westmoreland, but it doesn’t come
off quite as poetic or lyrical to sing, “He was born in the autumn of
his 51st year....” But my first experience of homecoming to a
place I’d never really been came when I discovered music, or rather,
music discovered me. As a teenager I was a rock musician, and
then a folky, and then at age 19 became part of the choir at the
University of Redlands. It was the director’s first year – and
he’s now about to retire, so that’s why we were in California recently,
to sing with him once again. As we were concluding the rehearsal
before Saturday evening’s worship service, when we would sing with over
400 others, he reminded us why he’s been a musician and conductor all
these years – he said music takes me to a place I can’t get to any
other way, a place I like being, and it is the closest we might get to
God this side of heaven. Maybe it’s what heaven is like, in fact,
and I wouldn’t be too unhappy about spending eternity singing in that
choir with Jeff as conductor.
Today we are celebrating Christmas – the
incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us – with music. The texts are
not what we usually think of as “Christmas,” there’s no manger, no
shepherds or magi – but the words are drawn from the Psalms and classic
liturgy. (Just as “Joy to the World” is based on Psalm 98, not
the nativity stories.) But I think you’ll agree that the anthems
Alejandro has composed take us into God’s presence, they are a holy way
home, and if we have ever felt lost or exiled or separated, they will
transport us and transform us.....and we will know that God is with us,
which is what this season is finally all about! Maybe it will be
as Garrison Keillor says: a few bars of a tune will turn a switch, the
floodgates will open, and we will come home!
So may we sing and pray and work for the day when it
shall be Christmas, when the exiles will come home. "And the
ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
.
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
1
Westmoreland Circle
Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
www.westmorelanducc.org
An
Open and Affirming Congregation
|
