August 27, 2017
A Beginning, Not an Ending
Questioning and Questing
Belonging and Beckoning
Whether you are here for an hour or a lifetime, I welcome you again to this congregation. What a wonderful time to be a part of this community!
It is, course, the season of beginnings, with all of the excitement and busy days that go along with them.
This past week children went off to kindergarten and grade school. Youth headed out of their homes and with rejoicing or trepidation made their way into the halls of the junior and senior high schools.
Students came from throughout the state, across the nation, and around the world to begin a course of study or a new year at Kirkwood and the University of Iowa.
In the midst of all of this, we confirmed eight youth this morning. And while confirmation is often seen as an ending, it is really a beginning.
And once again we are beginning our church program year: The choir sings; we look forward to the start of our education programs in two weeks. And this morning we renewed our covenant with each other so that we can go forward together. With creativity and imagination we will live in the uncertainty of these days and meet their challenges united with each other.
In the year ahead we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of this beloved old building. We will publish a church history that looks at our last fifty years. These are not exercises in nostalgia but rather a part of discovering the kind of congregation we want to be in the future. We have a past, but we don’t live in it. We affirm that each generation must make the faith its own.
Confirmands, you are taking on for yourselves the questioning and wondering that is a part of the life of faith. You are confirmed, but Paul encourages you—and all of us really—do not conform. Do not just take from the rest of the world the meaning that is assigned to words like “God” or “Christian” or Faith.” To paraphrase Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “Those words don’t always mean what you think they mean.”
Peter Gomes, who was the minister at Harvard’s Memorial Church told of students who would come up to him and say, “I don’t believe in God.” A strong statement. A challenging statement. Some of you feel that way—and that’s OK. But Peter would reply: “Tell me more about this God that you don’t believe in. I might want to not believe in that God as well.”
Where will you learn about God? When we look at Jesus we see something of the God who heals the broken, who welcomes all people, who challenges false authorities, who suffers with us.
Where will you learn about God? In the natural world, of course. Among other people, yes. And you can also learn something about God here—yes even here among these people.
In this place, confirmands—and all of us—are connected to a tradition of questing and questioning. We used to have that ad in the Yellow Pages—when people used the Yellow Pages—that said of our church: “Respecting Questions.” That was one of the themes for the confirmation class this year. The students were brought into the life-giving tradition of seeking new answers and respecting the questions of others.
The prophet Joel reminds us that searching, wondering, and questioning are for the whole church, for all ages. It is both important and possible for old people to dream alongside the young who bring their own visions.
Each generation will find its faith for its time. As we renew our covenant in these new times we are called to question again how we will live together, to wonder together about the new things that we can bring into the world as we discover the meaning of faith for our lives and for the issues of today.
One way we’re going to do this in the coming months is through a series of “sit down coffee hours”: these will be opportunities that give us a little extra time after worship to talk in small groups about different parts of the life of this congregation. Together we can ask: How do we understand God? What are we supposed to be doing? How do we live with each other and with creation and with the rest of the world? This is a trustworthy place for questing and questioning.
As I’ve started talking about this possibility with members of our church boards and the council, the interest and excitement has been growing. Watch for more information about these events.
Here in this place our deepest longings for ourselves and for humanity can find both expression and a place to question. You know that is not true everywhere else. A place like this doesn’t just happen. I heard the entrepreneur Adam Pollock say something amazing recently: “People who show up and are willing to give their time will shape what the future’s going to look like. If you want it to look a certain way, you should probably show up and give your energy to it.” If this is true for a business, it’s certainly true for a church like this.
This is a church that can carry your questions to so many places, among so many people.
So we are able to listen as Jesus beckons us: “Come to me.” He doesn’t call just the strong and those at ease. He calls the weary. He calls those carrying burdens. That is, he calls you and me. He calls us out from what we know. He calls us away from familiar paths to follow in ways yet to be made known. Jesus beckons and offers rest. We belong here, but we are called beyond this place. We are beckoned in a way that enlarges our sense of belonging.
Together we become what we are—the body of Christ.
We get some sense of what that means in one of Brian Wren’s hymns that sings: “We are your people, Spirit of grace, you dare to make us, to all our neighbors, Christ’ living voice, hands, and face.”
Wren originally titled this hymn, “The Church Taking Stock of Itself”—and that is what we are about in these days—taking stock, assessing, finding out what we want our future to look like. He seems to describe who we are—or who I hope we are becoming—when he writes:
Joined in community, treasured and fed, may we discover gifts in each other, willing to lead and be led.
Rich in diversity, help us to live closer than neighbors, open to strangers, able to clash and forgive.
Glad of tradition, help us to see in all life’s changing where you are leading where our best efforts should be.
We are at a beginning, not an end.
We are a questioning and questing congregation.
We know both belonging and beckoning.
And what a joy—today eight young people with all of their vision have joined with us as we walk together in the ways of Jesus Christ.