2nd Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2017
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUo85kovF6M
The second membership vow we’re going to look at this
week is a four-letter word that begins with an H… Any takers? Here. As in “Come
here,” like you might tell a child or a dog. The word “come” was also suggested
for today’s four-letter word, and it would work, too. When you joined the
church, and at every baptism, and every time someone else joins the church, you
promised “faithfully to participate in the ministries of the church by your …
presence.” By your presence. By being here.
Now, this does not mean you should be here every single time the doors are
open. That is going to wear you out. It means you come and are here and
involved in the ministries of the church. It means you make Sunday morning
worship a priority. It means you come when you can to other events, like this
Saturday’s Country Breakfast (PG: Wednesday night Lenten services).
There are some things you’re not going to make because of your schedule, and we
all know that. There are some things you’re not going to make because it really
doesn’t appeal to you. A country breakfast (PG: midweek evening worship
service) may be exactly the opposite of your cup of tea, and that’s okay. There
are other ways you can participate in those ministries, like by your prayers,
or offering if you can get anything for the meal even if you can’t make it. But
the ones you can make, the ones that don’t turn you off, you pledged to be here. You pledged your presence in
the ministries of the church. They’re not all glamorous ministries, sometimes
it’s a church clean-up day. Sometimes it’s setting up for a special service;
sometimes it’s cleaning up after donuts. You promised to faithfully be present.
You promised to be here.
What’s interesting is pairing this vow with today’s
readings, which are all about journeys. In Genesis, God tells Abram to go from
his home, to leave everything he’s ever known, and go to an unknown, unnamed
place that God will show him later. And Abram goes, and leaves on this
uncertain journey. He obeys. Our psalm this morning, Psalm 121, with that
famous first verse, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my
help?” This psalm is thought to be a psalm that was sung by pilgrims going to
Jerusalem. Another journey. And in our Gospel we have Nicodemus, who snuck away
to see Jesus under the cover of night, and they talk about being born anew, of
water and the Spirit. The journey of birth, and the journey of how you get to
God’s kingdom. None of these journeys, not Abram’s, not the pilgrims, and not
the journey to God’s kingdom are journeys that you do by yourself. Abram went
with his nephew, Lot, his wife, Sarai, and the enslaved persons in their
household. Pilgrims always traveled in groups; you couldn’t make the journey by
yourself back in those days, and doing so just wasn’t an idea even thought of.
Individualism is a much more modern concept. And being born never happens in
isolation, either. Either it requires at least your mother to be present, or
being born of the Spirit means that the community of faith is present. The
community of faith is here. Being
born of the Spirit, being baptized, is joining God’s family, which is why we do
it in worship. God’s family needs to be present, God’s family is here, and so here is where baptism happens.
I was tapped by our District to join a clergy cohort this
spring. There are six of us who meet every two weeks and the theme is that we
are pastoring churches who are in transition. The book we are reading together
is called “Canoeing the Mountains,” an idea which comes from the Lewis and
Clark Expedition. If you remember from your history classes, there was the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when we bought almost a third of our country from
France. Then President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark and their team,
the Corps of Discovery, to go explore that land and keep going all the way
until they hit water. They went from the Mississippi River to the Missouri
River and followed that all the way up to its starting point, at the far
western end of the Louisiana Purchase. Then, they expected to have some small
rivers to navigate their way over to the Pacific Ocean; they had even packed
canoes and oars on their trip for just such a purpose. But when they reached
the headwaters of the Missouri River, in what is today Montana, they didn’t see
the ocean. They didn’t even see streams running toward the ocean. Instead, they
saw the Rocky Mountains, which were unlike anything they had ever seen before, and they probably said a few of their own choice four-letter words.
Who has seen the Rockies? How are they different from the Appalachians? Bigger,
taller, pointier; not rounded slopes like the ones we know here in the East.
That’s where the title of the book comes from, Canoeing the Mountains. Lewis
and Clark and their team had brought canoes for that part of their journey;
they thought they knew what to expect. But instead it was something wholly
unknown and unexpected and they were not prepared for it. Now, the Corps of
Discovery succeeded in that vast unknown, in spite of not having the right
equipment for it. They succeeded because of how well the team worked together and bonded during the first part of the trip.
Here’s how that ties in to being here, being present in
the life of the church. There's an author and consultant named Margaret
Wheatley who studies organizational behavior, leadership, chaos theory, things
like that. In 2003, she wrote an essay called “When Change Is Out of Control.”[1]
Does it ever feel like change is out of control? Okay, well, in that article
she wrote that “It is possible to prepare for the future without knowing what
it will be. The primary way to prepare for the unknown is to attend to the
quality of our relationships, to how well we know and trust one another.” “To
attend to the quality of our relationships…” Did you know that the first
synonym that comes up when you look up ‘attend’ in the thesaurus is “to be
present at”? Be present at our relationships. Care for our relationships. Is it
really any surprise that being present is one of the vows we take when joining
the church and when promising to help care for a newly baptized person? Knowing
and trusting one another, being present, intentionally making our relationships
with each other quality relationships, that’s how we get through change and the
unknown. We do it together. We are present to and with each other. We are God’s
family together. Families spend time together and do things together and
weather the storms of life together. They journey together, like Abram’s
family, moving from where their family had always lived and farmed to a
completely unknown place. They achieve dreams together, like pilgrimages, which
today we might call bucket list items. Families are present together.
I remember back when we lived in Maryland when I was a
kid growing up and there was a snowstorm. The front page of the newspaper was a
story about a family who had dinner together for the first time in a long time
because of that snowstorm. That family had not been present with each other;
each member had been off doing their own thing: work, meetings, sports
practices, lessons, school, maybe even throw in some church activities in
there. They’d been so busy and so divided each doing their own thing that they
didn’t spend time together, until they were snowed in together.
Beloved,
if that is the case in your family, or the case of our church family, then it is a good things it's supposed to snow this week. We need to stop doing so many things and stop
doing so many things separately. The ministries of our church are joint
ministries, they are church ministries, they are not Trustee ministries or
prayer ministries or any individual’s ministries. Let’s not get spread thin. We
cannot be all things to all people nor is that what God wants. We are to be
this local church, in this place at this time. I forget the name attached to
it, but I remember a leader talking about ministry where you take someone along
with you. Paul was the example, and how he took Barnabas with him throughout
much of the book of Acts. There is no ministry you should be doing by yourself.
It’s why when someone asks about one of our shut-ins or sick, I often invite
them to come with me the next time I go visit. It’s not just that I love
company or that makes the drive around 695 go faster; it’s because it’s the
family of Christ spending time together, being present together.
And why is this important? Why is the vow to be present included
in that list? Why do we need to be here?
Cowenton: Again, so that we can be rooted in Christ so that we
can nurture the community.
Both: The mission of The United Methodist Church is to make
disciples for the transformation of the world. You can’t make disciples with
people you don’t know. You can’t be in ministry with people you’re not in
relationship with. Like I’ve said before, it’s not about us. We are not here for each other. I mean, we are. We
have each other’s backs. We are that kind of here for each other. But we are
not present in church for our own sake; we are present for the sake of the
world. After all, as Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the whole world, that he sent his only
Son.” God loves the whole world and wants to see the whole world transformed,
wants to see his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. That’s why we’re
here. That’s why it’s important to be here.
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