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IRev It Up... |
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Shining moments abound. You just have to know where to look. Start in Philadelphia, about nine at night, at the end of the third day of a journey from the open ease of life in South Dakota to the strain of survival in the City of Brotherly Love. The bus rolls to a stop, full of light and laughter in the darkening night. Out pour 34 weary souls, aged 10 to 81. Across the street, with necks eagerly craning, stand two pastors, arriving at last to join up with the mission trip. We see you before you see us, radiant with the fatigue of work and shimmering with the gifts you have just received from the meal you shared with others you once thought were most unlike you. Someone sees us, shouts - hey! -, and you all come running, flowing across the street as if you were one being, enfolding us with glee, hugging, surrounding us, drawing us in. Our eyes and hearts moisten with the joy of recognition, of belonging to someone who is that glad to see us. Then drive around New England for a while, meeting old friends for lunch, enjoying the generous hospitality of new ones. Eat well, sleep well, move in a world that is still slow and serene, where people dwell more in the moment than on either side of it, where gentility is prized more highly than flamboyance, depth more than flash. Browse in a small town where there are not only one, but two independent book stores. Now go to Hartford and take a look at the 9000 people gathered there, all part of the family we call the United Church of Christ. Notice that 1000 of them are youth. Notice how glad they are to be together, coming from all over the world as if they were coming back home again, belonging to one another. Notice how much church matters to them, how hope is something abundant like blood running in their veins. Spend some time with them, and with some of the “biggest” personalities in our UCC family tree – Lynn Redgrave, Marion Wright Edelman, Leonard Pitts, Walter Bruggemann, He Qi, Maria Otero, Barak Obama, and best of all, Bill Moyers – who will challenge you and inspire you and fire you up and melt you down. Let the gifts of musicians and artists envelop you and then turn you inside out. Share communion, all 9000 of you at once, and realize that Jesus really could have done this with half as many on the grassy shore by the lake on that day long ago. Then jump to your feet – no, be propelled out of your seat – all of you all at once, when the 17-year-old violinist, poised and confident, completes the impossible music of Saint Saens with the perfectly tuned youth orchestra accompanying him. Watch the grin spread across his innocent face as the roar of applause you offer deafens him, as if he, rather than you, has just been surprised with the gift of a lifetime. Then come home, and know that it is home, and there is nowhere you would rather be, and go to church and see people you missed and hear that they missed you, too. Celebrate summer birthdays with both grandboys and a father who is entering that delightful decade of life in which wisdom finally becomes childlike enough to make real sense. Get back to work, knowing there is no work more honorable or satisfying than empowering the saints to live the lives to which they are called – proclaiming the good news of God’s all-encompassing love, enacting the startling and compassionate teachings of Jesus, filling the world with light. Shining moments abound. You just have to know where to look. And looking for them is worth everything you have to give to the task, because there are more than enough shadows and more than enough voices of regression and doom to make you lose your balance. Take the Pope for instance. I’m not sure what good it does to proclaim in this day and age, in case we’ve all forgotten, that the Roman church is the only true church, the only purveyor of salvation. Backing away from a movement toward unity, it seems to me that the ultimate end of such entrenchment could only be the escalation of more holy wars, as if we don’t have enough of those going on anyway. It’s an odd and ultimately damaging understanding of salvation that dismisses the possibility that God might have a broader view of peace than anything we can come up with to protect our tribal walls. So comes a shining moment from a man named Brian Doyle, editor of prize-winning Portland Magazine: “I still have faith in faith, despite the philosophers’ evidence that religions are merely nutty hobbies, like being a Cubs fan. I keep thinking that under the rituals and rigmarole, there is in religion a crucial, wriggling sense of what human beings might someday be. It’s what you experience sometimes, for an instant, in patriotism or sport or family; a humor and mercy, a camaraderie and ease, a grace and mercy, a warmth beyond all reason and sense....a quick shiver of inexplicable peace and joy in the company of your fellow travelers. “That flash is what religions are for...in their essence they are all about the same thing: praise for the miracle of life; awe for the mysterious force that creates it; yearning for life beyond death; and most of all, inarticulate desperation for a future in which mercy trumps murder. More than any other force on this bruised earth, religions keep that desperate dream alive; for which I celebrate them and bow to what is best in us.” commonwealmagazine.org, 11.3.06 I wish the Pope could have been with us in Philadelphia, where I was enormously proud to be a pastor of a people like you, or in Hartford, where I was deeply grateful to be part of an undoubtedly true church, if church is a place where you get even the merest glimpse that the Light of Life can shine through any barrier we can erect. I wish everyone who thinks that religion is merely a nutty hobby, or worse, a justification to be as greedy and murderous as they can possibly be, could spend even one day with all of you. It wouldn’t take them long to change their minds. May your eyes be dazzled by the sheer brightness of the shards of hope. |
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602 Mitchell Drive ● Alcester, SD 57001-0229 ● Phone: 605.934.2341 |
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Entire contents © Copyright 2007 Alcester United Church of Christ |
Reflections
on Faith and Life