A sermon given by Rev. Thomas Disrud

Sunday, April 16, 2000

Call to worship

Let us come together here as a community of faith in this holy season.

Let us bring our whole selves, our joys, our fears, our longings.

May we listen to that still small voice within,

and find ourselves connected to the mystery.

Come, let us worship together.

It certainly isn’t hard to stay in touch these days. We get information from the internet, from the TV and radio, from newspapers, on the telephone. No matter where we are, we can be reached. Cell phones now ring in movie theaters and restaurants. They are in cars. Occasionally, they even ring here in church.

It is good to be so connected, we say. Indeed, it can be. I marvel at how much information is now at my fingertips on-line. My life has changed a great deal because of the advances in technology.

But I’m also aware of how fast and furiously information seems to come my way. It used to be that when I was done with a meeting at church in the evening, I just went home. Now I usually go home and check the e-mail. And I usually check it before leaving the house in the morning. Even though I give myself permission not to check it, I find that I usually do. I don’t want to miss anything.

Life is full these days, but not necessarily full in the way I want it to be. It may be that a lot of what comes in front of me really isn’t all that important. Yes, I try to filter things as quickly as I can and I’m always trying to get better organized. But sometimes that doesn’t seem to be enough.

I try to make sure I don’t lose out on my prayer time, but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough time for both.

What, I ask myself, are the most important things in my life? My family? My work? My values? When was the last time I sat down and gave thanks for the things that mean to most to me? When was the last time I sat down to even meditate on those things.

It is important to pay attention to how it is we fill up our time. It may be that we are loosing out on some of the important things. As the writer Annie Dillard says, there can be a great temptation to fiddle around making itsy-bitsy friends or itsy-bitsy meals or spending time with just about anything else that is itsy-bitsy. Almost anything can be trivialized—it depends on what we do with it.

There are times, of course, when we are in touch with those things that are most important. There are those times when we are in touch with God, or the divine, or the spirit, whatever we might call it.

They are those moments when we are called to something larger, when we are aware of a connection that seems to take us out of ourselves. We are in relationship with the world around us.

I have an image that has grounded me throughout my life. I was four or five years old, playing with my dogs in the front yard. I lay on my back, my head in the tall green grass, looking up at the sky. It was blue with big white clouds gently rolling by.

In that place I was safe and grounded and I felt held and connected to the world. It is my earliest sense of being with God.

There wasn’t a need to get an explanation, or to discuss something, it was simply there. It was complete.

It is a time when I resonate with the words of Martin Buber, the great theologian: It doesn’t matter what you call it. All that matters is that you hear it.

I think that it is an important part of why it is we come together here Sunday morning. We want to have a time that is different from the time we spend during the rest of the week. We want to be with others, to know that our voices are together. We want to take some time to think about those things that are most important in our lives.

We want to take time to be with God, or the spirit, or the divine, or the common good, or our highest values.

We want to take time to remember who it is we are and where it is we are going.

We want to take time to listen to that still, small voice inside of ourselves, and to be with others who can help us to that.

That awareness of connection may come when we are in a certain place, or with a certain person, but most often we may touch it when we least expect it.

It may be it comes when we don’t know what else it is we can do.

A story.

Garrison Keillor tells of twenty-five Lutheran ministers on a retreat one July retreat. There they were, all in earth tones, making good eye contact with each other, murmuring to each other, fellowshipping, picnicking on a twenty-six foot pontoon boat, the Agnes D, in Lake Wobegon. With all these ministers on it, the pontoon boat rode so low in the water it looked to people standing on the shore to be a genuine miracle—like they were walking on the water. It was quite a sight.

Well, too many ministers were in a small space, and when they started moving up toward the bow it started to go down. Water started sloshing over the front. The pontoon rocked. All of a sudden the hot coals in the grill started shooting sparks. The ministers were waving away sparks as they landed in their hair and they kept moving up towards the front. Five ministers leaned over the port rail and tried to fill their cardboard beer cups up with water to douse the sparks. This caused the port side of the pontoon dipped down low and the ministers lurched over to starboard, and then starboard went down too. The Agnes D started to plunge forward and to drop some of its ballast off the forward rail. Eight Lutheran ministers went for total immersion.

All the rest were holding on to the rail when they heard the crash of the barbecue grill. Red, hot coals slid down the deck, coming straight toward them—the Book of Revelations coming to life.

It seemed there was nothing else they could do. All of them plunged over the side into five feet of water; (it had been a dry summer), but some of them were just over five feet tall. They lifted their faces up to the sky. They stood there and took just a moment of silence. They did not know what to do. They did not know where the lake floor might drop off. Their soaked clothes made them too heavy to swim.

And then a voice came to them. A boy called out to them, "it's not so deep this way."

And those were the words they needed to hear. They needed the assurance of things they could not see. He give them the conviction they had hoped for. And this child led them to shore. They followed, an act of faith.

At times we are looking to be led somewhere. We don’t know what to do and we reach out. It may be one of those times when we really don’t know how deep the water is and we are looking for some assurance. We’re looking for a sign to tell us which way to go.

Whether we’re afraid or not, the impulse to reach out is there.

It seems there is a primal instinct. Call it the religious impulse. Often we do it when we don’t quite know what else to do. But we seem to have a sense that we need to reach out, and to try to find that connection. We need to put ourselves forward.

It may come when we have lost someone or something, it may come when we are in a transition, it may come when we no longer know what to do.

Sometimes we are called to let go of our pretenses, our ego. We have to get past all the distractions to a place where we can hear the inner voice.

If we can do that, we make room for the spirit to be present.

Another story:

Writer Parker Palmer tells of the time when he had the opportunity to be the president of a school. He had visited the campus, talked with students and faculty and trustees and had been told that if he wanted it, the job was most likely his.

At the time, he was having a hard time figuring out his vocation. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. But this position was quite prestigious and he was pretty sure the job was right for him.

Palmer is a Quaker, and he decided to call together a clearness committee, a group of people who would sit down with him and help him figure it out. The group does not give advice, but spends three hours asking open, honest questions that would help him discover his inner truth. Palmer writes that if he really looked at his motivation for the meeting, he really wanted to just impress the group with the position he had been offered, that he had already decided to accept it.

At first, the questions were easy. What was his vision for the institution? What is its mission in the larger society? How would he handle decision making? How would he deal with conflict?

Halfway into the process, someone asked a question that sounded easy: "What would you like most about being a president?"

Palmer writes: "The simplicity of that question took me out of my head and lowered me into my heart. I remember pondering for at least a full minute before I could respond. Then, very softly, and tentatively, I started to speak: "Well, I would not like having to give up my writing and my teaching… I would not like the politics of the presidency, never knowing who your real friends are…. I would not like having to glad-hand people I do not respect simply because they have money… I would not like…

The person gently reminds him that she asked him what he would like most.

He continues his litany of what he would not like, and the questioner again calls him back to the question.

Finally, after a long pause, he answers. "Well, I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it."

The group was silent and respectful.

Finally, one of them asks, "Parker, can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?"

How often do we know, on some level that what we’re doing isn’t right, but that we do it anyway? We have to get past our egos and expectations. We have to get beyond what we should be doing or what seems like it will bring us the most attention. We have to get past our fears.

But that is a challenge.

Sometimes it takes a loving circle of people who can help us get there. Sometimes it takes listening to that still, small voice inside us and having the confidence to do it. If we give it room, we can usually figure out what it is we need to do.

When we meet the divine, we get out of ourselves and are with the other, that mystery. There is something in the meeting, something in the connection of I and Thou. We connect outside of ourselves, but there is also a connection that happens inside of us. We have an awareness that we are not alone, but that a presence is there with us.

We come to understand that we are not as acting by ourselves, but as part of some larger relationship, one where love is present. We see our lives in a larger context, and we know that we are part of everything.

I think of the story from the time when the great cathedrals of Europe were being built. It would take many, many years to build a cathedral, more than a single person’s lifetime. People would spend their whole lives working and not seeing the cathedral finished. One day someone went up to a worker and asked what he was doing. He said, "Well, I’m laying stone." The next person who was asked said, "I’m carving wood." Last they went to a woman who was sweeping the front staircase of the cathedral. She was clear about what she was doing. "I’m building this temple to the glory of God."

It doesn’t matter what you call it. All that matters is that you hear it.

Writer Maya Angelou tells of a lesson she had with her teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, when he asked her to read for him. She writes: "I was twenty-four, very erudite, very worldly. He asked that I read from "Lessons in Truth," a section which ended with these words: "God loves me." I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, "Read it again." I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, "God loves me." He said, "Again." After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?"

Most of us, I’d expect, don’t think about our relationship with God on a daily basis. Maybe, maybe not.

But when I do think about it, I’m reminded that my life has a purpose, that I’m connected. With it comes a sense of responsibility to the world. It comes from an awareness that as I have been loved, so must I bring that love to others. That is a grand, wonderful, awesome, awareness.

It does not matter what you call it. All that matters is that you hear it.

I remember my second Passover seder some years ago. I don’t have a lot of memories of my first seder, because, I have to say, it didn’t mean much to me. I was apparently caught up in something else. The words didn’t speak to me.

But the next year a friend invited me to her home. It was small gathering of friends. I remember how she told us of her family traditions. I remember the people in the group and how each of us seemed to be looking for freedom in some aspect of our lives.

And something happened in the seder, I don’t know if I can quite explain it—other than to say that I got it. The meaning of the meal came home. Just as the jews needed to mark their freedom and the slavery they had endured, I, too, needed to be reminded of how I was free and how I was enslaved. Their story, I realized, was also my story.

Passover now takes me back to that time. It was a time when I knew the spirit was present.

Each one of us is enslaved in some way. Each one of us has those things that keep us from relationship with others, with the earth, and with the divine. Each one of us has those distractions that keep us for realizing who we might be.

But there is a presence in the world that connects us and reaches out to us. It is something that is always there if we can be open to receiving it.

Words of Rumi:

God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses, up from the ground,

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered with vines,

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,

till one day it cracks them open.

May the spirit crack us open to new life. May it surprise us, may it challenge us. May it bring the awareness that we are loved.

May this presence in the world guide us and hold us and move us.

It doesn’t matter what we call it. All that matters is that we hear it.

May it be so. Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life, in this holy season of Easter and Passover, help us to know we are loved. Help us to receive the love that is in our midst. Move in our lives and challenge us. Help us to listen to that still, small voice. Help us to be open. Help us to bring that love back to the world. Amen.

Benediction.

Go this day knowing that you are loved. Know that you are held in the arms of the beloved. May you bless the world with your life. May the spirit move in you and through you. Go now in love and in peace.

Copyright 2000, by Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.