The Jesus Experience: Like Being Born. Again.

for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, 20th March 2011
text: John 3:1-17

During this season of Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the list of scriptures used by many churches, assigns passages from the gospel of John. Now John’s gospel is, to put it in polite Minnesotan, “different.” I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, staring with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. [This was when I was in high school. I used to read the Bible before I went to bed at night. Because I didn’t want my parents to worry that I was turning into some religious freak, I hid the bible in a shoebox under my bed.] When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. There are stories and characters in John’s gospel that appear nowhere else. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, [as I wrote previously in my blog] perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a poetic ballad is to a historical novel. Perhaps the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. John’s gospel was compiled as many as 40 years after Mark, decades after Matthew and Luke. It is different. The gospel according to John is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles-- the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. So the gospel of John had another mission. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to explain to new Christians “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John-- Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus—each one is, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
This week, we will consider how the Jesus Experience is like “being born again.” Next week we will consider how the Jesus experience is like drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again. The following week, how the Jesus Experience is like seeing the world clearly for the first time ever, and finally, like coming back from the dead. “The Jesus Experience” is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.
So, meet Nicodemus. A Pharisee. One of THOSE people who were always critical of Jesus. And yet, Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. This is Nicodemus’s first appearance in the gospel, but we will meet him again, as we read along. At this point, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, Nic’s relationship with Jesus is just beginning. In the beginning, Nicodemus seems to be suffering from a divided self. Nicodemus follows Jesus in secret, because he is firmly entrenched in his family and community as a leader of the conservative movement, the movement that views strict adherence to the law, or to a particular interpretation of the law of Moses, as Israel’s only salvation. He continues to live as a Pharisee, but follows Jesus in secret, and that’s what I mean by a divided self, he is trying to live in two worlds. So the story goes that he comes to Jesus in secret, to say (in paraphrase), Hey, I’m on your side. I know you are from God, because no one could do what you do apart from God.
Jesus called him out. You can’t follow me half-way.
Jesus said, you must be born again, born anew, born from above. (All acceptable translations.)
“Born again” is one of those terms that people in my tradition say with at least a hint of derision. My tradition is “cradle Christianity.” It was the goal of 19th century Congregationalists and Presbyterians and others in the mainstream Protestant tradition, who invented the “Sunday School,” that a child born into the church should never know what it is NOT to be Christian. I think they did their job well, so well in fact that it is hard for us “cradle Christians” to understand just how difficult it is to make a change from being “not particularly religious” to claiming the name of Christian. It is like being born again. Because a person who leaves one identity, one community, one family for another is completely vulnerable, naked and scared, and in need of special care and protection. Like a newborn infant.
The image of being born again of water and the Spirit is a reference to baptism; that reference would have been clear to the first Christians reading John’s gospel. In the early church, adult converts were baptized during the great Easter vigil. In the pre-dawn darkness, catechumens were led to the baptistery, a circular building outside of a church, often a womb-like structure, where they undressed, immersed themselves in the water, and emerged cold and wet as a new born babe. They were then received by their new family, their Christian family, toweled off and anointed with oil, and dressed in a new white robe. Just like a newborn baby.
If you are, like me, a cradle Christian, if you have a hard time imagining what it would be like to embrace a life that is wholly foreign to your family and your community, then perhaps you can think of a different sort of change in your life that has been like being born again. Your coming out, your leaving home, your return from battle. Think of a welcome change, which made you tremble in anticipation of – you knew not what.
That is what it is like having Christ in your life, it is like being born again, naked and screaming.
Now, in the past, if a church like ours has grown, it has grown because people who were raised in a tradition like ours moved to our town and transferred their membership from their church in Anoka or Wadena or Zumbrota to became a member of our church. That was then, this is now.
Now, the fastest growing religious demographic in America is that group that checks the box “no religious preference.” Now, when a young couple comes to me for a wedding, and I ask them if they are affiliated with a local church (because, I believe being a professional means I shouldn’t steal some other pastor’s wedding!), usually they have to go back two generations to identify a religious affliliation. The bride and groom didn’t go to church, their parents didn’t go to church, but they seem to remember that Grandma used to go to St. Something or Other until she moved to Florida. So now, if the church is going to grow, it is going to have to be ready to care for infant Christians. We as a church have to be born again, we have to change our way of thinking and relating to the world. The old assumptions no longer apply.
We now need to be ready to care for those who are completely new to the faith. Those who, because of their decision to follow Christ, might need a new family. Our newest members will need us to be their family. We will need to think like a nursery, if we are to help other people have the Jesus experience that we cradle Christians have taken for granted. The Jesus experience is too good to keep to ourselves. It is an experience that we want to share with others.
But, I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s all work, work, work. Just as a new baby brings joy to a family, newborn Christians infuse the church with new joy. New and newly born folks tend to have the energy and stamina and enthusiasm to bring new life to an old congregation. If we let them.
We have watch ourselves, lest we be tempted to say those killer words, “We’ve never done it that way before.” We ought to be ready to say, “We’ve never done it that way before. Let’s try it!”
We may even find ourselves being born anew, to a new understanding of our faith. Being born again doesn’t necessarily happen only once. As one of my favorite musicians named after two apostles, Paul Simon, sang:

I was born before my father and my children before me
And we are born and born again like the waves of the sea.
That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I want it to be.
(Senorita with a Necklace of Tears, 2000)

Born and born again. That’s the way it’s always been, and God willing, that’s how it will be. Thanks Be to God. Amen!

The Jesus Experience

 

An American missionary was hiking in the wilderness of New Guinea, through the forest, up the mountain. Two Guineans served as guides and companions on the rigorous trek. When they arrived at their destination, a mountain village, the villagers brought them water and food and asked about their journey. Each of the guides took turns telling the story of the hike, and as they told it the American was wondering if he had been on the same journey! The story the guides told was, to put it politely, embellished, to put it crudely, pure bull$*@#.
When the villagers left the travelers to their rest, the missionary asked the guides how they could lie like that. “What do you mean?” they asked.
“None of that stuff actually happened.”
“We spoke the truth,” the guides insisted.
But as the missionary settled in and became accustomed to village life, he learned that the kind of stories they people told each other were true, in the way that poetry is true, in the way that folktales are true. The guides were trying to convey to their listeners the experience of the journey. Not a map of the journey, but the experience. Their story was meant to convey what it was like to climb the mountain that morning.

...an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The gospel of John stands in sharp contrast to the other three gospels. I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, starting with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a ballad is to a historical novel.
I think the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. It is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles, the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to say, “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John, Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus, are each, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
Having the Christ in our lives is like
-- being re-born. (March 20)
-- drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again (March 27)
-- seeing the world clearly for the first time ever (April 3)
-- coming back from the dead (April 10)
That is what I am calling “The Jesus Experience.” It is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.

Mountaintop

A Communion Sunday Meditation.
Text: Matthew 17:1-9

The day we had set aside to climb Camel’s Hump Mountain was wet with a gentle rain, but it wasn’t pouring, so we went anyway. We had hiking shoes and slickers, and the trail was well traveled, and we made it to the top of Vermont’s second-highest peak with just enough difficulty to make it feel like an accomplishment. The peak is above the tree line, just skree and moss, like a rock garden, and many hikers were unpacking their knapsacks for lunch. It was like a meeting of the nations, people from all across the country and some foreign visitors too, enjoying their tour of the Long Trail. There was a sense of camaraderie. Then, for an instant, there was a clearing in the fog, a break in the clouds, through which the sun shone and you could see the green mountains spread out below, and it was such a sight you could hear a great collective sigh. I think some of us applauded. It was just a brief moment, and then it passed. And eventually, we gathered up our granola bar wrappers, and checked our boot laces, and one little group after another went on, down this mountain.
It was an experience that defies description. As much as I have tried to keep the memory of that day, I know I have lost many of the details. As much as I have tried to convey it to you, to share the way the rocks felt beneath my feet and the way the mist caressed by face, you really had to be there.
Everyone needs to have their own mountain top experience.
I believe that is the intent of the gospel story, of the mountaintop experience shared by Peter, James, and John. It was a moment of enlightenment. They told the story to convey the experience, to share it with the other disciples, who in turn passed the story on to others.
You have probably had your own mountaintop experiences, which you have treasured in your own hearts, and have longed to share with others. If only we could bottle those experiences and return to them whenever we feel the need. But the presence of the holy rarely comes in the same way twice. We always have to come down from the mountain, or home from the wilderness. After enlightenment, the laundry.
We keep these stories for each other. We keep them to remind ourselves that the Spirit moves, in this life, in this world. We keep the stories to remind each other that God’s presence comes, the spirit comes, the Christ comes, and comes again. Holy ground is wherever the Spirit is present, Holy time is whenever the Spirit is present, a holy meal is whenever we break bread together.
We break the bread and share the cup in the presence of our Lord, the one who comes to us on the mountaintop and the one who walks with us down the mountain, the one who is host, and guest, and servant at the table all at once. May this be for us a sacred moment, a memory and a foretaste of the full presence of God in our lives. Amen.

Busting Down the Walls

20 February 2011
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

In this season of Epiphany, which begins with the light of the star that marked the place where the child Jesus lay, we have been celebrating the light of Christ. Simultaneously, we have been enjoying a little more light day by day. So little, that you hardly notice it at first. But the other day, as we were driving up highway 371 on a return trip from the Cities, I noticed something wonderful. It was 5:00 p.m., and we did not need our headlights yet! I could still see well enough to keep on knitting. (Relax, Richard was driving. I’m not so accomplished yet as to drive and knit at the same time.)
The season begins with the cold light of the star, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. The darkness, personified by King Herod, tries but fails to snuff out the infant light.
The Old Testament writings reminded us that God gave us Israel, our spiritual ancestors, as a “light to the nations.” And Jesus called us to be the light of the world. In the Sermon on the Mount, which we have been reading bits of for several weeks now, we are shown how to let that light shine.
And at the same time, our part of the globe leans into the sun, like a sunflower drawn to the light, as if to remind us of our calling, to resist darkness, and lean into the light.
Meanwhile, beyond the church doors, we have been reminded of the eternal struggle. When we see in Egypt the crowds of peaceful resistors standing up to a dictator, we see it in terms of light versus darkness. And when we see the Wisconsin State Capital overflow with peaceful protestors, we see light versus darkness. My brother-in-law and I may disagree about who represents light and who represents darkness, but we both tend to see it as good versus evil. As if the drama of real life were as simple as High Noon or Star Wars.
But real life is complicated by the problem of sin. Whether it’s “original” or “new and improved,” sin is a part of each of us, and we deny it at our peril. Self-identifying with the white-hats, and casting others who are not like us as the villains, that is the very thing that drove Jesus into full-time ministry.
Jesus didn’t have a problem with sinners. He spent a lot of time with them. Jesus had a problem with the self-righteous, the pious, those who prayed, “Thank God I’m not like those people.” Jesus had a problem with the scripture, particularly those scriptures that build walls between “us” and “those people.”
We all remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, who took care of the man who had been beat up and robbed, after three nice religious people passed by on the other side. But do we remember what preceded the parable, do we remember the set-up? Someone was asking Jesus which commandment was the greatest, and then answered his own question. Jesus prompted, “What’s in the law, what do you read there,” and the person who asked the question answered: “To love the lord and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s straight out of Leviticus, we heard it in our Old Testament lesson for today. Leviticus is most well known for being the source of the holiness code, the laws that build walls between “us” and “them:” the dietary codes, the purity laws, the “you shall not eat” and the “you shall not touch.” Leviticus is the book that uses the word “abomination” a lot, and it is the book that justifies a death sentence for those who violate the code.
Now, those people in the parable, who passed by on the other side, they were following the code. They were staying away from blood, so as to remain ritually pure. The Samaritan (feel free to read any despised person here, to personalize the paraphrase—the good Iraqi, the good Mexican, the good Muslim) didn’t follow the code, but allowed himself to be ritually violated by blood. And in doing so, in that beautiful paradoxical way that we find in scripture, fulfilled the law. The good Samaritan fulfilled the law by breaking the rules.
Go and do likewise.
Go and violate the laws that build walls. Go and break the rules if necessary, to keep the spirit of the law of loving your neighbor as yourself.
“Who is my neighbor?” is the title of the antiracism event we are co-sponsoring on Saturday. I want you to be ready for this. The event itself is not a protest or a demonstration. The gathering at the courthouse on Tuesday was a demonstration, a symbolic act. Symbols are subject to interpretation. Saturday’s workshop is our effort to provide an interpretation.
One possible interpretation of the demonstration might be that it was an effort to paint the accused as “evil” and identify the demonstrators as “good,” to symbolically paint black hats on the accused and white hats on everyone who gathered outside the courthouse. If that’s all it was, then we are no better off for having gathered. If that’s all it was, then it only served to put up more walls between “us” and “them.”
The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the difficult truth that real life is not that simple. The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the sin of racism, and the place that it has in our own souls and in our communal soul.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem. Conversely, something there is that loves a wall. Sin is that wall-builder. Sin is that impulse that points the finger and says “that is not us.” Grace acknowledges a brother or sister.
The beating of Willie Navy held up a mirror to our community. We didn’t like what we saw, so we have done our best to deny it, to say, “That is not us.” But that is us. When we hold up a mirror to our community, we want to see the cover of the Lake Country Journal. That is us too, but that is not the whole picture. We must come to terms with the whole picture.
On Saturday, we are going to take a good look at the whole picture in the mirror. Once we acknowledge the whole picture, then we can chose how to change it for the better.
Here is a new parable for you. A gardener planted a garden in the Lake Country. To keep the critters out of it, she put up a fence. The deer leapt the fence, so she built it higher. The rabbits went through the gaps in the chain link, so she built it up with stone. And behind the stone walls, the garden withered and died, for lack of light.
Then she realized, if she wants this garden to grow, she’s got to start busting down those walls.
Go and do likewise.

The Unhistoric Acts of the Saints

(For the February church newsletter.)
In January, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr Day. In February we will celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on Presidents’ Day, and observe Black History Month. While we all owe a debt of gratitude to great historic figures for their great historic acts, we should also remember, as George Eliot wrote, in her novel Middlemarch, that…

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

We are dependent not only on the historic acts of historic figures, but on the unhistoric acts of people who live faithfully, who do justly, who love kindly, and walk humbly with God. I’m sure you can think of someone who intervened in your life at a key moment. I am thinking of my sixth grade teacher.
In elementary school, I was an indifferent student, and an embarrassed reader. One day my sixth grade teacher called me to sit beside her desk and quietly explained to me that I would fail reading that semester, unless I read a book a week for the next nine weeks. I didn’t think that was possible. I didn’t come from a family of readers, we were avid watchers of television. As a child, I felt I was as much (or more) a part of the Brady family and the Partridge family as the Griffin family. I was sure I could not read a book a week, but my teacher was sure that I could.
So I went home that day, with a book from the school library, a book that my teacher recommended. When I got home, instead of sitting on the sofa for the usual fare of Gilligan’s Island, followed by Hogan’s Heroes and Star Trek, I sat in a chair and told my mom I had to read. And I read. The book was called Freaky Friday. That’s right, like True Grit, it was a book before it was made into a movie based on a movie! When Mom called me for supper, I was astonished to realize that I was one chapter away from the end of the book. I had read almost a whole book in a day, and I hadn’t thought I could read one in a week.
My sixth grade teacher changed the course of my life, by telling me I could do better. Through this simple, unhistoric act, she saved me—she became an agent of my salvation. I was saved from being a sixth-grade failure, and from whatever comes of being a sixth-grade failure.
Sometimes, people just need to know that they can do better. The apostle Paul knew this, and I believe that is why he began nearly all his letters with thanksgiving to God, for the people to whom he was writing. Sometimes he wrote to correct the people, sometimes to encourage the people, but whether to comfort or cajole, he first expressed his thanks for the people. In giving thanks, he was reminding them who they were. Not isolated individuals but members of one body in Christ; not powerless, but endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul speaks to us through these pages, to remind us of who we are: We are God’s children, fed by God’s Holy Spirit, given authority to continue the work begun in Christ, saving the world in Christ’s name. We each have our part to sing, our role to play, our work to do.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the past, to the historic and unhistoric acts of the saints who have gone before us. And the best way to pay our debt to the past (wrote John Buchan) is to put the future in debt to us. Without ever expecting to collect interest, for all that we are we owe to others, who have themselves been agents of our salvation. Let us go, and do likewise.

Why everything we think we know is probably wrong

A Sermon for January 30, 2011
Texts: Micah 6:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12

In the title of this sermon I promise to tell you why everything we think we know is probably wrong. I’m also going to tell you why that is good news. When we survey the scriptures, we find that whenever people think they have God figured out, God begs to differ. That’s why everything we think we know is probably wrong, and why meekness is a virtue.
Take for example this passage from Micah. Now, in Micah’s day, which was a time of rebuilding Israel after the long Babylonian exile, people were trying to figure out how to get Israel back on top. They had heard the stories from their parents and grandparents, about how great it was back in the day, back when Jerusalem was the center of the world, back when queens and princes from faraway lands would travel by camel caravan just to see the glory of that city. But, you know, how grandparents can embellish stories, right? How the stories become tall tales, so the past becomes legendary. The Jerusalem of the stories probably far outshone the Jerusalem of history.
Rebuilding a city and a nation was not as simple as it had seemed. They did not find it as their great-grandparents had left it. After decades of neglect, Jerusalem was a ruin, the land of Israel forgotten. What do we have to do, the people were complaining. We returned, we cleaned up the temple, we devoted ourselves to the worship of God the way our grandparents told us. They promised that if we do this, the riches of the nations would come pouring back into Jerusalem. Well, what more can we do? We have kept our part of the bargain, where is God?
You think you know me? God says, through Micah. You don’t know me! It doesn’t matter what you do inside the temple, if you don’t do right outside the temple. What happened was, the returning exiles turned the restoration of Israel into a big land grab. When they came back to the city they acted as if they had a right to all the best houses and all the best lands, and they displaced the people who had been living there for generations, whose families did not Go into exile. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. The retuning exiles thought that justice was something God would do for them, once they got their ritual on. God, through Micah, turned the world upside down and inside out. Justice is not the reward at the end of the journey, it is the journey. Everything the people thought they knew about God was wrong, and that was good news! Because God was working through them to build the city of peace, Jeru-salem, (that’s what the name means, the dwelling place of peace).
And in Jesus day, people thought they knew who was blessed and who was cursed, just by looking at them. Obviously, the wealthy person with a house full of children is blessed by God; obviously the beggar at the gate was cursed. But Jesus, he saw things differently. Through him, the people learned to look with the eyes of their heart and see things differently. Once again through Jesus, God turns the world upside down and inside out, blessing the cursed.
And in the days of the apostle Paul, when the people of the church in Corinth were trying to outdo one another in claims to wisdom, God did it again—turned the world upside down and inside out through the words of the apostle Paul. What you think you know, Paul said, is foolishness, and that is good news. You don’t have to depend on your own cleverness, and that is good news. ‘Cause you aren’t so clever as you think!
And even now God is calling us to turn our vision inside out. Turning the church inside out is one of the keys to success—and I’m a bit uneasy with the term—in church development. I’m uneasy with the term “success” when it comes to the church because what we think of as success conflicts with the Jesus movement. Jesus turns our idea of success upside down and inside out too. Look at Jesus. He was not the leader of a mega-church. Jesus had a small church, a small band of disciples. And sometimes, Jesus would say something that would make people mad, and they would leave. Jesus didn’t even have a home or land or a big family, and he didn’t live to a ripe old age—these were the measures of success in his day. He was arrested, tortured, and killed. Hardly a success story, by our conventional standards.
According to the Center for Progressive Renewal, the vital, successful church is one that is turned inside-out: the one where people come in, for the purpose of going out. So, when we think of a “successful” church, we shouldn’t picture the church of the past, the church of history or legend, where everyone up and down the street went to worship every Sunday morning, and the Sunday schools were bursting at the seams. I don’t think recreating the protestant church of the 1950’s is high on God’s list of priorities. But God has shown us what success means: what is high on God’s list is that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God
Humility, is one virtue I still have to work on, when it comes to my church. Because I am so proud of my church. Even when people say, “First Congregational, which Lutheran Synod is that?” Or “United Church of Christ? Church of Christ, like Pat Roberton?” I say, no, no that’s a different church, and we have no connection to that famous person. The Congregational church and the United Church of Christ—remember the pilgrims? You know us. We invented America. And we invented the abolition of slavery. And women’s rights. And we even invented Unitarianism.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot sit back and bask in the reflected glory of the faithful past. When we get together here in this church, we come to fill up on the nourishment of the scriptures, and to build one another up in love, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of the faith. We come here to fill up, so we can go out there and give it away. The Holy Spirit comes to us all, and gives each of us gifts, but not for our own sake. The Holy Spirit comes to us on its way to somebody else.
So, go from this place and do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. And come back for more, to go out again. Thanks be to God for the Spirit in our midst.

Called to Rise

A Sermon for Sunday, January 23. Text: Mark 4:12-23

There are no prerequisites for discipleship. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about. It’s totally an entry-level position. No educational requirements, no pre-certification. If those fishermen were qualified, then so are you.
There are no prerequisites, but there are expectations, great expectations. The expectation is that when we are called we will rise up and follow.
Disciples are called to rise. Called to rise to the occasion. Called “for such a time as this,” or for such a time as will be.
Moments of decision come while we are mending our nets, washing our dishes.They come when we are on our way to important meetings, or going nowhere in particular. There is a call, a plea, a searching look, and we can return to our nets, our sink full of dishes, the business of the day, or, we can rise to the occasion, and be someone we did not think we could be.
Rosa Parks, the woman whose arrest in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, rose to the occasion by remaining seated. Now, when I was a child, I learned in school that Rosa was tired from working all day, and just decided right then and there that she had had enough. I got the idea that it was social change through weariness. Well, a few years ago when I was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I learned that that is not the whole story. Rosa Parks had been a member of the NAACP for a more than a decade. She had participated in voter registration drives. She had attended training sessions on civil disobedience. She was prepared for the occasion. She had practiced, and role-played so that when someone said to her, “If you don’t get up out of that seat we are going to call the police and they will arrest you,” she was ready to say, simply, “You may do that.”
What we are about in the church is practicing faith. Practicing for the occasions to come, so that we will be ready to rise. One of my summer jobs when I was in college was camp lifeguard, and one of the responsibilities of the lifeguard is to train, every day, in order to be ready when the occasion comes. So I swam a half-mile every day and occasionally a mile. With the other lifeguards I participated in search and rescue drills, and we practiced carrying people to safety. Most of the time, lifeguarding is about watching. In three years, I never had to rescue anybody. But I had to be ready, should the need arise.
We might never be called to greatness. We may never be called to save a life or start a movement. Or, we might. Unless we are ready we won’t know what God may do through us. We may have a role to play in someone else’s greatness, like Mother Pollard, a woman who encouraged Martin Luther King, Jr, when he was frightened and his faith was failing. You can read about her in Dr. King’s book, The Strength to Love. The story leaves me wondering if Dr. King would have been Dr. King without the encouragement of this elderly, poor, uneducated but profoundly wise woman, who offered encouragement to the struggling young pastor who led the bus boycott in 1956.
Here we are. Practicing the faith together, that we might be ready to rise when the occasion calls us, with words of encouragement, acts of love and justice. New life begins here, with the call to rise, where it might lead, God knows.