Mark 6.30-35                                                                                                  9 August 2009

“SOMETHING VERY MUCH LIKE PEACE”

I am very eager to radiate something here today before it wears off.  And I hope it never wears off. I return from my sabbatical as your pastor with a renewed and reinvigorated sense of how God has called me and how God has blessed Dennis Union Church to be a blessing to the world.  Two stories will help me begin this.

First, in May I was flying back for my Lise’s graduation from Middlebury College. As I waited to take off on a Caracas runway, I grabbed the American Airlines complimentary magazine from the pouch of the seatback in front of me. Now, normally, I don’t bother with these frothy, self-promoting magazines.  But I was starving to read something current in English. So I studied every last page. I was ready to replace it in the pouch before me when the final page caught my eye.

“Cape Cod” read the title, with a familiar beach photo.  Well, I know something about that place, I smiled.  It was written by the nephew of Patti Page, the singer who recorded the song “Old Cape Cod”.  Years later this nephew was using her song as a guide for exploring Cape Cod.  “If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air/Quaint little villages here and there/You’re sure to fall in love with Old Cape Cod,” goes the first verse. So he visits Jake Rooney’s in Harwichport and orders the lobster stew.  That sort of thing.  “Winding roads that seem to beckon you.”  He seeks out the back lanes we use during summertime. Then in the last verse. “Church bells chimin’ on a Sunday morn.”  He Googles “Cape Cod church bells”.  Which church do you think his search yielded? He came here and worshipped.  So I’m sitting on a runway in South America reading about Dennis Union Church. 

But I have another story.  My last week in Venezuela I did something memorable to put an exclamation point on my sabbatical. I flew for a few hours in a rickety old Cessna into the jungle toward Brazil to visit Angel Falls. It is the highest waterfall in the world. Imagine a waterfall 20 times the height of Niagara Falls, over a kilometer straight up with its rush of water turning to mist as it cascades down.  It was otherworldly, a dreamscape unlike anything I had ever seen before.  (If I can, hope to show you some photographs between services on August 23^rd.) 

I have been to 30 different countries; this was the most remote place I have ever been. Never mind bobbing through the air on a tiny five-passenger plane. Once we landed, we traveled four hours upriver in a hollowed out log whose 75 hp motor propelled us through Class 4 rapids.  A Finnish couple and I hired a Peruvian guide and two Venezuelan boatmen to thread us up the churning rivers. 

So we arrived safely, beheld the soaring waterfall and hiked quickly to swim in its base pool. We returned weary to hammocks and mosquito nets, ready to sleep. But first 25 Americans came filtering in to share dinner with us.  I hadn’t seen more than one or two Americans at a time during all my months down there.  Where were they from?  Boston.  They were with the Nature Conservancy.  And they were curious about me. So I spoke of our sweet church on Cape Cod and our Congregational-UCC tradition.  “Oh, we know that church,” they responded. “And we’re familiar with the UCC. You guys are the thinking man’s church, right?”

Sometimes we imagine no one notices what we do here and our power to make a difference is miniscule.  Sometimes it feels like we proclaim the Gospel by word and deed, but the busy world pays us no heed and it is all for naught. Other times we need a little bit of distance from these things most precious to us to see them more clearly. I stand before you today to proclaim the ripples of our transforming ministry in Christ’s name are real.  They travel farther than we dreamt possible.

What makes my heart sing?  Pulling far enough away to perceive this truth, and to share it with you as good news upon my safe and happy return makes my heart sing. I also became fluent in Spanish once again.  Being able to connect with hundreds of millions of hemispheric neighbors makes my heart sing.  I also read voraciously in directions not possible during the usual crush of doing sermons, classes, and newsletters. Broadening those reading horizons made my heart sing. I also received family, friends, and clergy colleagues who celebrated with me and challenged me.  That made my heart sing.  And I am exploring for my next book project something that never would have occurred to me without the shared discernment of those visiting colleagues. As we clear space in life to let our heart to sing, we approach something very much like peace.  Finding the deep soul rest I have found has given me a peace some say is visible in my face. 

Sometimes we live out the difficult and demanding side of our faith and then we never get to what makes our heart sing.  But this sabbatical, my third in thirty years of ministry, has reminded me that if we are following Jesus Christ together only to wonder aloud, “Where’s the joy in all of this?” then something is amiss.    
A big part of being faithful individually and together is balancing the duty and joy.

Yes, our faith brings duty and obligation; following Jesus asks self-emptying love; he asks us to pick up our cross and follow; sacrificial commitment to God’s reign means keeping this front and center. But these formidable and forbidding pro-mises should not obscure the part where Jesus said, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn 15.11)

This is the side too easy to short shrift.  The soul of every last one of us is a microcosm of God’s divine spiritual economy working itself out in the world. In this personal spiritual economy, as we live day to day, if we are always making withdrawals—“I should be doing more for others, I should be a bolder witness to God’s truth, I should do this or be that”—and we never make any deposits to restore our souls, our divine spiritual economy goes bankrupt and grinds to a halt. And while we imagine our heroic self-giving as noble and lofty, this is not the will and the pleasure of God, that we end up feeling spent, burdened, and empty.

That is the lengthy story of the prophet Elijah facing down the prophets of Baal, burning himself out, and then fleeing to that distant mountainside cave where God called him out.  “What are you doing here, Elijah?” asked Yahweh.  As if to say, “get back out there on my behalf and reengage your calling.” But before God sent Elijah back into his ministry, he had Elijah step out of that cave and feel the wind.  And after the wind, to feel an earthquake.  And after the earthquake, a fire. 

But God wasn’t so much in those dramatic special effects as what the Bible calls “the sound of sheer silence.” And having been renewed by encountering God in that silence, Elijah was prepared for the next phase of his ministry.  Can you see what was happening? Elijah’s personal spiritual economy was sorely overdrawn.  And it wasn’t only a matter of confronting the enemies of God in the prophets of Baal.  He was likely also worn down by well-meaning friends who had nibbled on him like ducks telling him how he should do his work differently. I’ve been to that mountaintop, heard God in that silence, and similarly been renewed for ministry.  And by asking with you in the weeks ahead--what makes your heart sing? Where is the joy in your life?  What makes your spirits soar?—it’s my intention to restore all of our spiritual economies, individually and together, into a healthier balance.

Something similar is happening in our Gospel lesson.  Earlier in Mark chapter 6, Jesus had commissioned the twelve, sending them out two by two, to do God’s work of healing, teaching, preaching, yes, all of it. New ground was broken in this sending.  For the first time the disciples—followers of Jesus—become apostles—ones sent out by Jesus.  And guess what?  Surprise of surprises, that sending and serving of the twelve exacted a toll on them. For beyond their successes and failures, during those days, King Herod murdered John the Baptist. That must have put a chill into their blood.  But they pressed on despite their fears, serving and glorifying God anyway.  Our lesson begins with Jesus receiving them back. 

What did he first say to them?  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.”  For the rush of this new life as apostles was such that they couldn’t even find a few moments to eat their dinner. Jesus knew that asking them to give so much of themselves, he had to amply empower them, to make a deposit to restore their spiritual balance. Otherwise, they would soon become useless and resentful like Elijah hiding in that cave. But Jesus wouldn’t let them neglect themselves and invested himself in them before asking more of them.

My first week back from my last sabbatical in 2001 was the week 9/11 happened. I had two new staff members who were lost. People were clamoring for a word from on high in the midst of terrorism. We planned impromptu worship on Friday morning, advertised it on the radio, and 450 people arrived that evening.  And do you know what? That church had given me deep reservoirs to meet the chal-lenge.  Because during my sabbatical my spiritual equilibrium had been restored.

Last Saturday I sat in my study playing catch up, getting back up to speed, taking my reentry slow and easy, when the phone rang. I heard anguish in a mother’s voice. Her 20 year old daughter had died in her bedroom the night before.  I met with the family that afternoon, promising we would walk alongside to see them through last week and beyond. On Thursday 275 people gathered in this sanctuary clamoring for a word from on high in the midst of confusion around Chelsea’s loss.  Do you know what?  Because all of you have given me the deep spiritual reservoirs to meet the challenge, my spiritual equilibrium was restored. 

What makes my heart sing?  Realizing that God does ask incredible things of us.  But God does not ask more of us than God is willing to equip us for the journey. What makes me heart sing? Realizing that the joyous side of the cross balances out the sacrificial side of the cross, until we are made whole, until heaven and earth are reconciled, until God’s kingdom comes, God’s will is done.  Will you ask with John and me these next weeks about yourself, what makes your heart sing? In my way of seeing things, this is how my sabbatical becomes our sabbatical. And the upshot is the precious peace of God, which passes all understanding. Amen.