"Meet Me at the Edge" [Final Sermon at Grace]
This is the final sermon I gave after 20 years as Rector of Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon at a combined service of worship on November 23, 2014. I have tried to capture in the written text through the use of indentation and italics something of the spirit of the sermon as it was delivered. I adopted this way of writing sermons as a young preacher after reading the sermons of Peter Marshall.
Lessons:
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46
Psalm 100
In the San Gabriel Mountains above my childhood home in Altadena, California, there’s an observatory set atop Mount Wilson, a several-hour hike on the old toll road that goes by Henninger Flats.
During the first half of the twentieth century astronomers at Mount Wilson made breakthrough discoveries that forever changed how we look upon our place in a vast and ever-expanding universe.
Visiting Mount Wilson as a young boy and first seeing the giant telescope, I was conscious that I was quite literally standing at the edge of the world.
On this day—the last Sunday of the church’s year—we are invited to enter God’s observatory and to see as far as we can see into God’s future.
For on this day we have come to an edge, the edge of the world.
And this edge serves as the great hinge upon which the entire Christian year turns.
Next Sunday we all begin a new journey with the lighting of the first candle of Advent.
And so while today we come to an ending, we are also aware that we stand—you and I—just before the threshold of a new beginning.
I have long suggested that the church’s year is more than a calendar punctuated by days—days of high celebration like Christmas and Easter—and seasons—times of preparation like Advent and Lent.
It is far richer than that.
The church year is the best template I know for how to live our lives.
Each season—each special day—carries with it a distinct invitation, a searching question.
And this day is no exception.
Our opening prayer or Collect of the Day sets before us the theme for this day:
“Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords . . .” [1]
On this day we’re invited to enter God’s observatory, that place at the edge of the world where we can catch a glimpse of creation restored. A vision Jesus referred to as “the kingdom of God.”
And this invitation leads us to a daring question: What might it look like to live now in God’s future? What would it mean to live as though we have become part of God’s kingdom or, in the words of Verna Dozier, to live into "the dream of God." [2]
On my recent trip to perform a wedding in Hawaii, I made one telling observation after I had taken my seat at the back of the airplane.
I watched as the other passengers entered.
Since it was a chilly and wet day in Portland, I noticed that there were two very different kinds of passengers entering the airplane:
There were the travelers who had on heavy coats and sweaters. They were dressed to navigate the chilly Portland weather that they were about to leave behind.
And then there were the others. They walked to their seats in floral shirts and shorts. They had dressed for where they were going.
This latter group of travelers had already embraced “the dream” that they would soon be entering.
Sheep and Goats
With God’s dream as a backdrop, let’s first tackle our Gospel parable for today.
It’s a story that also describes two kinds of people, each group with a rather different destiny.
This is—to be sure— a haunting and even slightly disturbing little parable.
And the parable begins with the separation of sheep and goats, with the sheep given the place of honor to the right of the shepherd.
This poses an immediate problem for me—for when it comes to animals I am much more drawn to goats than to sheep! But leaving that aside . . .
The Gospel quickly shifts to people and portrays a scene of judgment.
In this scene we are given the picture of a gathering where people are separated into two groups.
The inheritors of the kingdom—inheritors of the dream or reign of God—are described as those who had responded to human need: they fed the hungry, they welcomed the stranger, they gave clothes to the naked, they cared for the sick, they visited those imprisoned. In doing so, they were knowingly or not, serving Christ. [3]
Those who fail to inherit the kingdom are those who did not respond to the needs of the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick or the imprisoned.
Now there are a number of ways we might hear this parable.
Many tend to receive the parable as a quite literal description of people being placed eternally in either the company of the blest or the damned . . .
. . . either among the sheep or among the goats.
I believe a little more imagination is needed as we listen to this text.
John Polkinghorne, theoretical physicist and Anglican theologian, suggests another reading:
These words present us with a formidable challenge, but if we take them seriously do we find ourselves unambiguously in one company or another? More likely, we recognize that sometimes (perhaps by no means often enough) we have met the needs of the Lord in the needs of the marginalized; sometimes (perhaps too often) we have not. We are neither wholly sheep nor wholly goat. Perhaps then judgment is not simply a retrospective assessment of what we've been but it includes the prospective offer of what we might become. Perhaps judgment is a process rather than a verdict . . . Perhaps judgment builds up the sheep and diminishes the goat in each one of us. [4]
Every time we recite the baptismal covenant—as we did a few weeks ago on All Saints Sunday (when four from this community were baptized)—we are asked the question:
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” [5]
I believe that this is the most searching and probing question in the entire covenant.
If we make the response, "I will, with God’s help,” and let this response fully permeate our thinking and our living, we are allowing the cleansing "process" of judgment to transform our lives.
If judgment is a process rather than a verdict we can hear the gospel as an urgent invitation.
For we are indeed works in progress.
“Rough draft” is stamped upon each one of us.
No wonder that they called those earliest Christians, “People of the way!”
As I’ve said so often, the Christian faith is a journey!
Five Post-It Notes
So with the Gospel parable as an opening, I would like to take the larger view of this day and ask: How do we live now into God’s future?
During this time of vocational transition, my life has largely being held held together by Post-It notes. [6]
And so in that spirit—and in lieu of a two-hour sermon—I would like to offer you five Post-It notes for those who seek to live now into God’s dream.
1. Post-It note number one: Let the margins define the center.
Picking up on today’s Gospel challenge:
How often do we find ourselves serving the least advantaged of our sisters and brothers?
If people at the margins matter so much to Jesus, how can they become a more central part of our lives?
On this Sunday, people of faith across this nation are speaking out against gender-based violence.
Others are working to eradicate the Ebola plague on missions of mercy or by providing financial support to those on the front lines.
Some are serving in soup kitchens.
There are those who are opening doors of hope to persons with developmental disabilities.
Some are working with the orphaned children of the Peruvian mountains.
Still others are tutoring children in this community.
We cannot do everything, but is there something each of us can do to bring those at the margins into a more central place in our hearts and in our lives.
Let the margins define the center.
2. Post-It note number two: Look for the connections.
We are part of that great web of creation.
Christian Wiman, a brilliant and accomplished poet who experienced an opening to faith in the face of death, reminds us in his book My Bright Abyss:
If quantum entanglement is true, if related particles react in similar or opposite ways even when separated by tremendous distances, then it is obvious that the whole world is alive and communicating in ways we do not fully understand. And we are part of that life, part of that communication . . . [7]
If every sentient being has moral worth and standing . . .
If the air that we breathe and the water we drink connect us one to one another . . .
If we are all bonded together in a deep mystery of grace . . .
How can we cherish this larger landscape of God’s dream by looking for the connections so that we might become vigilant guardians of creation?
3. Post-It note number three: Pursue the common good.
In a time of increased polarization in our world . . .
Where religion has been drawn into geopolitical conflicts and failed to be a force for peaceful reconciliation . . .
There is an urgent need for people of good will to come together from across our many faith traditions with a commitment to pursue the common good, the well-being of all.
One of the finest moments during my years at Grace was following the 11th of September when we reached out across the city to our Jewish and Islamic neighbors and later to those in the Buddhist and Hindu communities to create a peace camp which introduced young children in this city to the peaceful practices of our varied faith traditions, building small but significant bridges of understanding.
Pursue the common good.
4. Post-It note number four: Practice the art of being alive.
So often we seek to navigate our lives based upon our fears.
We try to figure out the safest path forward.
We focus on that which needs correction.
We all but lose sight of any larger dream.
But there is another way.
The great African American social prophet and preacher Howard Thurman once spoke these words of challenge and encouragement:
Don’t ask what the world needs. Rather ask—what makes you come alive? Then go and do it! Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. [8]
Almost everything that has been of great worth during these past twenty years I have been with you in the community of Grace is because so many of you have come alive and acted to extend your spirit of life to others.
You’ve come alive to feed hungry people and to work for justice.
You’ve come alive to offer a gift of music in choir or in concert.
You’ve come alive to release the creative gifts of children.
You’ve come alive to teach or lecture or pray.
The list is nearly endless.
Now as some of you know, I have long been drawn to one group of circus performers.
I’ve been mesmerized by those aerial artists—the daring folk who find themselves high above the circus floor.
Architect Christopher Alexander tells the story of a troop of aerialists who experienced a horrific accident in the middle of a performance with a number family members falling from the high wire. Almost inexplicably, a few months later, the father of this family, who had escaped from the tragedy with injuries himself, was seen back at work, in the circus, on the wire again. [9]
Someone asked him in an interview how he could bring himself to do it, how could he continue after such a terrible accident.
He answered simply: “On the wire, that's living . . . all the rest is waiting.”
At every stage in life we each have a “wire”—that place where we are most fully alive.
To discover where we are alive is to discover our true vocation.
Part of the dream of God is that we practice the art of being alive.
5. Finally, Post-It note number five: Fall into love absolutely.
A number of you know that perhaps my favorite quotation is this one attributed to Pedro Arupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus (more commonly known as the Jesuits):
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Those words say it all.
So here let me speak personally:
Since this is my last Sunday with you as your Rector, let me confess that twenty years ago I fell in love with this community of Grace and with all of you as you have found your way here over the years. A love affair like this does not end, it changes form. Grace will continue to unfold in amazing ways under the gifted leadership of Mother Esme and of the new Rector who will eventually be serving you.
It is my most enduring conviction that all that is born of love endures and is held in that greater love that holds the world together, a world created by the God who so loved the world . . . that God fully embraced the world in Jesus.
And so on this day my heart is full and filled with love for you. This is a love forged out of the bonds of friendship and shared ministry, nurtured by deep memories and an abiding sense of gratitude. These bonds of love will bind us together as we each make our new Advent beginnings.
Meet me at the edge of the world
So, I like to think that on this day we stand at the edge of the world.
And that as we stand here, we are at a place of meeting.
I’ve been inspired to think about meeting God at the edge of the world by two faith-filled musicians, Karin Berquist and Linford Detweiler, who perform as the band Over the Rhine.
They tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to teach me the art of songwriting a few summers ago, but I always listen carefully to the well-chosen words they write.
And so I conclude with words from a song Karin wrote, a song that also inspired this sermon. It has lodged deep within my spirit.
On the surface it sounds like a love song, but I also hear it as something like a prayer:
Here we stand on cold concrete ground
‘Cause someone said they liked the sound
I’m thankful that they’ve hung around
But I’m craving the edge of the world
Is it time to disappear?
. . . can we just get out of here?
You and me love and no one near
Walk me to the edge of the world
Meet me at the edge of the world
I’m waiting at the edge of the world
When we walk to the edge of the world we enter God’s observatory.
The edge of the world is where we go to allow our minds to stretch and our spirits to soar, to catch a glimpse—if only a fleeting glimpse—of God’s dream . . .God’s dream for us and for all creation.
The edge of the world is where we become most fully alive.
This is where we meet God . . .and know that we are loved by God unconditionally.
And this is where we shall always meet each other.
___________________
Endnotes
[1] The Book of Common Prayer, p. 236.
[2] I have drawn this phrase “the dream of God” from Verna Dozier who once wrote "The dream of God is that all creation will live together in peace and harmony and fulfillment. All parts of creation. And the dream of God is that the good creation that God created -- what the refrain says, 'and God saw that it was good' -- be restored.”
[3] Matthew 25:34-40 (New Revised Standard Version)
[4] John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 129-130.
[5] The Book of Common Prayer, p. 305.
[6] Post-It is a registered trademark of the 3-M Corporation.
[7] Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2013), p. 35.
[8] According to a Wikipedia article on Howard Thurman: “The only place in print this familiar quotation occurs is in Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled, p. xv, where he attributes the quotation to a conversation he had with Thurman.”
[9] Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 49-50.
