The Service
I once read that the most holy moment in all of creation is the “wow” of a child. I’ve reflected on this in my life many times. I’ve experienced the “wow” of new discovery many times, and I would lean towards agreeing that there is something powerful and holy in the moment when we say “wow” and experience or understand the world in a new way.
Having said that, there is something delightfully appropriate in having the two readings we shared earlier, as part of our service. Today we’ve invited our Graduates to come and join us, and as part of our long standing tradition that we’ve observed – a tradition where we wish our grads well as they make the transition from one chapter of their lives to another.
Our reading about the demoniac at Gerasene, is NOT a comment on our grad class, but rather it is represents for me personally one of the stories that altered the course of my life as I moved through the transition of graduation. This story is very much a revisiting of a holy “wow” moment.
In the spring of 1988, I was privileged to be a participant on a study tour offered by the University of Toronto to Jordan, Egypt and Israel. For six weeks we toured the Holy Land and explored its religious, political, economic and environmental features. We met with Arabs and Israelis, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. For six weeks we traveled and studied all over that tiny corner of the world that garners more than its fair share of headlines. The entire trip was a holy “wow” filled with many many holy “wows”.
But one afternoon we stood on the top of a steep hill that overlooked the Sea of Galilea. Our tour guide began to recount the story from Luke that we shared a moment ago … He described Jesus and the disciples crossing the sea by boat and arriving at the foot of the hill where we stood. He pointed over the side of the hill to the location of a historic area of graves. He motioned to the brush in the other direction and indicated that if we stayed quiet we might catch a glimpse of the wild pigs who inhabited the area.
As he spoke he informed us that we were standing on the site of the only story from Jesus’ life that can be accurately pinpointed on a map. Using the clues of the text from Luke, there is ONLY one place on the entire eastern shore of The Sea of Galilea where this story could happen … one hill, one place with graves, one place with wild pigs that when startled will run into the water and drown because they can’t swim … one place where a story of Jesus can be marked on a map with 100% certainty.
I was awe struck … and that afternoon as we drove back from our time along the shore and in the Golan Heights to the east of where we stood, I was overcome with a sense of awe that lead me to WANT to study further the scriptures.
A fire was lit … a fire of learning … In that moment I knew that I wanted to do something – anything – with Scriptures and spend my life exploring and better understanding them … All because I stood on the top of a hill over looking the grey-green waters of the Sea of Galilea and heard – this is the place it happened … the only place it could have happened.
It was a holy “wow” that lit a fire and it was a fire that in time lead me back to the church and to the pulpit … it was a fire that in time lead me to embrace the United Church’s courageous stance on things like social justice, gay and lesbian rights, support of First Nations people and fair trade. It was a fire that continues to burn within me – each time I open the scriptures to prepare for Sunday Morning worship, or in my own devotions, I begin with a silent prayer – a hope – that something new will be revealed to me …
This is especially important in the reading and rereading of familiar Biblical stories. The stories I know well – the stories I’ve read a dozen times over my lifetime. I seek to reclaim the holy “wow” moment …
The story of the Demoniac at Gerasene is very familiar to me. For 17 years, I read and re-read the story thinking of that day in the Mediterranean sunshine learning about where it actually happened. I’ve preached on this story from that point of view several times.
Then in the fall of 2006, I attended the Rural Ministry Conference in Muenster Saskatchewan and listened as Cam Harding, a professor from Saskatoon laid out the story – this story – in a radical new way. He described both the story and the events contained within as an expression of defiance and rebellion against the Roman empire … the pigs, the name of the demons, all of it – every detail was in Cam’s view an expression of defiance by a rural faith community to a political and economic empire that REALLY didn’t care about anyone or anything but the profits it could extract from the rural areas … it was a holy “wow” in the fullest sense of the moment.
It was a radically new understanding of the text – it made a great deal of sense, and it was born of Cam’s research and companionship journey with farm families enduring and surviving farm bankruptcy. He ended his reflection by tying his interpretation of Luke to modern events gripping the churches of the prairies … and wondered if it wasn’t time for a little defiance on OUR parts …
The fire of learning intensified. I returned from Muenster more deeply committed to ministry in the rural setting. But more than that, my commitment turned to seeking to understand the Biblical texts and our common faith as something that can speak to the situation on the prairies today … we can no longer be bound by the way things were or have been. Now is the time for radical actions, radical ways of being church, radical ways of living out our faith.
Living outside the box.
Now instead of standing idly by and shaking our heads as our rural areas depopulate and our churches struggle and multi-nationals expand their control over everything … our faith … our understanding of scriptures … our way of being church requires, and I would dare to say – demands that we revision what Church is to speak and live words of hope to the world around us – to ourselves, our family, our neighbours, our communities …
The familiar must become a means of understanding the world in bold new ways … the old stories must inspire us to new ways of seeing the world around us …
Such is the spirit of Graduation … before us is not a continuation of the way things are and have been … before us today – before our grad class – is potential and possibility … in the coming days you will, and you must, test your wings … In the coming days and weeks it is about being like Elijah and finding the presence of God, our higher power, the holy – whatever terms we are most comfortable with – finding that presence in the world around us and letting it work in and through us … the task of the graduates is to experience the holy “wows” that are ALL around us … and to share those moments with all of us …
Graduation is the moment in time when collectively we commit to tomorrow being better than today … Graduation is the moment when we feel inside ourselves the fire of learning that will never be extinguished, and that continues to glow and burn within us … Graduation is the moment in time when we stand poised before potential and possibility … Tomorrow is a new day – it is unwritten and unfettered … It can not be what yesterday has been – it can not be what today is … it must be what it can be …
New experiences, new understandings, new ways of seeing and living in the world are before ALL of us … today as we send the Graduating Class of 2007 into the world with our blessings and our prayers, our task is to follow them by continuing our learning and our experiencing the holy wow in everything we do …
And undergirding it all is the realization that like Elijah in the cave – sometimes the holy is found in the most unexpected of places … it will NOT be found where we expect it – it will be found where God wants it to be found … Go into the world today and search it out …
May it be so … thanks be to God …
Let us pray:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment