St. John's United Methodist Church, Dover, NH ~ "We've Come This Far By Faith"

On Ash Wednesday at our evening service, I told a story about a young man who tried to stop Death. In fact, he did stop Death. He took Death and stuffed him in a bottle and threw him into the sea because he didn’t want Death to come for his mother. But he soon found that stopping Death was harming the world. There was no food, either animal or vegetable without death. Those who were suffering greatly couldn’t have the peace of moving to the next life. Business were ruined; people were starving. And so, at his mother’s urging, the boy returned to the sea, found the bottle and allowed Death to return to the world.

If I substituted Change for Death, I could tell that same story again this morning. This week, those of you on the newsletter list received the letter from me announcing that I would be leaving St. John’s at the end of June. Whether on an individual level that means something good, bad, or indifferent to you, as a church, it means we are in for a change.

Change is hard, even when the change is a positive one. Change means we have to trust in the unknown. Change reminds us of the impermanence of life. Change disrupts the patterns of our lives, and when something on the outside changes, it means we must each make some changes on the inside. Change is not easy.

On the other hand, our experience with the trees last week gave us at least one example of the way that change is absolutely essential to life. People are living organisms, and groups of people also have an organic unity. The Church is like a tree, always growing, reaching, drinking in life, producing fruit. The Church is like a human body, Paul tells us, each doing our own part toward a common goal. Biologists tell us that the cells of our own bodies are changing every minute; and so it is in the Church, as well. The question of life is not IF we will change, but HOW we will change over time.

When we think about that question, there is a certain amount of fear, because we come to realize that we are not in the driver’s seat. I can get plastic surgery and face lifts and anti-ageing serum, but my body is going to march on toward death just the same. I can show up faithfully to work and do my job, but the company can still be sold and I can end up without a job. I can live Sunday to its fullest, but in 24 hours it will still be Monday, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.

While I can’t do anything to actually prevent change, I do have a lot of latitude in the way I respond to the changes that come my way, and I think that challenge is one of the main themes of Scripture. One of the most beautiful statements of this is in the Old Testament book of Lamentations. A lament is a song of sadness, and Israel has every right to be sad at this point. They have just been through a long, terrible siege of Jerusalem...and they lost. The Babylonian Empire finally starved them out, marched in and sacked the city. The temple was destroyed, thousands were slaughtered, and everybody with either brains or skills were taken as captives to Babylon. Talk about change.

But this is how the writer of Lamentations, who is probably the prophet Jeremiah, responds: “The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.” (Lam. 3:19-24)

Or if you would rather hear it from the New Testament, there is the resounding passage at the end of Romans 8: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God is Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The message is the same. In this world of constant change, there is one constant...one north star...one concert A pitch around which everything else centers: The love of God. That love may be expressed in different ways to different people at different times. Jeremiah says that God’s mercies are “new every morning.” Same mercy, different form. God might change course, and we see evidence of that a lot of times in Scripture, but what never changes is God’s love. It is the solid rock on which we stand.

God’s love is the basis for our faith, and that trusting faith in the love of God is what sees us through change. I will never forget being introduced at my first church in Cross City, Florida. In the United Methodist system, a new pastor is first introduced to the Staff-Parish Relations Committee. They are the first ones to know who a new pastor will be, and they have a chance to ask questions, to talk about the needs of the church, and to hear about the gifts and skills of the new pastor. It was March, 1994, and I was going to be starting at the church that June, right after my graduation from seminary.

The chair of the Church Council was at the meeting, and he came up to me as we were milling around, introduced himself to me and said, “I want you to know that I think the Bible is clear that women should not be pastors. I object to your being here, and my wife feels the same.” I thanked him for his honesty, said I hoped we could talk about that sometime, and then we started the meeting.

It was a rather tense meeting, and we went through and talked about the specifics of this and that in the church. Then it was my turn to say something. “Look,” I said, “I know that many of you don’t feel comfortable with a divorced, Yankee woman pastor here in Dixie County, Florida. When you thought about a new pastor, I was not what you had in mind. And I have to say that when I thought about a first church, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind either. But I can tell you that I have been earnestly praying for two years for the church where God would send me, and I know you have been earnestly praying for the pastor you would receive. We may not understand it, but we seem to be the answer to each other’s prayers, and I am going to trust that God got it right.” God did get it right, minds were opened on both sides, and God was able to use me in Cross City.

When I think about times like that, my faith grows, and that is what the writer of the book of Hebrews is doing in chapters 11-12. Reading all of chapter 11 would have taken too much time, but what that chapter does is to go back through the history of Israel to remind the people of how God has worked in their midst. Starting right off with Adam and Eve’s son Abel through Noah, Abraham and the Patriarchs, Moses, the Judges, David, the Prophets...all those who had been used by God to lead, to teach, to govern, to guide are lifted up. Why? We learn that in the beginning of chapter 12.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” The purpose of remembering God’s faithfulness in the past is not just nostalgia. It’s not just to sigh and long for the “good old days.” The purpose of looking to what God has done before is to remind us of what God will do in the future. When we fear change, when we think that we will not have what is needed, the stories of God remind us that God goes with us, no matter what. From the stories of the Bible to modern parables like Footprints in the Sand, the thing that gets us through the changes of life, is the faith that God is present...even in the moments when it seems like we are utterly alone.

Jesus himself had to try to explain this to his closest disciples as he approached the time when he would be leaving them. How does he help them find comfort? In John 14:8 He reminds them that they will not be left as orphans, and tells them that love is the way to stay connected to God. God will still be with them, but in another way. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.”

That said, when the time comes for me to leave at the end of June, I will be a basket case. I have lived here longer than any place I’ve been since I left the home of my childhood in 1976. I have formed many deep bonds, and the grief in leaving is real. So also there will be grief in the congregation...at least I hope there will be grief in the congregation. It will be real bummer if you’re all dancing in the streets at the thought of my leaving.

But while my love for you is great, my love for God is greater. Both my own experiences in life and the stories of the people of God across the millennia have taught me that God’s love can be trusted. God will not leave either of us orphaned. Just as God stirred in my heart late in 1998 to come back to New England, so God is right this moment stirring the heart of a new pastor to lead St. John’s in its faith journey. God knows what I need, and God knows what you need. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.”

I don’t know who the new pastor will be. Maybe you will fall all over yourselves with excitement over that person, or maybe, like the church in Cross City, you will wonder how this could really be God’s will. But I know that person is praying for the church where they will go, and I know you are praying for the pastor who will come; and what happens will be the answer to everyone’s prayers. Trust God to get it right. Trust God to walk with you, whether it be through the valley of the shadow or on the glorious mountain peak. God is here and is not packing to go anywhere. It has always been so.

Sometimes, like the boy who trapped Death in a bottle, we want to stop change from happening. But there is no growth without change, no life if the earth is carved in stone. Let God’s spirit roam freely in our midst. We are not left as orphans. God is here. Amen.