This morning was aswirl with conversations about the ongoing legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. To listen to the various discussions about where we began as a nation and how far we still have to go, were both inspiring and deeply challenging. We are people of great hope who, at our best, learn from the past and use it as strength to imagine the still unrealized future. This morning I heard a reference to African American Spirituals and the way that they straightened out question marks and turned them into exclamation points… it was a compelling image. The description was brought home with the familiar Spiritual which had taken Jeremiah 8:22’s question and flipped it on its head. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, the people’s long exile and hoped-for return, Jeremiah asked the question: Is there no balm in Gilead? Can no physician be found? Why has healing not yet come to my poor people? But we all know how the spiritual rings out with all of its familiarity: There is a balm in Gilead! To make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.
Two years ago, we couldn’t have predicted how a pandemic would have impacted our society, our economy, our churches. For the church in America, we were already in a place of trying to discern how God's spirit was leading us into unknown territories. Clearly, the church has been steadily changing for many decades. The question that would have been reasonable decades ago of “what church do you attend?” now would more naturally be the question of whether or not a person attends a church at all. Many of us in the old Mainline denominations have wondered where we are heading in our witnessing to the love and grace of God for ALL the world. This has felt like an even harder question to ask as the dominant voices within Christianity have become those of fear, guilt, or a love-of-God which can sound small and transactional rather than extravagant and grace-filled beyond our imaginings. Our world has become a series of question marks: What is the future? When will this pandemic end? What will the outcome be for our economy? or even something as simple as someone asking what is our current membership? To each of those questions there are no clear answers – and that is a strange place to journey for two years with some saying we may have a couple more ahead of us. What seems clear is that we are running a marathon rather than a sprint. And what seems equally clear is that we would do well to learn from those who lived in the midst of darkness and oppression that exceeds our imaginations, to learn from a slave’s song that turns question marks in exclamation points that there is a balm, there IS a promise before us. We are invited to sing it out and to live it with all that we’ve got as a proclamation that God's strength is greater… greater than anything we may be able to imagine.
Life is always a journey of choice and perspective! That said, there are many times when we can too easily get locked into our familiar ways and fail to imagine how we might straighten a crooked line.
In a few weeks, we will once again embark on another journey together as we begin a Sabbatical time from February 7th through June 5th. We will be traveling separately, but the opportunity for each of us is to listen for how God is calling us into a future yet unknown. You will have the blessing of lots of different voices leading worship, hopefully connecting you more deeply to the Wider UCC, as well as offering a different perspective than what I might offer. I will be taking the opportunity to spend lots of time reading and in prayer as Laura and I travel with our trailer along a path yet unknown. We are hoping to explore a sampling of our country’s National Parks, Forests, and natural spaces. We are looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and one another, to witness to Berit’s graduation, and all along the way for me to reconnect again with God’s call for my ministry. The great hope is that as we reconnect in June, we all are refreshed and reinvigorated to reunite our journeys.
For the church’s part, this is a great opportunity to reaffirm how strong and capable Peace UCC is and has always been. I have always celebrated that this church is quite clearly God's church, not mine, not even yours. We are all passing through, giving thanks that this was a strong church before any one of us arrived, and our prayer is that it will be a strong church when any one of us is gone. This time of Sabbatical is a great time for people in the church to step up to the challenge of reaffirming that strength together.
Of course, we undertake this journey in the midst of one of the most challenging times that the church has experienced in most of our lifetimes. The pandemic has strained our capacity to do what we have always done… and that may not quickly change. But that crooked line can be straightened into a proclamation of trusting that God is working here through each of us.
I will be praying for all of you, and for God's guidance for the church. And Laura and I will certainly welcome your prayers for us as we journey. May we encounter God's blessings in our sabbath journey together apart. Pastor Eric