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“The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God”
March 15, '09
Psalm 84:1-12
1How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
2My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
3Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
4Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.
5Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
7They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
8O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!
9Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.
10For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.
11For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.
12O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.
I awake from a dream disappointed that wakefulness is pulling me out of another world so immensely fascinating and beautiful. I hold on tightly – desperately not letting the dream slip away back to the mystery from which it came – slipping away from the joy of my memory – to fade away, never to return. A dream rare in peaceful joy. Contentment. Security. A sadness awaiting me on my pillow. Morning light greeting my awaking eyes. The alarm clock silenced. The dream slightly lingering – close by – then distant – then in complete evaporation. Peaceful upon my pillow, but yet, a melancholy sadness at the loss of that other reality which seemed so real just moments before. I cannot even begin to describe the dream. It really is gone. But I was left with a peacefulness and a joy and a contentment bathed in that morning, but also with the loss grieved by its passing. It was only a dream. Only a dream. But yet, the dreamer dreams. The realities of the waking world waiting in ambush to pounce upon the dreamer once he returns to the realm of wakefulness, to maul and rip apart the remnanants of contented hope within the dreamer’s last moments of sleepful bliss.
Oh well. It wasn’t real. Just a dream. Gone. Gone forever, whatever it was. Dissipated into thin air. Time to be awake and get on with the real world. The tasks of the day. The appointments. The insecurities. The losses. The pains. The conversations. The reading. The daily rituals. The real world. Dream long gone into some sort of distant memory, but yet, a mood lingering – a feeling – like a perfume or a cologne lingering in room long after the cherished friend has left. But, still, a sadness. Why do contentment and peacefulness and joy and security only seem to belong within the world of the dream? Why does it insist on floating away into oblivion with the startling ring of the alarm clock? Why cannot that be the world of reality I awaken to rather than awaken from? Why cannot that be what greets me with the sunrays of the morning?
Maybe it can. Maybe it could. Maybe it should. This morning we ponder the second of the Six Great Ends of the Church which our ancestors in the faith have passed on to us from over a century ago. The second Great End is: “The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God.” In the stained glass imagery of our window, it is depicted by the three hands reaching up – reaching up to God. The dove (the Spirit of God) is tilting down with wings outstretched – covering – protecting – maybe even like a mother hen desiring to gather her brood under her wings (Matthew 23:37). It is an image in the best sense of “home.” A faith home. Home with our faith family.
“Home” is a concept – an image – divided. In our community in this part of the world with a domestic violence rate far too high, for many, too often “home” can be akin to a “four letter word” – not a memory of security or comfort. In reaction, perhaps the other image of “home” is just a fantasy – so charming in its idealism that such a place can only be a hope, impossible and out of reach. One can wonder if the “family values” espoused by many in the church (and often in campaign slogans of political hopefuls) isn’t a collective fanaticized longing for a time which never was – another dream teasing another dreamer – slipping away when eyes open to the realities of the world.
Regardless of the perspectives each of us bring to the concept of “home,” deep within, we somehow know the longing – the tugging – the deepest of desires to be within one – to be part of one – to be home. Some church leaders have felt it their call to “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” A call to the prophetic, no doubt. But I have wondered about the audiences they have afflicted, too quickly assuming the comfortable they are to afflict have been those gathered on Sunday mornings, willingly enduring the afflictions. Seems to me a Cultural Tsunami has caught so many of us off guard – even though the warning sirens have been screaming all around us – the age-old agreed upon boundary between the realms of ocean and land have been breeched, throwing much of life-as-usual in to chaos. What was normal is no longer the norm. What was once expected is no longer understood. In the comparatively short time since our first breaths at our mothers’ knees, the known has shifted – the usual has become unusual – the expected has floated out of reach.
More than a century ago, when those visionaries put into writing the calling they believed was God’s calling for the Church, they put into words this thought, this dream: “The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God.” What was in their minds? What was the vision? Certainly there must be a book written somewhere which could give us all the details, but perhaps it is merciful I have not been able to find such a book. Perhaps the words they wrote down with their collective fountain pens could not have even come close to imagining the world we now find ourselves in. But as in any words prophetic, perhaps they were words written which God knew we would need to hear, even a century after their fountain pens were long dry. “The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God.”
Psalm 84 was written from the context of exile. Exile in Babylon. For the better part of a thousand years the People of God had lived in what we call the Holy Land. Abram and Sarai journeyed there. Several generations later, driven by a famine, their descendants moved to Egypt. Four hundred years there before Moses was called by God to lead the people back to the Holy Land. A couple hundred years later the kingdom of tribes united by King David and made glorious by his son King Solomon. A split in the kingdom for four hundred years. The southern kingdom of Judah conquered and taken to Babylon in exile. There for more than a generation. A longing anything akin to normal – where was their God? Who were they if God’s throne had been in Jerusalem five hundred miles away, separated by an unforgiving desert, and as far as they knew, cut off from the Glory of God forever? A people of exile. A people with a longing which seemed to be out of reach. A dream.
1How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
2My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
3Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
4Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.
5Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Just a bunch of dreamers, perhaps, but then, why not? Maybe the dreams can be a beckoning to a reality – a dream which, for the exiled community in Babylon, became a reality.
The dreamer wakes from the dream. Does the sadness and the heaviness of the so-called “real world” have to be that which greets the dreamer as he wakes to the morning rays of light shining through the window? Or, can there be another reality awaiting him upon the opening of his heavy eyelids?
Again, the words of the ancestors of our faith, whatever their vision might have been: “The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God.” Certainly there is a time and a place to afflict the comfortable. It seems to me, though, that a deep calling for the Church – for our congregation – for our faith family – is that we are in the midst of a different time and place – a time to comfort the afflicted. When the love and security of “home” floats further and further out of reach for so many, we must be the “home” all of us need. A church home.
Here we are. Is this part of our calling? Is it our obedience to God? Is this one of the ways we are to live our faith? Consider the words of Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans: (Romans 12:4-18)
4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. 9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Paul packed a lot into those few sentences. I hope we did not miss that one sentence tucked right in the middle of those words: “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”
Some years ago two shows were shown back to back, Saturday evenings on Public Television. I know that a number of you enjoyed the shows – often they were the topic of conversations overheard on Sunday mornings. One was the Red Green Show. Perhaps a bit of an irreverent caricature of male stereotypes, yet, all too often, hitting awfully close to home. The other was a show called Keeping Up Appearances. Equal time for the female stereotypes. Four sisters: Hyacinth, Rose, Daisy, and the always out of the picture Violet. The main feature of the show was Hyacinth who was continually obsessed with creating the ultimate show of hospitality: her candlelight suppers. Weekly, the opening of the program showed Hyacinth using a ruler to measure exactly where to put the stamp on the envelope inviting the guest to her suppers. The details of hospitality which are laughable, but yet, so dear. Imagine receiving an invitation with such careful attention to detail. Our presence at the supper so valued that even the position of the stamp on the envelope so carefully placed. What an honor! Again, we laugh at Hyacinth, but then again, why not treat each other with such value and respect? “…Outdo one another in showing honor.”
We have long referred to our congregation as our “faith family.” That may be more of a reality than most of us have imagined. In a disconnected world facing the insecurities of change, change, and more change – who is it that we “come home” to? For many of us whose closest relatives live thousands of miles distant, who is it that we “come home” to? In a culture driven by an almost valued selfishness, who is it that we “come home” to? When we wake from joyful contented dreams only to groan with the reality of the so-called “real world” into which we are awaking, who is it that we “come home” to?
Amazingly prophetic the words passed on to us from the ancestors of our faith: “The Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God.” Could they ever have imagined what that could possibly have meant to their descendants? Of course, the Christian faith is much more than just the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. This is not the One Great End of the Church. It is only one of Six Great Ends of the Church, but the other five are not the theme of our ponderings this morning.
Perhaps the dream is real. There is a place called “home” for all of us. “Home” in its best sense. The joy of the community of faith. Welcome home. Amen.