Creator of all life, help us know how to move beyond our
insulated humanness and be willing to see what you would have us see. Welcome us to your divine “safe space” where
we are promised hope and joy. Amen
First, I want to thank all you who
participated in our retreat yesterday.
What a holy, sacred time we had together—the first of many, I hope. And, for those of you who could not or did
not attend, I hope you will ask someone what it was like so that you might be
inspired to attend next time. It was the
start of a journey for us in Open Circle and it is the journey that I feel
called to speak about today.
It is a personal journey as well as
a communal one. As your pastor, I spend
many hours over the weeks in prayer for you and in discernment regarding where
God is leading this church. It is an
awesome responsibility—a responsibility that comes close to getting the better
of me some days; however, it is a responsibility that I take up both seriously
and joyfully as God allows me to spend my time here with you. It is not an easy responsibility, and my
authenticity requires me to tell you that—to acknowledge that there is often
pain, and a great deal of frustration included in this responsibility.
Let me say to you as well (and I
think those of you who have spent the effort to get to know me know this)—I do
not think that I am the perfect pastor, not for this church or for any. If I thought I was perfect, or even close to
it, I would have stopped learning and changing years ago. In other words, I would be useless to you and
useless to God. So, my journey into the
will of God for this church has not been without doubts and conflicts. Let me say this, I believe that every one of
you who have struggled with my leadership in private or public have done so
because of what you believe. While some
of the associated assumptions have been hurtful at times, I do not doubt for a
moment that each of you was being true to your own beliefs, values, and
fears. All that being said, I am
undertaking the giving of this sermon with the trust that, above all else, we
love each other and want the best for each other as individuals and as a
church. Open Circle is my family and I
believe it is also the family of many of you.
And so, we take this journey or choose not to take this journey together
Let me tell you first why I believe
that we are at a crossroads at Open Circle.
We want to have ministries that matter, we want to build a church, we
want to make an impact on our community and world. To do that, we must change. I could quote statistics to you; you would be
bored. I could talk about the larger
trends across the country regarding church growth; you rightly would be
unimpressed. However, I will tell you
what I believe to be the truth regarding Open Circle. Once the excitement of a new church wore off,
our attendance has stayed roughly the same.
Let’s face it, people have short attention spans; and, if we do not
offer something that will change their lives, we will not stay on their radar
for longer than it takes to visit once or twice and then lose interest. And, that’s just it, I believe that we do
have something to offer that will change people’s lives—that is changing our
lives—if we will only find the courage to look our fears and doubts in the eye
and move into a deeper relationship with the Sacred—with God, the source of all
love.
Now, of course, this is considerably
easier said than done. For all of us,
your pastor included, this takes time, passion, and commitment. It takes time because we are temporal
beings—we exist in time. We process
before we change our thoughts or actions.
And, this is a good thing. As we
move and live and change and have our being in the God who is the ground of our
being, we become more and more the people God calls u to be. This week in another group I said that if I
were limited to two words to describe “church”, those two words would be “safe
space”. We all long to be safe, but we
do not all describe safety in the same way.
For some, safety may imply that no one will ever ask you to think in
ways different than you already think.
This is not what God had in mind.
Listen to David in our Psalm today:
“God taught me how to sing the
latest God-song, a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God”. I ask you and
I ask myself at exactly the same time, “When was the last time you abandoned
yourself to God?” And, if you did
abandon yourself to God, where did God take you? I believe that God yearns to take us deeply
into sacred safe space, to teach us of the love that cannot be measured and
grace that cannot be outrun. Seeing this
part of the journey as “safe” requires us to look at our fears and trust our
dis-ease to God at the same time as we make ourselves available for the
journey.
Most
of us grew up believing that there was one way to describe the Holy—that Otherness
that we know is beyond us or bigger than us. We learned formulae put in place by men
centuries ago. We learned about the
Trinity, and heaven and, for some of us, hell.
We learned that there was a divine measurement of good and evil in place
and that the day would come when we would be judged either worthy of heaven or
deserving of hell. Some of us took great
solace in the fact that people who had hurt us would pay a heavy price
throughout all eternity. It was a
comfort to have beliefs that could be nicely bound into books and re-packaged when
social and artistic trends changed. The
rest of us may have grown up not thinking much about the Holy. Perhaps our families weren’t religious or
spiritual, or our parents thought that we should be free to make our own
decisions when we were older. This also
felt safe, putting off any doubt-causing, headache-forming self-awareness until
later.
Back
to Open Circle—I know that there is something that can be different about this
place. There is something that can set
us apart and allow us to do God’s work in the world in new and exciting
ways. And that is a commitment to making
Open Circle the “safest space” that we possibly can. This means that we can have discussions and
even disagreements without asking anyone to give up what is of value to
them. Allowing someone on this side of
the room to believe one way while you believe another does not threaten your
belief system at all if you endorse the idea of safe space. You see, allowing one person to believe one
thing while you believe another simply makes the world more interesting, more
loving, and more God-like. Someone asked
me not to long ago, what Open Circle stood for.
While saying that while I could only respond with what Open Circle’s
pastor stood for, I replied with every ounce of passion that is in me, “Open
Circle stands as a place where all are accepted—no matter what”. Now, I am here lovingly to tell you that, to
a great extent, we have been saying this more than we mean it. I mean—it sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want to go to a church where
everyone is accepted? Here’s the
catch—in order to truly be such a faith community, we have to allow God to send
us the everyone’s and not pick and choose as if the choice were ultimately
ours. And, that means we have to
change. And change is work, sometimes,
hard work. Now, I want to tell you in
just a few sentences about some of the hard work that I have been doing as your
pastor. As we began to move beyond
thinking about openness to really acting upon it, the initial resistance, at
least by a few, was quite palpable. I
could taste it, see it; and, even read it.
I began to doubt that God was continuing to call me to be in this
place. I wandered in that wilderness
almost alone. But, there was a small
group of you who met faithfully every Wednesday night—a place where “safe
space” was beginning to grow—where people were opening themselves up to the
hard questions. Still, I agonized over
the fear that was evident in some others of my brothers and sisters. Nevertheless, I believe that this is God’s
call to Open Circle and that, at least for the moment I am the person called to
be your leader in this present journey.
And, I believe, that together we can overcome whatever needs to be
overcome in God’s name.
You
may be asking yourself why you would bother to engage in any of these
conversations that we will be having over the next weeks and months. And, I’m going to give you an answer that you
may not have expected. It is not for the
good of the church or the community. It
is for freedom—freedom in your own spiritual growth that comes from asking and
living the difficult questions and being open to answers that may sound very
different from those you learned as a child.
It is for freedom—freedom for God to reveal God’s self in ways that you
didn’t see coming or expect to receive.
It is for freedom—freedom to open yourself up to the touch of people who
are or believe differently from you. It
is for freedom—freedom to become closer to God than you ever thought
possible—to live a live full of assurance—to face life’s questions with a
calmness that comes from having already gone to a place of complexity and come
away with the simplicity of grace. And
then, and then, this safe space for all will begin to be a reality so full of
passion that others will find their longing leading them here to this place of
love and acceptance—and, at long last, we will be ready to say, ‘welcome
home!” Amen and amen.
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