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“When God Came to the Meetinghouse, or,
Introduction to Scripture In the Book of Genesis we meet Jacob, a rascal if ever there was one, and right from the start, too. He tricks his brother Esau, the first-born, out of his birthright, and then steals his father’s blessing as well. Esau has had enough, and so plots to kill Jacob, but Jacob is warned and so flees across the wilderness towards the home of his uncle, Laban….
Jacob’s question is our question: How awesome is this place? An overcast, rainy October Sunday, all the way back in 1999. As usual, a worship service had been lovingly crafted by the staff here, it being our hope that through the music and the sermon and the prayers the thin tissue separating the divine from our mundane existence might, if only briefly, be pierced, allowing rays of illumination to shed light on our struggles, allowing the warmth of our Creator’s love to heat souls grown over-chilly. It is now time for the sharing of concerns and celebrations, and up to the microphone walks a stranger, a man who clearly has seen some years, who carries with him, it seems, a great deal of the weight and the sorrows of the world. “My name,” he tells us, “is Ben Bavinck, and I am originally from the Netherlands; for many years I was a missionary in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, serving the churches there that were founded by American missionaries way back in the early 19th century. I am staying with Paul and Jackie Clayton, because, along with a number of other people who cannot be here today, I am on the board of trustees of a group that oversees the endowment for a school in Jaffna. The reason the others cannot be here is that there is a horrible civil war going on in Sri Lanka, and last week there was an attack on the airport in the nation’s capital, and now there are no flights in or out. Please let me tell you for a minute or so about the suffering in that country – about how women outnumber men in the villages 8 or 9 to one, because the army and the militants come in and take the men away to fight, and take all the boys to make them soldiers as well; about how since women have no training for employment in this traditional culture, extreme poverty is everywhere; about how the army’s occupation of much of Jaffna has driven people out of their homes and into camps in the jungle. And let me tell you how the indigenous church there – the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India – is working with the poorest of the poor and the most needy to make a difference, even as many of the country’s professionals have fled to exile.” If you were here that day, you will remember it. For me, it was the silence – never had I heard so many be so silent, for so long, and so deeply. Looking back on that day, I still don’t know what the right thing to do was – we did go on with the rest of the service, as planned – but it would have been just as appropriate to have had a benediction and gone straight to coffee hour, for we all could have said, “Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And this we do know, not just because of the experience of that one day, but because that led us to invite the Bishop of the Jaffna Diocese to preach for us the next year, and that led to an introduction to a local parish pastor, the Rev. I. Rajkumar, and that led to a mission partnership that has enriched and continues to enrich the people there and the congregation right here as well. Jacob’s question is our question: How awesome is this place? A snowy Sunday morning some 8 years or so ago, the faithful filling many of these pews, braving, as resilient New Englanders of the right sort tend to do, the slick roads to make it to worship. Creatures of habit as many of us are, most in their usual pews. We glance around, nod at each other, familiar faces mostly, and settle in for what we have come to expect, and come to like, too, which is why many of us are here. Your pastor launches into the opening words of welcome, ending with the usual encouragement for first time guests to stand, if they are up to it, and tell us their names and where they come from. Up with a bound spring two young woman from those pews right there. It was like they couldn’t get to their feet fast enough. “Hi,” they say, “we are so glad to be here. We actually belong to another church here on the Cape, and we are pretty new to the faith, and when we started going to that church they told us that they were a very friendly church and that they welcomed us. And so we got to going and got to love it and started to get really involved, and then we got a visit from the pastor who told us that we had to stop being a couple, that our love for each other was wrong. And then last night I couldn’t sleep and so was watching television when an advertisement came on about two in the morning for your church, for the United Church of Christ, and it said that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, that you are welcome here, and we went to the website and found that you are right here only ten minutes from our home, and we were just so excited that you would love us just as we are, that we couldn’t wait to get here this morning.” You know I smiled. But I also took a deep gulp. Because what these two women did not know was that they had seen an identity ad for the national denomination, and that this particular congregation was not what they call an “Open and Affirming” church, and while the Board of Deacons had talked about starting a study process aimed at helping the congregation discern whether we should be welcome to all, particularly without regard to sexual preference, in fact this was only at the talking stage. And yet here they were, believing that God loved them just as they were, and believing that we did, too, and we would, too. And we did. We smiled back at them. We walked them over to coffee hour. We welcomed them to the joys of the Rooster Crows Fair and serving at coffee hour and ushering and just being part of our church family. And we even got around to that study process, and after two years of great discussion and sharing voted to be open to and affirming of all persons, regardless…. And looking back on that snowy day, when we were visited by two angels, surely many of us can say, “Truly the Lord was in this place, and I did not know it.” Jacob’s question is our question: How awesome is this place? I could pick any of a number of Sunday mornings on those occasions when we have had a Lay Sunday, when members of this congregation have planned and led our worship service, when you have delivered the sermon, witnessing to the grace of God as you have experienced it in your lives. Gail Weekes on the reality of being homeless and dealing with Section 8 housing issues; Pat White on Easter people; Greg Williams and Kristen Monteiro on the justice system from the inside; Stuart Plettner and Cornell Bretz and Roger Henson on Bible Study; Jackie Clayton on growing up in Turkey as a child of missionaries, and the lessons she learned about inter-faith dialogue and multiculturalism. But one moment that especially sticks out in my mind was a bit over a month ago when those who went on the mission trip to New Orleans shared the experience with us. When a member of the congregation who admittedly finds himself elsewhere on most Sundays, a man who does not wear his spirituality on his sleeve and most often finds it uncomfortable to say the least to speak of matters religious, boldly climbed up here and, to illustrate the immensity of the flooding that devastated New Orleans, pulled out a tool of his trade, his trusty measuring tape, and leaning over, showed us what twelve feet of water looked like. When another member of the group told us that her take-away from the trip was not, “Why do mission work?”, but “How can you not do mission work, how can you not respond to God’s call to be partners with God in serving others?” When another member summed up the experience by saying this: “For just a few days we got to do exactly what Jesus asks. In some ways if feels like seeing a light so bright that you can’t stare at it too long. It is like faithful Jews not pronouncing the name of God because it is too holy. It is a hard place to stay because it is so intense, but if you are willing to take a leap, it is a guaranteed encounter with the risen Christ. And I can’t wait to feel it again.” And looking back on that day, surely many of us who were here that day can say, “Truly the Lord was in this place, and I did not know it.” Jacob encounters God in the wilderness, and by this miracle his life is changed forever. Fleeing his intent-on-murder, and with good reason, brother, Jacob has journeyed all day through the barren wilderness. Night falls, and because he is dead tired, grabs a rock the size and shape of a pillow, a rock still warm from the heat of the day, and drifts off to sleep. And he dreams, o how he dreams. A ladder falls out of the sky, its top resting in the clouds, and he sees going up and down the ladder angels, and then there, right next to him, is the Lord God. And his God speaks to him, and assures him of that which he most craved – protection, and safety, and land, and children, and blessing. And then Jacob wakes up. Was it real? Did it really happen? Was it true? How could we ever start to answer such questions? But Jacob knew this – that his life was changed forever. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Having woken up to God, he would never be able to go to sleep again, at least not to the divine presence that had promised to be with him whether he could see it or not. What really happened? Only God knows. All Jacob knew was that he had to mark the spot.” So Jacob takes the stone he had used as a pillow, and set it up as a pillar, and names the place Beth-el, that is, House of God, saying “Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”, and “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; it is the gateway to heaven.” Jacob’s holy encounter occurred in a place he named “the house of God”, and yet it was just a piece of barren real estate in the midst of a vast wilderness. And it is true, God will not be confined to our clapboarded meetinghouses and brick sanctuaries and stone cathedrals on Sunday mornings. The sacred is everywhere, out there in the world, ready to surprise us as we do the laundry or change a diaper or pound a nail or gather at the office water cooler or gaze into our spouse’s eyes. And yet, not for nothing is the church called a house of God, and it is at our peril that fail to see the miraculous that happens right here. As Philip Jenkins writes in this week’s Christian Century magazine, “When people cannot find miracle in their churches, they seek it elsewhere.” Which is not to say we should not seek God elsewhere, but is to say, rather, that we ought to come here on Sundays hoping for, and perhaps even expecting, the miraculous: a clarion call to mission abroad or closer to home, or a visit from heavenly messengers inspiring us to more closely follow Jesus Christ, or a healing unlooked for, a new insight, even the key to a more abundant life, or whatever other surprise our still-speaking God might have in store for us. So perhaps on this day, a day on which we gather to have the annual meeting of the congregation right here in this meetinghouse, we might be intentional about thinking about how often we have woken here with a start, as if from a dream, saying, “Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”. --------
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