Threads Sermon

On the Great Plains of the Frontier winters were harsh, and people were known to become lost even in their own backyards in a snowstorm. So throughout the winter, they would tie a rope from the Kitchen Door (or in this case the Pulpit) to the Barn door (for us the Narthex) so as to be able to find your way from home to work and back again. (Literally tie heavy rope down center aisle.)

Fifteen years ago, I had a friend and mentor who was a retired welder and sheet metal worker, who one day had a mild stroke. Sitting with him in the hospital I asked what happened, and he said:
“All my life, I thought of each thing, each accomplishment, every relationship as individual points. I graduated from High School. I enlisted in the Navy. I fought in the war. I got a job. I got married. We had a daughter, then a son. A full life of accomplishments. Suddenly I realized these were not independent events, separate markers, but that there are threads weaving through and making connection. Just when I came to understand that there were all these strings connecting life, all the pins were pulled out. There are all these lifelines, all these tubes and strings and wires, but I no longer have a clue, how, why or to what they are connected. And more than anything in my life, not knowing the connections, scares me.”

(Hand out seven balls of heavy yarn) Throughout the sermon, if you would continue to pass the threads connecting us one to another. Occasionally, popcorning the balls up into the air for others to catch. Being careful and sensitive NOT to throw the ball at anyone, or hit anyone, but to realize the threads connecting us all.

Those who are physicists and musicians, feel free to jump in here and harmonize with me, but as I understand in recent decades a theory has been advanced challenging Newton's Laws of Physics called “STRING THEORY”. Imagine that across our lifespans and throughout our lives, connecting across time and space there were threads like the chords of a guitar. When stressed with tension, these chords can be plucked or strummed to resonate and make music. So the fact that we seek partners who are very much like our parents' relationships, or that we hear and remember our voices coming out of our children's mouths, or we see our father in the face in the mirror as we shave, is not strange, but a resonance with who we are.

The difficulty according to Quantum Physicists is that related to gravity, length, height and breadth, the diameter of these strings through time and space would be one millionth of one billionth of one billionth of one billionth of one centimeter. We cannot see them, or touch them, they have no weight, though they can provide feelings of somber heaviness, and joy that makes us soar, they can crush us or invite us to dance.

Like the strings of a guitar, what we have to to learn is the tuning, and the fret points. Those familiar places, where we can be confident of connections and resonance rather than discord and dissonance, even though the strings are more tightly stressed than normal, whatever normal is.

Luke is unique in the Gospels, for describing the story of Jesus in the Temple at age 12. Some have conjectured that this was Jesus Bar Mitzvah, as he recited the Law and became a man. But the text is specific, that he was 12 and not 13, that he was a child whom his parents thought was lost, unable to reason as an adult. Rather than being the Bar Mitzvah of Jesus, Luke is identifying that completely and thoroughly human, Jesus feels these tensions in his life, the points of connection and identification. Surely, like Samuel and Isaiah, Jesus could have been a Priest, or conversed with Rabbis as a scholar, but in life he came to discern his Calling. As Christians we resonate with that same Calling, to listen to people, offering healing, prayer and counsel, teaching, compassion and the sharing of a meal, even risking everything to redeem and save those who are in trouble.

A problem related to STRING THEORY, different than height, length, weight, or even the worth or financial application, is that as we begin discerning and recognizing connections among us and between circumstances, we can no longer deny the possibility of connections we may not desire. This is the 7th Day of Christmas in the Carol of the 12 Days of Christmas,
this is New Year's Eve as we make resolutions of what we hope to be and do in the new year.
As much as we live placid and tranquil lives, concerned whether it will ever snow and how to pay bills for the comforts of heat, ...
we are in a world at war, in Iraq and Somalia, Darfur, Congo and over the Holy Lands of the Middle East.
This weekend, Saddam Hussein was executed for Crimes against Humanity.
We take for granted the Death Penalty, and the natural succession of Presidents and Senators, when in so many other nations the State does not have the Death Penalty, and in so many places once removed from office former leaders are killed for what they have done.
Last evening, the mortal remains of President Ford were brought to Washington, to honor him and his legacy as our 38th President.
Ironically he was one of our most athletic and physically fit of Presidents who will be remembered for falling down steps and while skiing. A Healer, who risked forgiveness, and pardoned both the former President caught in the scandal of Watergate, and the young men who had fled our nation to evade the draft to War in Vietnam. One of our most Bi-Partisan leaders, not a larger than life Statesman, but a common man who liked liverwurst sandwiches. A man who did what had to be done, because it was merciful, and humble and just and compassionate, and trustworthy, not because it was what he wanted the Nation to do, not what was politically expedient, economically profitable or popular. He pardoned and forgave others, because though it was not popular, the Nation needed to forgive.

One of the THREADS we have difficulty looking for is forgiveness. We like to imagine that we are self-made, to point to all those points of accomplishment, all the individual relationships we are identified with by association, rather than as Paul named to the Colossians “If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, because God has forgiven you and that is really the only point of relationship that matters. That thread is recognizing that God has forgiven each of us, so we forgive one another, not condoning or condemning, but in our every word and deed, doing everything as a demonstration of faith in Jesus Christ.

We were a generation, who were carefully schooled to stoically watch the Riderless Horse at President John Kennedy's Memorial, to salute without shedding a tear. We could not fathom people questioning the integrity of the presidency. In these 45 years we have learned skepticism and doubt, fear and ridicule, to protect ourselves from being wounded or betrayed by the humanity, the mortality of leaders, rather than looking for relationships and connections between us.

One of the most marvelous examples of what we could do has come out of South Africa. Remember that throughout the 1970s and early 80s that was a place of Apartheid and Genocide. When a new era came, those who had committed atrocities, crimes against humanity, were tried. YET There is the story of a woman, whose home had been invaded in the middle of the night, her husband and sons taken, beaten and killed. When Apartheid ended and these men were found guilty, the woman was asked what punishment she sought. She pronounced that from that day forward, and throughout their lives, these men would become her family, they would honor her on her wedding anniversary, they would honor her husband and sons on their birthdays, they would become to her, what they had taken away, and she would forgive, knowing she had been forgiven by God.

Researching our history, has given this church identity and continuity for the present and future, that we have always been a CIVIC CENTER for this community, a place of education, music and the arts, but especially of mission and involvement in our community. In our earliest days as the Religious Society in this place, we were also the public school and the civic courts. That is a piece, we gave up too quickly. Would that rather than a place for seeking justice, vengeance, retribution, reclaiming what we feel has been taken from us by an adversary, our civil courts sought to create forgiveness between us and one another.