End or Resurrection Sept 16, 2007

This morning, this bitter cold morning of 35 degrees in September, we gather together to believe, to HOPE. That is what we need to hear and are afraid to believe, that we can HOPE.
In Central New York, where we annually anticipate 200 inches of snow,
where taxes and utilities are high, the housing market is in pain, SU's Organemen lost their third in a row, we awake to frost on the ground, And WE ARE CALLED TO BELIEVE in a future where we could again reach 80, Indian Summer, HOPE.

We read therse parables from Luke , and WE Hear The
Story of THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST COIN, THE PRODIGAL SON, or the ELDER ONE,
when the focus of these parables especially in the telling of Luke is on The Shepherd whose sheep was Lost but was FOUND. The Woman who lost a Coin and searched UNTIL she found it. The Father who had two sons, who each were lost, and he went out until they were found.
In the Gospel of Matthew's telling, one of the sheep “WANDERS OFF”, and according to the old Gospel Hymn with the others safely held in the sheepfold, the shepherd searches, and IF HE FINDS IT he rejoices. Not so in Luke, here for Jesus the Ninety and Nine are not a focus, the SHEPHERD'S ONLY REAL CONCERN is returning the lost, and searches UNTIL IT IS FOUND.

We are a pessimistic people preoccupied with principles of Rationalism. We govern our lives with laws that Whatever goes up, must come down; rather than believing, HOPING that that which came from heaven must return to heaven. We not only see the GLASS AS HALF EMPTY, we never imagine that the reservoir could ever be replenished and the half-full become whole anew. We are preoccupied with holding onto what we have, protectionism, security, especially from Death. As a POST 911 People, SURVIVORS of CANCER, it is said we have lost our innocence, our sense of security that bad things cannot touch us. We are a people living in the present moment, blinded by excess and the fears of reality of loss, Cancers and death, separation and brokenness. There is a difference in this, and being a RESURRECTED PEOPLE hoping and believing that God may use even these horrors, the pain of our lives, to humanize us and give us compassion, faith, hope.

We hear this prophecy from Jeremiah, and IF WE KNOW our Bible, we recognize the poetry of Creation as described in Genesis 1, but something is terribly wrong.
Genesis begins with the world as a waste and void, and God voices hope, light and life, possibility; one builds upon another and all are interdependent, inter-related, filled with life!
Here in Jeremiah, the prophet dreams of destruction, death and loss, we are mortal and creaturely, created, there must be a death.
One by one, everything is taken away, until there is no sound, no one.
BUT, this is a lament from the 4th Chapter of Jeremiah.
All that is to come, all that occurs is built upon this word having first been voiced.

Six years ago, what was beyond our worst nightmare, took place, terrorists used commercial airlines to destroy the Towers at the World Trade Center, and one of the five sides of the Pentagon I remember that morning, consoling people working on the line at WelchAllyn who questioned “Is this THE END, the end of the world?” Our Nation's Capital and New York City were in terror and in ruins. Thousands and thousands of people walked across Manhattan across the bridges, covered in dust and debry, to try to escape. And the most incidious part was that as businesses pledged equipment and dollars to rescue those who were victims, as the Red Cross collected blood donations for the wounded, there were none... NO ONE was coming out.
Like Jeremiah's vision, there was no sound.
Tsunamis and Hurricanes beat down and destroyed whole cities in Indonesia and New Orleans, Florida and Texas. In Minneapolis, bridges collapsed. At every News Cycle story of destruction, we feel beaten down and humbled, yet there is always resurrection.

We cannot blythely dismiss the human condition of suffering.
SIX YEARS and FIVE DAYS ago we did believe this could be the end of the world, the beginning of a holocaust the world had never known. The devastation of Hurricane RITA was absolute and the feelings of abandonment of those left, horrifying. When a loved one is in the midst of Depression, when you have the word CANCER over your life, all you want is for it to be over.
According to the Scriptures there is that which is worse than DEATH, that which we fear more than the END OF DAYS,... Worse is to be LOST, FORGOT, as if your existence never mattered.
But the WORD of HOPE is that we are never lost, our lives do matter, not only to our family and friends and co-workers and church, but WE EACH MATTER TO GOD.

There are those out in the community who have said, what a wonderful thing, that this church has provided health care to a people who NEVER before had it. When the World Health Organization estimates there will be 10 Million more Orphans in Africa by the year 2020, and you have made a difference.
BUT I Would tell you there is a Selfish benefit as well.
We in the First World, in North America in the 21st Century, we have become so preoccupied with our possessions, our reputations, our accomplishments, that serving others, having compassion for a people who have lived through genocide;
Providing food to our neighbors in this community;
Clothing to women who have endured domestic violence from their fathers and their husbands and who strive to earn their own way and to believe the future for their children might be different,
COMPASSION (Offering Hope to the Hopeless) HUMANIZES US.

This is not CHARITY, not the rich casting off scraps, claiming tax deductions for used underware and broken things donated for others; but sharing our time, sharing our lives, praying for someone in need, these acts of compassion cut us to the core of what it is to be human and allow us to hope.

The Shepherd is different from a Hired Laborer, because the Laborer is content grazing the 99. The Shepherd's whole life is identified in caring for and protecting the most vulnerable, the LOST The Collector is oblivious to all that she has, she knows one is lost, and cannot rest until that one is found.
There is something I think Mothers experience later in life, that Fathers feel from the very beginning, it's why there is such anxiety in children going to school, or away to college, there is an identification with -- and yet separation from, that is compassion. We forever yearn for our child to come home, our children are what make us FATHERS and MOTHERS. As much as we may become engrossed in our careers, in projects, we are only family by choosing to identify with one another, that is what humanizes us.

There are dreadful, horrible moments of life, when it appears we may face THE END, when even more than dieing, we feel helpless in the loss of our dignity, our decisionmaking, our career, our very identity. But the END did not come SIX YEARS AGO on the 11th Day of September. Cancer may take our strength, our dignity, our hair, our control of our bowels and our sex, but we are not lost, and there is hope after.

This day we celebrate Baptism. which is a SACRAMENT, a SACRED MOMENT not because we recognize the birth of a baby, or a family's joy at naming.
As human beings we are BORN and as such we know that we will DIE, we are mortal, creaturely, vulnerable, human.
But, KNOWN by GOD, LOVED by GOD and the People of God, we can never be LOST, every day is a new day after, a fresh beginning, the sights and sounds of life are always new.