January 23, 2011 "What Do You Want To Be?"

Isaiah 9:1-7
Matthew 4:12-23
In conversation with a twelve year old, they were frustrated by not knowing what they wanted to be when they grew up. It seemed to them, their friends had known since Nursery school that they would be a Doctor, a Lawyer, an Engineer, a Musician, a Homemaker. Poignant for me, because at 52 there are many days when I am uncertain what I want to be whenever I grow up. But pressing for why this had to be resolved, the child described “How could they possibly know what College or University they needed to apply to go to, if they did not know what they wanted to be, and if they did not know what college, then how could they know what classes they needed to take in Junior High and High School.” Our anxiety and stress have pushed us to the point of believing we have to have the answers and can only be one thing. God forbid we choose wrong at age 12 and ruin the rest of our lives!

Yet all of our world is caught up in how to fix the presenting circumstances. What one right choice do we need to make to get us back on track, to return us to prosperity, to a time before oil spills and excess snows, to bring our troops home safely and take us back to a time without war? How long will it take for the world's economic circumstance to recover and life to return to what we remember? According to our leading economists, it will take a minimum of five years for our economy to fully rebound. According to ecologists, the oceans are diluting both the oil and the chemicals used to contain the oil, and within 20 years the Gulf may be as plentiful as it once was. But all this assumes the circumstances of today remain exactly as they are, without change, without anything else taking place. Rather than five years for our economy to return to what it was, others claim that it will take fifteen years for a new World Economy to have developed. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah confronts the problem of a “Loss of Nostalgia.” We want to return to what we remember life was like, but not that it ever actually was.

Isaiah had been of the Tribe of Levi, of the order of High Priests, like all his family had been before him. In Chapter 6, we have this grand vision of the Kingdom of God and the Commissioning of the Prophet sent by God for Salvation to preach; from which our opening hymn “Here, I AM” is derived. But as grand and glorious and spiritual and majestic as the Court of God is, Isaiah is commissioned to the problem of people having faith. Their Ears will be too heavy to listen, their Eyes are already so shut by familiar experience to ever see what is around them. They will look without seeing, they will hear but not listen. It is as if, 10,000 times a day, for each of us, every day, there are opportunities for faith. There are visions for each of us, as spiritual, as awesome, as being in the presence of God surrounded by Seraphim (6 winged serpentine angels) flying overhead singing Holy Holy Holy, Lord God of Hosts! but we never see them. Miracles, Saving acts, the Spiritual reality is there all around each of us, every day, and yet living with our circumstance, we never see.

When I was in Seminary, I worked weekends serving two churches in Middletown, NY. One Saturday the pastor took ill, and Sunday morning a colleague filled in for him preaching. In contrast to all the sermons, week after week from the installed pastor, I remember the words of the visitor. He said “How easy it is to be a visitor, to stride in and offer a word that is fresh and new with possibilities. But the real work of faith happens day in and day out, year after year, as people try to make a difference in daily life.

The Prophet Isaiah envisions a future time, when there will never again be gloom, let alone anguish. This people who have lived with fear and death, literally walking in darkness, will see a great light. What if, the times in which we NOW live, are not only the culmination of all the advancement of all that has gone before, the greatest, most innovative time in history; BUT also, represent a Dark Ages, for what is to come? As much as we are intrigued by the latest 3D, the fastest and smallest, the newest solution, that in a time to come, here in this frozen and frigid place all people will live knowing God!

The teachers among us are welcome to offer challenge, but I am told that as periodically there are new ways of teaching, a New Math, Whole Language, Suzuki Music, that the current shift in methodology is to realize that if we can stimulate the minds of children with a fluency in Music, that the rhythm and harmonics, the repetitions and contrasts will aid their learning math and engineering, spelling and history. What if, the secrets to Joy, to Life, to Salvation and a new way of living without war, without oppression, require a shift of mindset from contrasting as opposites Faith and Knowledge, to perceiving all our realities as opportunities to witness the presence of God with us?

The first time, many of us heard the words of the poem by Barbara Kingsolver, which served as our Call to Illumination this Day, we were offended at the idea of Engineering, Math and Science being taught exclusively at the expulsion of Music and the Arts. But that was precisely the poet's point, that at times Legislatures are too concerned with making laws to affect Test Scores, rather than understanding the education and nurture of the whole person.

The Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus Call to the Disciples as a Call to Repent. But REPENTANCE is not described as Shame or Guilt, but The Contrast of a new and different way from everything we have ever known. Simon, Andrew, James and John did not abandon their businesses and way of of life, as if that was wrong and this is right. Instead, they listened to the Call to Follow and used everything they had known, now in new ways.

How do people become believers? Some describe a slow maturation over a lifetime. Others, a cathartic event in which their lives are forever changed. What I have seen are personal circumstances over and over again through life, where we are drawn deeper and deeper, where everything we thought we knew is contrasted to the possibility of what God may yet be doing.

For decades, this community had a food pantry in each of the churches. When suddenly someone had the inspiration that all the churches share together in one pantry. By so doing, not only would serve more people more effectively, but Catholics and Presbyterians, Evangelicals and Episcopalians might come to know each other as people who live their faith.

For thirty years Presbyterian Manor was in this community, providing an affordable residence for healthy seniors. We hired a new Housekeeper, who wanted to be able to go to Church on Sunday, which gave the opportunity for people from this church to each volunteer to share lunch with the residents, that this not simply be a thing we own and provide, but that we individually and personally become involved by sharing a meal on Sunday afternoon.

There was a teacher, a mother of teenagers, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, which then became Uterine, then became Bone Cancer. Knowing she was going to be in isolation for several weeks surrounding Bone Marrow transplant, she created a list for her friends and family. Everyone always wants to help but never know how. Her list were a 150 things that I would appreciate you do. Bake cookies for my kids, then eat them with them. When you find a great story or poem that touches you, would write it down and send it to me. So also, when you see and hear birds at your feeder, or smell flowers of spring, because I need you to do that for me right now. That you would tell my husband you are going to do the dishes on Tuesdays. That you would honestly and sincerely pray, because I am very much afraid, but have come to know that all things are possible with God. She got through her treatments and had a good summer. On the first day of a new school her Cancer returned, and she asked that friends and family would come sit with her as she crossed over. What a gift. Not making death scary, but encouraging others to share this most sacred part of life.

We have been very blessed as a community as a Church, to celebrate weddings and anniversaries and baptisms. Would that instead of simply offering what we possess as a resource to others, we could perceive these as opportunities for faith, each is a moment, as is each day, to see God. One of the things we have done over recent years has been to bring poetry into worship. Some have liked this, others have not. But a delightful part is that each of the poems shared come from a collection of poems that world leaders, teachers, philanthropists like you and I, have pinned to their bulletin board, taped to their door, written on their email messages to never forget.

Faith does not suddenly come when we most fear death, and may never come though we study for a lifetime. Faith is made real, when we choose to go from being fishermen to fishers of women and men. Faith will be a reality, when we see the present and future, not as a return to former glory days, but as a Renaissance a reclaiming of what is beautiful and important for a new time. The awesome joy of Isaiah is that this comes in the gift of a child, who is God with us. Years ago, there was a season finale of a long running show. As the characters lives interacted, they did not resolve everything, but instead the camera backed away, seeing the whole of the room, then out the window seeing how the events of this room were similar and different from those in all the rest of the hospital, and how that hospital setting was part of a neighborhood, part of a City, part of whole world. When the BOCES classes ended here, they created for the church a banner that hangs in Dobson Hall: When you Change your Thinking, You Change Your World.