“God’s Desire to Gather”

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14

A Sermon Preached by Catherine Foote and Virginia Felton

January 4, 2004

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“With all wisdom and insight God has made know to us the mystery of God’s will”

-Ephesians 1:9a

Virginia Felton: “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” we sang together during Advent. We celebrated the coming of Jesus—Emmanuel—God with us. And now, even as we hold the warmth of that celebration in our hearts, we turn to a new season, a new year. Now our challenge is to live into the meaning of “God with us;” to think about how we can keep God with us, in our hearts, in our minds, and in our work from day to day, and from hour to hour.

When I look back on the life of this congregation over the last ten years, it is obvious to me that God is, indeed, with us. Especially over the past two years, I have felt God’s presence as we sought to renew our physical space and strengthen our foundations by committing a truly amazing amount of energy—and money—to the task.

But even as we begin to renew this building, change rushes at us from every corner. Once we have refurbished Ostrander Hall, remodeled our kitchen, made our building stronger, then what? The question that has been running through my mind is this:
What are we –University Congregational United Church of Christ – called to do, and to be, as a Christian community? What, indeed, is God’s desire for us?

During my time as moderator it is my hope—with God’s help—to engage us further in seeking an answer to that deep question. I believe the time is right for us to come together as a community to do some careful planning—strategic planning, if you will.

We have many challenges before us:

1. a report from Sam Leonard, our Alban consultant, that suggests intriguing possibilities for change;

2. an operating budget that for the past couple of years has not quite balanced;

3. a neighborhood around us where the desperation in the eyes of homeless youth breaks our hearts;

4. our nation on an uncertain course, fractured by war, senseless materialism and industrial greed.

All of this suggests that we have many opportunities to make a difference, to live out God’s love in our world. I am convinced that a deliberate planning process can help us to focus our efforts in this endeavor.

But the strategic planning I envision for us is not just about strengths and weaknesses, or threats and opportunities. It is about listening very hard to hear the voice of God within us and among us. It is about careful discernment, seeking always to know not just what I think we should do, or what you think we should be—but what God—in God’s wisdom and insight—would have us do, and be. It is truly about inviting God – with us—to a seat at our planning table.

Catherine Foote: To talk of God’s desire is to enter into a territory of mystery and danger. Many have wandered here and become lost, even dangerously so. It is not uncommon for people to confuse their own comfort, advancement, power or maybe most significantly their own will with the will of God. The more extreme examples echo through human history. The more subtle examples echo through personal history. So in this country folks have proclaimed, “God’s will is for our prosperity” and in the proclamation justified their own greed, not understanding how that prosperity might mean poverty for others. This is clearly not God’s will. Some of us who have lived through difficulty or tragedy may have even had folks say to us, in an effort to be supportive, that what has happened is “God’s will.” To be speaking in such terms is dangerous indeed. Such talk can do great harm.

However, to proclaim a journey as dangerous not to say that it should not be taken. The other side of faith is the sense that God is involved in our lives, and is calling us to something. Part of the journey of faith is the task of understanding how we might be a part of God’s work in our world. This is not easy language for liberal Christian, in part because the language has been so misused. Yet as John Shelby Spong has suggested in his book “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” we liberals need not give up our language of faith just because others have misused that language. We do want to understand where our congregation might be heading in the next several years. We want to be planning, and we want God at the planning table. We do say to one another every Sunday, as we will say this morning, that we covenant together to seek and to respond to God’s word and will, made known and to be made known. So let us talk together, carefully, thoughtfully, and faithfully, about God’s will.

First, we as a faith community have assumed by our covenant that God does have an intention for the world, for creation, and for us. Our minister emeritus, Dale Turner, told this congregation many years ago, “Happily, we do not move into the future alone . . . . We live and move and have our being in God’s presence. We are not orphans in an empty world.” (Turner, Another Way, p. 1) Peter Ilgenfritz said it much more recently: “”We don’t worship a God who is separate and removed – out there somewhere. We worship a God who is a God of heart.” (Ilgenfritz, “Living in Covenant: Letting Go of Control.” Sermon of September 14, 2003)

And of course implied in these words is the assumption that God’s will can be known, and indeed that it is our task to seek it and to respond to it. That is the reason we study scripture. It is the reason we gather together. It the reason we exist as a faith community.

So this morning we begin the task again, by hearing God’s expressed desire to gather all of creation into her care. In our confession, we told each other that God’s will is to “Bring us back.” In our texts we read of God’s tender care, desiring all people to be blessed. We heard that God has intended, since the foundation of the world, that all of creation be connected to God. “In Christ we find out who we are and what we are living for.” (Peterson, The Message, Ephesians 1.)

It is good to hear God’s call, yet it remains for us to put flesh and bones to it. So there is the final step. We assume that, if we pay attention, God can call us to something unique in our time. Lloyd Averill, one of this congregation’s consulting theologians, has written about providence, saying that it “is not a matter of demonstration but of confession. The hope our world needs cannot, at the last, be proved but only pointed to; it cannot be shouted but only listened for.” (Lloyd Averill, Reclaiming the Language of Faith, p. 184)

Then our task becomes, as Lloyd has said, not to shout but to listen. Our task is to search together to come to know what our call might be. So as we are entering into a time of discernment let me offer an illustration and a few guidelines.

Do you remember those fractal posters in 3-D that we used to see everywhere a few years back? At first glance the picture seems like random shapes and colors. Then, if you look closer, you can see many tiny shapes, repeated over and over again. But finally, if you continue to look and, as the instructions say, “unfocus your gaze” another very clear picture will just pop out at you.

To do the work of discernment means to allow for such an experience. It is to allow for mystery. We might not be able to offer easy explanations, and what we come to might not be clear at first glance. That is because discernment is more that putting together a long range planning team, or trying to guess the future, or even seeking consensus. Discernment means, as some have said, not so much making decisions as uncovering them. (See Oswald and Frederick, Discerning Your Congregation’s Future.) As Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

To do the work of discernment requires a willingness to let go, perhaps to “unfocus our gaze’ for a while. We might all think we already know what it would mean for this congregation to be a successful church. But what might it mean for us to be a servant church in our community? Let’s unfocus our assumptions, just for a while, and see if we might discover something deeper and even surprising together.

Finally, let me also make a confession. I have never been able to see the “big picture” in one of those posters. And so, to do the work of discernment requires trust. I might not be able to see what you see, and you might not be able to see what others see, but if we trust each other, and hold on, we can still move forward together.

What Dale Turner once said about individuals also applies to us as a church: “Nowhere in the Bible are we encouraged to be a successful person. When I first discovered this fact it came as something of a surprise . . . The Bible does not teach us that we are to be in competition with others, but we are caked to be faithful to our own highest possibilities. Rabbi Zusya, . . . who lived in Lithuania in the nineteenth century, said, ‘On the day of judgment, God will not ask me why I had not been Moses, but why I had not been Zusya.’ To be faithful to our own highest possibilities is an unending quest.” (Turner, Different Seasons, p. 54)

Virginia Felton: Indeed, being “faithful to our own highest possibilities,” is what discernment and planning is really all about. The success that we seek in this endeavor may, in fact, surprise some of us, confuse some, frustrate some. The task of discerning our congregation’s future may even seem like an elusive goal. But I am convinced from my own experience, that the journey itself is worth the taking. I have discovered that when I seek resolutely to live in harmony with God’s desire, the mystery of God’s grace unfolds in ways that leave me breathless.

I have tried over the past several years, as I am sure many of you have tried, to be more disciplined in setting aside time every day to be still, to pray and meditate, to listen for the voice of God in my life. And, like some of you perhaps, I have mostly failed in this effort. The pull of job, family, relationship, service, church, sleep, LIFE—makes it very difficult.

But, the most amazing thing is that even though I have mostly failed, I have also partly succeeded. With mindfulness and patience, I have managed to fit little pieces of discernment into my days. For example, I try to be more aware of the rhythms of nature. I focus my vision on the waxing moon for just 15 or 20 seconds in the evening, and let the beauty and mystery of the universe fill me. I go into the mountains and just sit sometimes, gazing silently at the peaks of the Cascades around me, and I feel their majesty seep into my soul. Then I walk the trail in gratitude for that beauty and majesty, and as one foot follows the other and the miles accumulate, an ordinary hike becomes a walking meditation, and the very trail of my own life gains a clarity that I cannot find anywhere else. It is that kind of clarity I seek also for us, for our community.

When the Church Council and board chairs spent two days together last fall in our annual planning retreat, we began by breaking into groups of three or four and asking each other, “How do you know when you are living out the will of God?” When we shared our stories in the larger group we were amazed at the similarities we found: “A path opened up for me.” “Things just seemed to unfold.” “The decision was clear.” “It just felt right.”

If God is with us at our planning table, I believe we can achieve this same kind of clarity as a community. But, I do know that it will be challenging and difficult. I know it will require of us openness and courage, and a willingness to listen to God and each other. But I believe we can all grow closer to God in this way. I am convinced by working together to learn more about God’s desire for us we can get closer to our highest possibilities. I invite you to share this journey with me, and I humbly ask your prayers, your own careful discernment, and your participation along the way.