Other Seas

Psalm 85, Mark 1.14-20

A Sermon Preached by Dave Shull

Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 22, 2006

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

The love, laughter, and sugar from the good-bye dessert potluck celebration last night still carry me. I thank the personnel board for organizing the event, Alan Klockars for creating a program that had just the right combination of seriousness and levity, my colleagues for their great graciousness of spirit. And all who were there in person and in spirit. There is no way you could have made me feel more surrounded by your love and your prayers than you have.

Playing the steel drums this morning is Shannon Dudley. Not long after Peter and I moved here, Shannon and I discovered how small this world of ours is. He and his family spent a year in India the year after my family and I spent a year there. Not only that, we both attended the same school. And lived in the same house. Because his parents led the same University of Wisconsin program in 1969-71 as my parents did in 1968-69. Thank you, Shannon, for letting me know about our shared India connection. And thank you for sharing your musical gifts with us today.

A number of you have asked about my next steps after leaving here. On February 11 I will fly to Nicaragua to spend a week visiting a Seattle friend who is studying Spanish in Granada. I begin my 12-week Spanish language immersion in Guatemala on February 20. The program is called “Hermandad Educativa” – the Educational Fraternity. Eight of the weeks I’ll be studying and living with a family in Quetzaltenango, a city of 120,000 people 7000 feet above sea level. I think I’ll be learning the Spanish word for ‘oxygen tank’. Four of the weeks I’ll study in a mountain village made up of 25 indigenous families. In that village I’ll join my hosts working in the coffee fields, organizing activities in their children’s school, helping to prepare meals. This school has a strong social justice orientation and is committed to immersing students not only in the Spanish language but also in the realities of the history, culture, politics, and economics of the region. Peter will come down to visit me during the last week of March. I thank Peter for his love and unfailing support of me during this time of transition. I could not be doing this without him. I will return to Seattle at the end of May and look for work with Spanish-speaking people. I am excited about this next step. And your excitement for me as you see me living into this new calling is a true gift from God.

Let us pray. You in whom we live, and move, and have our being, may only Your Word be spoken. May only Your Word be heard. Amen.

I was flying so high after you voted to call Peter and me as your pastors that it took me a week to float back to earth. Going through my old journals last week, I discovered I hadn’t written anything about your calling us until five days after the event. When I finally contained my enthusiasm long enough to write something down, this is what I said:

An unbelievable week we had last week. Such affirmation and love.

I want ever to hold onto the moment we walked into the sanctuary after the vote, when everyone stood and applauded . . . and applauded . . . and

applauded. Such goodness. Such utter goodness. Such hospitality we

experienced there. Wonderful love. And God was with us there. God

moved through that congregation. Thank you, Lord God.

Such hospitality we experienced there.

It has been said that preachers have one basic sermon that we preach about in different ways our whole career. While that is a slight exaggeration, there’s definitely some truth in it. Recently one of you told me my sermons had really changed the way you understood the meaning of hospitality. And I realized if there’s one sermon I’ve preached the past 11-1/2 years, it’s been about practicing Christian hospitality.

Winston Churchill said, “Hospitality is making guests feel at home even when you wish they were.” Which may be why Jesus is always offering it. Jesus’ disciples weren’t people who normally would have gravitated toward each other as friends. They had trouble getting along. And it’s the same way in the church. We who make up the body of Christ are a collection of people who like each other and who struggle to like each other. Sometimes it seems like we live on different planets.

And that’s exactly why Jesus calls such an odd assortment of people as his disciples. Because Jesus knew that the people we have the hardest time showing Christian hospitality are the very people we most need to be in relationship with. It is the people we who seem most unlike us who have a gift for us from God that no one else can offer.

Father Henri Nouwen gave up professorships at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard to follow his true calling as a chaplain to adults with severe mental handicaps. Early in his life, Nouwen discovered what Christian hospitality is all about. He discovered Christian hospitality is

the creation of a free and fearless space for people to be authentically themselves;

the creation of a space that transforms hostility to community;

the creation of a space that offers food, comfort, warmth, friendship, and strength.

So after that glorious week with you all, when I wrote in my journal, Such hospitality we experienced there, I was speaking the truth. Because that’s exactly what you’d shown Peter and me. And you probably didn’t even know you were doing anything unusual.

But you were.

If hospitality is my one sermon, then “You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore” is my one hymn. So it’s most appropriate that I’m basing my last sermon here as your pastor on that hymn. In this hymn, Jesus’ calls us to follow him as disciples who live the kingdom of God. During the past 11-1/2 years, you have shown me how to be a disciple of Jesus. And so I want to use this hymn to thank you for helping me be a better disciple by showing me what Christian hospitality is all about. For my time with you has not felt like a time I could have had with any other congregation. You have taken me to other seas. An adventure for which I can never say thank you enough.

So please open your hymnals to #173. And keep it open during the sermon. Let us sing the first verse together.

You have come down to the lakeshore

seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy,

but only asking for me to follow.

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes;

kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;

now with you I will seek other seas.

The line that speaks to me most in this verse is only asking for me to follow.

Jesus, you’re saying to us, You can help build God’s kingdom just as you are. Just follow. And let’s create a space that transforms hostility to community.

One of the ways you made this verse real for me was during the lead up to the war in Iraq. Many of us in this church believed that for the United States to invade a country that was not at-war with us violated Christian just war principles. So we tried to follow Jesus as we understood his call. We held weekly vigils at Green Lake. We had prayer services in the yard off of 45th Street. We issued a pastoral letter opposing the war. We prayed daily and weekly for our political leaders to be converted from their blind rush to war. Christians around the city, including Peter Ilgenfritz, committed acts of civil disobedience and were arrested and charged.

But war came anyway.

And many of us felt defeated. Those of us opposed to this war felt like all our efforts to prevent it were wasted. Nobody listened.

But I don’t think most of us really expected the people in power to listen. And finally that’s not what was most important. What’s most important is that we were trying to be faithful to the call of Jesus. You have come down to the lakeshore . . . only asking for me to follow means just that. That each of us hears Jesus’ call, and we ask people we trust if what we think we’re hearing sounds like the gospel, and then we join others in following Jesus. I’m not saying all who follow Jesus believe the same things are moral and immoral. We hear his call in different ways. What I am saying is that you helped teach me that discipleship is about following Jesus even when it seems that it won’t change anything in the short-term. You have taught me that what matters most is following Jesus.

Let us sing verse 2 together.

You know full well my possessions.

Neither treasure nor weapons for conquest,

just these my fishnets and will for working.

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes;

kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;

now with you I will seek other seas.

In this verse, I hear Jesus calling us radically to re-imagine how we understand and use power. In his day, and in ours, the people with the most money and the most military might have the most power. Power was concentrated in a few hands. And those with power did whatever they needed to in order to keep others from taking it from them. They believed there was a finite amount of power, so sharing it meant being weaker.

That’s why you were following Jesus to another sea by giving the clergy permission to form a team where power was shared as opposed to preserving a model where power was concentrated in the senior pastor. No other church this size in the United States we’re aware of is led by the kind of clergy team we as a congregation are creating here. In a society where more and more economic and military power is held by fewer and fewer people, we here are proclaiming a different story. As disciples of Jesus, we know there is more than enough power to share.

Let us sing verse 3 together.

You need my hands, my exhaustion,

working love for the rest of the weary –

a love that’s willing to go on loving.

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes;

kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;

now with you I will seek other seas.

The words a love that’s willing to go on loving could describe many different ministries of this church. But I’d like to focus on two of the children’s programs we support. Early on in our building renovation planning process, the leaders of the child learning and care center and the Trettin drop-in center told us that if they couldn’t stay in the building and stay operational during the renovation, they couldn’t survive. It was as simple as that. If a spirit of Christian hospitality had not been present, the church could have decided that the many benefits of remodeling an unoccupied building outweighed the needs of the children of this community. But a spirit of hospitality was indeed present. And though they had to be relocated twice, the child care centers remained in operation. In fact, they thrived. And when the Department of Social and Health Services recently inspected the Child Learning and Care Center, the Center passed with flying colors. Indeed, it was called a model for all the pre-schools in the state.

You taught me that what might be easiest and most cost-effective was not the way to follow this Jesus who speaks of a love that goes on loving. Yet another way you have shown me what it means to be a disciple of this one who brings in God’s kingdom of radical hospitality.

Let us sing verse 4.

You who have fished other waters;

you, the longing of souls that are yearning;

As loving Friend, you have come to call me.

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes;

kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;

now with you I will seek other seas.

When I came to this church in 1994, I didn’t know my soul was yearning for Jesus. I didn’t know I was longing for a relationship with him.

Like many of us, perhaps, I wanted to be in church so I could learn how to follow the teachings of Jesus. I knew the world would be a much better place if we lived by those teachings. I absolutely still believe that. And, at the same time, you showed me how much my soul is yearning for more than a commitment to Jesus’ teachings.

You have invited me into your lives. We have walked together through divorce, cancer, infertility, depression, and suicide; we’ve walked together through your feelings of being abandoned by God and rejected by family. What I’ve realized as I’ve walked with you is that it’s almost impossible to heal from these experiences when your faith is primarily based on trying to follow Jesus’ teachings. I realized that the only way I could offer you comfort and strength was to build a relationship with the risen, living, still-calling Jesus. By letting me be your pastor these past 11-1/2 years, you have put me in the position of needing to deepen the faith I brought with me here. So I’ve done what I thought only fundamentalist Christians do. I’ve opened myself to a personal relationship with Jesus that blesses me with a free and fearless space to be myself. And a personal relationship that calls me to commit myself to make real the joy and justice of God’s kingdom.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, tells her best friend:

Love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and

do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’

thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s

different with every shore.

For 11-1/2 years, we have shared with each other the love of Jesus Christ. Our love has washed up against each other’s shores. And because we have loved each other we are forever changed. Your shores have shaped the love I carry with me. You have made me a more faithful disciple of Jesus. A better pastor, and partner, and friend. As we go our separate ways, our love that is a sea keeps us connected. And always a part of each other, we walk with Jesus to shape other shores into places that create free and fearless spaces for people to be authentically themselves. We walk with Jesus to shape other shores into places that transform hostility to community, and offer food, comfort, warmth, friendship and strength. For the sake of God’s glorious kingdom.

Committing ourselves to be builders with Jesus of that kingdom, let us once again sing the final verse of this hymn.

You who have fished other waters;

you, the longing of souls that are yearning;

As loving Friend, you have come to call me.

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes;

kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat;

now with you I will seek other seas.

Thank you. Amen.