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This
has been a rather amazing weekend for me, the new pastor on
the block. I have led my first wedding rehearsal, my first
wedding, my first baptism (not to mention my second, third,
fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh baptisms!), and now I am
offering my first sermon among you.
It has also
been my privilege to act as pastor to our pastor for the last
couple of days. I have had the chance to visit with him in
person and by phone several times, and I need to tell you
that he looks well—pretty much like his normal self, except
for being in a hospital bed. He said that I could tell you
that right now, he is very bored. He says that the hours go
by pretty slowly at the hospital. He wishes he could get up,
drag along his IV machine, and go up and down the hall ministering
to all the other patients. But the doctors want him to rest.
One piece of good news: he gets to watch the British Open
on TV early Sunday morning, a very rare event in the life
of a pastor. He sends his warmest regards to each of you,
and he expects to be back at work very soon.
Prayer:
Loving Saviour, we come before you grateful for the
chance to be together. We come as a people hungry for your
word, hungry for nourishment for our souls. We also come as
a people hungry for hope: hope for our pastor, hope for our
lives, hope for our world. And so we place before you our
small stories and we ask you to take them, bless them, and
break them open in such a way that they will be multiplied,
even as we share them with others, so that all may be fed
through your grace. Amen.
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* * * *
In
the early years of the 20th century, around 1910
or so, a teenager left his home in Finland and boarded a boat
for America. He was a strong-willed man, filled with what
we Finns call SISU, which translates as determination, or
stamina, or as I was taught as a child, “guts.” He came through
Ellis Island, where his last name was changed by busy clerks
from Lehtenmaki to Maki, and he traveled to Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula by train. There he settled down to a life of farming,
coupled with other small business ventures, in order to make
a life for his wife and five children. They lost the farm
in the Depression, but Grandpa never lost his dignity or pride.
He never lost his SISU.
On Oct.
5, 1946, a young man named Bill spotted a good-looking woman
named Evelyn. He proposed to her under a covered bridge in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The man was Bill Bratton, a member
of our church family here in Birmingham, and Evelyn is his
wife of 56 years. I
met Bill and Evelyn as I began my work as a pastor among you.
They said I could share some of their story, if I thought
it would be helpful to you.
What
do these stories have to do with one another? Is there some
connection, a connection that really matters, a connection
that would make a difference for the way we live our lives,
for the way we interact with one another, for the way we reach
out to others around us who are hungry or lonely or in pain?
Do our stories affect one another? Does it matter to us that
a new Bishop has been assigned to our Michigan region, Jonathan
Keaton, last serving in East Ohio? How will his story interact
with ours?
After I
learned that I was being appointed as an Associate Pastor
here at the First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, I
went to Bill Ritter and I asked him what it was that he really
wanted me to accomplish here. What did he hope that I would
do; what would be my work among you? Bill’s answer was an
intriguing one, one which has captured my imagination and
has focused the early days of my ministry among you. He said,
“Help us to remember our stories.
Help us to see how our stories are connected to one
another. Help us to see how our stories are connected to a
larger story—God’s story.” Now, this quote may not be exactly
what he said at that moment, but it is definitely what his
words at that time have come to mean to me as I have pondered
them and prayed about them ever since.
Remembering
our stories together, seeing how they fit into God’s story,
seeing how those stories connect with one another in ways
that can be used by God to transform our lives—that has become
the focus of my ministry among you. It is through the lens
of stories that I will understand my work in pastoral care,
spiritual formation, preaching, teaching, and offering the
sacraments, and it is through sharing one another’s stories
that we will see the power of God working among us.
What
a daunting task! There are more than 3,000 members here, and
senioritis threatens me at every corner.
But Bill said, “Don’t worry, if your life depends on
it, you will remember!” But the truth is, I can’t possibly
remember. I can’t remember all those names and all those stories
alone, much as I want to. But I don’t have to. On my first
Sunday among you, Mary Jane Russell generously stood by my
side and whispered names to me as people approached. In some
ways I wish she could stand beside me all the time for the
next few months. Names are very important, but this is about
more than names. This is about people’s stories. The story
of who they are. The story of whose they are.
Remembering
is a fundamental activity given to us by God. Remembering
is how we know that someone cares. That’s why it is so important
when our spouse remembers our anniversary with a card or a
gift. Remembering is how we know that someone loves us.
Remembering is how we find meaning in our lives. It
is how we find God.
Remembering
in scripture takes on more meaning than simply recalling previous
events. Remembering has to do with how we take those stories,
those events from the past, and bring them into the future,
allowing them to shape (or better yet, reshape) how we understand
our present lives. So we remember in such a way that the past
becomes a part of the present, a living part of the present.
This is called anamnesis. And what we remember changes
us. It provides us with the insight, or the energy, or the
anger, or the determination, or the sisu, to make a
difference in the present.
When Bill
first met Evelyn, he was young and handsome. He was an active
member of the Tioga Presbyterian Church. Every Sunday evening
there was a young adult’s group that met at the church, primarily
veterans of WWII. He invited Evelyn to come with him. He didn’t
know that Evelyn had been avoiding church, or perhaps avoiding
God, ever since her beloved brother Ken had been killed by
“friendly fire” in World War II, not long after D-Day. Bill’s
story, and probably his good looks, helped her to take a second
look at her own story, to take a second look at how God fit
into her story, or perhaps how she might fit into God’s story.
For God’s story is a love story—much like Evelyn and Bill’s.
In a love story, everything does not always go smoothly, but
it is always an important story, a story that means something,
a story that gives purpose and meaning to our lives.
Evelyn decided
to go to church with Bill. When he proposed on that covered
bridge, she said yes.
When they were married a few months later, she slipped
a ring onto his finger that he did not remove for 56 years,
when a surgeon required it. Evelyn’s ring has still never
been removed. They named their son Ken, in honor of the brother
who had been lost, and whose loss had separated Evelyn from
God and from moving ahead with her life.
This
church is filled with stories. Stories that can change our
lives. Stories that can teach others about our care for one
another, about God’s care for us and God’s care for other
persons far beyond our small community. For example, I have
learned from Cliff Bath that 20 years ago there was a Cambodian
family named Chea who was adopted by this church; you invited
them to come and live among you. The family had almost nothing,
but you opened your hearts to them and also taught them how
to care for themselves in this strange new country that had
become their home. One visitor in the Chea home was someone
whom they called “The Apple Lady” because, unknown to other
parishioners, she frequently stopped by to check on how they
were doing, and she always brought apples with her for them
to eat. Today, the daughter has become a pediatrician. The
son is an electrical engineer who has also earned an MBA from
the University of Southern California. If we continue to remember
this story, I wonder what difference might it make for us
today? What might it inspire us to do, individually or as
a church family?
About that
assignment from Bill, what would Jesus have to say about it?
Is there any biblical basis for trying to remember all these
stories?
First,
there is the great commission. “Go and make disciples…baptizing
and teaching.” In the NRSV translation, the next line is “and
remember i am with you always.” In Luke’s description of the Lord’s Supper,
we are urged to eat the bread in remembrance of Christ.
Paul echoes Luke on this point in I Corinthians.
It
sounds as though Bill’s assignment might somehow be connected
to God’s assignment. How do we remember Jesus? Certainly in
the sacraments of baptism and communion, certainly in our
prayer and in the way we choose to live our lives. But isn’t
it also true that we remember Christ when we remember one
another? Didn’t Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, just as you
did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25: 40)
Therefore,
when we remember one another, are we not truly also remembering
Christ? When we share one another’s stories, are we not also
sharing Christ’s story, God’s story? So to my way of thinking,
this assignment is not just from Bill, it is also an assignment
that comes from God. This makes the work all the more daunting!
However,
there’s another Bible story that brings me hope in this awesome
task. It’s the story of the feeding of the 5,000 men, plus
women and children, which we read this morning. In that story,
the disciples were asked to do an impossible task. “You
feed them!” They despair of having enough resources to accomplish
the mission. However, when they give what they have to Jesus,
he takes it, blesses it, breaks it open, and gives it back
to them for distribution in some miraculous way—some way in
which there winds up being more than enough for all!
It seems
to me, as I approach my awesome new role here at First Church,
I can follow the pattern of the disciples. My role is simply
to bring the meager resources that I have to the table and
give them to Jesus, trusting that Jesus will take them, bless
them, break them open, and work the miracle of multiplying
them so that there is enough for all of us, and enough left
over for others. So
I can simply offer to God my own story, along with my somewhat-undependable
memory, and trust that God will bless these gifts in helping
me to remember and share your stories, and in helping all
of us to break open these stories and see how they are connected
with one another and with God’s greater story.
The other
reason that I don’t have to worry is this: I really don’t
have to remember all these stories—not by myself. This is
not really my assignment. It is an assignment for all of us.
Remembering is not an individual sport—it is a team sport.
It’s more like the Ryder Cup than the British Open—we can
all work on it together. The story of a death in my family
might have an impact on the story of life within your family!
When Grandpa
Maki died in 1973, I attended his funeral. It seems that this
stubborn grandfather of mine had political views that differed
widely from those of the Lutheran pastor who served his community.
Grandpa refused to darken the door of the church, and he would
only let Grandma go on rare occasions, even though she was
the daughter of a Lutheran pastor herself. At Grandpa’s funeral,
the Lutheran pastor stood in the pulpit and said that he fully
expected that Grandpa was currently residing in hell. Now
fortunately, our fate is in God’s hands, not any pastor’s.
But that event was a painful one for me. It was not something
I thought about much, but it turned out to be pivotal in my
call to become a pastor myself. Before I could become a pastor,
I had to first forgive the church for the hurt that it had
done to my family, beginning with my grandfather. I had to
find a new way to understand the story. I had to learn to
be able to tell the story, for it is in telling a story that
healing comes.
I
have noticed that when I can tell the story, really
tell the story, of some difficult event in my life, that is
when I sense that healing is happening. When I am not ready
to tell it, even to myself, even to God, I am not healthy;
I am not whole. So telling stories not only is a way of sharing
the past, it is also a way of finding healing. The interesting
thing is that when we are able to tell our stories, not only
do we find healing for ourselves through God’s grace, but
our very stories may help create the possibility of healing
for others. Could it be that this is the way God acts in our
lives? Could it be that this is one of the reasons that we
are called upon to acknowledge our sin each Sunday as we talk
with God in prayer—so we can remember our own story in light
of God’s story? So that God can offer us forgiving, healing
grace?
Could
this also be the reason that we tell the old stories over
and over again, and they somehow continue to be new and fresh?
Doesn’t the old, old story truly include our new stories today,
as well? Is this the old story, God’s story, the connection
that makes a difference in our lives today?
If that is so, then Grandpa Maki’s story, and the Bratton’s
story, and the Chea’s story, and Jonathan Keaton’s story and,
of course, Bill’s story, are indeed all connected.
They all teach us something about one another, and when we
share them, in some (dare I say) miraculous way, their truths
are multiplied in such a way that together they begin to tell
a bigger story—God’s story. Our stories together provide a
pathway to grace. They give us tools to reach out to others
who are hungry or lonely or in pain. Could it be that remembering
and sharing our stories is the first step in being
the church?
Our
stories, woven together with God’s gracious story in Jesus
Christ, have the awesome power not only to heal our past and
change our understanding of the present, but they also shape
our hope for the future. And our expectations for the future
actually change the way we experience our present as well.
As a church
family, we are experiencing a variety of emotions today as
we think about Bill being in the hospital. We find ourselves
worrying a little and praying a lot. It is a time when we
remember the stories of our own visits to hospitals, and we
remember the stories of the times Bill has stood beside us
praying before a surgery, large or small.
The stories
that we share today in Fellowship Hall and in our homes, when
taken together, have the power to change the way we understand
what is happening with all those in our congregation who are
ill, including Bill. Certainly, those hearing these stories
will add power as we privately and collectively lift prayers
to surround Bill and Kris with our love, and God’s love, this
weekend and on Monday. We will pray for him just as he has
prayed for us.
This
story about Bill’s trip to the hospital will become a permanent
part of our story as a faith community. As we tell the story,
it helps us to understand how much Bill means to us. But he
would want the story to tell us much more. He would want this
story to point us once again to the One whose story Bill spends
his life telling—the One who always remembers us, the one
whom we remember in our baptism, the one
whose greater story connects and empowers all our stories,
and the One who offers us a future filled with hope.
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