The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
March 4, 2007
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
May my vindication come from you; may your
eyes see what is right.
Though you probe my heart and examine me
at night, though you test me, you will find nothing; I have resolved that my
mouth will not sin.
As for what others do—by the word of your
lips I have kept myself from the ways of the violent.
My steps have held to your paths; my feet
have not slipped.
I call on you, O God, for you will answer
me; give ear to me and hear my prayer.
Show the wonder of your great love, you
who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes.
Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me
in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal
enemies who surround me.
They close up their callous hearts, and
their mouths speak with arrogance.
They have tracked me down, they now
surround me, with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground.
They are like a lion hungry for prey, like
a great lion crouching in cover.
Rise up, O Lord, confront them, bring them
down; rescue me from the wicked by your sword.
O Lord, by your hand save me from
such people, from people of this world whose reward is in this
life. You still the hunger of those you
cherish; their sons have plenty, and they store up wealth for their children.
And I—in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.
Sermon:
A while back, our congregation had a fantastic fundraising event, the Aloha-luia dinner. If you weren’t there, and are just now hearing the name for the first time, and wondering what this was, let me tell you, the event was as strange as the name.
In the middle of winter cold, our church had a Hawaiian themed dinner, complete with fruity drinks, and an auction. Not only did we raise a great deal of money for the ministry of the church, we had a great time.
The best part, in my opinion, was coming in to the church that night, from the cold freezing weather and the black night sky, and then finding First Congregational transformed into a neon colored luau, with everyone wearing their Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses and I think we even had pink flamingoes. It was as if there had been a coup, and now the church was being run by Don Ho and the staff from the Love Boat.
But walking in to such joy and frivolity that night, I
couldn’t help but think about our Puritan forbears, who traveled across the
Atlantic ocean in search of religious freedom, to form the first
Congregationalist churches in
Those early churches back in the 1600’s were absolutely plain in style, clear windows, no stained glass ever, with not even a cross as decoration, for fear that any artistic images would be idolatrous.
What would our Puritan forbears have thought that night, if they had traveled forward in time to see the United Church of Christ today, a denomination that has taken that heritage of religious freedom and extended it into the world of freedom for all people? For that is what happened.
Over the last centuries, the Congregationalist theological
tradition, of believing that there is still more light and truth to break forth
from God’s holy word, has consistently led us into being a church that is open
minded, and open souled. From a people in the 1600’s who had been persecuted
for their religious beliefs in both
Much later still, in 1957, the Congregationalists would join
together with Evangelical and Reform churches who had fled similar oppression
in
Now, while the Congregationalists and the German churches, who came together 50 years ago, agreed theologically, they did not agree on church architecture and décor. While the Congregationalists avoided all stained glass, those churches of German heritage loved stained glass. Even today, in churches of German heritage, the minister is more likely to wear a collar – similar beliefs but different styles.
Of course you have noticed, even this Congregationalist church, is not too plain a style. As the years progressed, we all mellowed – throughout Christianity – and our churches started to borrow from one another. So we have stained glass today, and the Roman Catholic church, St. Petronelle in Glen Ellyn, is built in the classic style of a twentieth century Presbyterian church.
What would they have thought, those early Pilgrims from the 1600’s, with their plain style churches? What would they have thought if they had stumbled into the Aloha-luia dinner and auction here at First Congregational? I think they would have seen those pink flamingos and keeled over in shock. But then, when they woke up, I think they would have understood that we were free to be that way. After all, if you care about religious freedom, where do you draw the line? Hawaiian shirts, pink flamingos. Wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
I was reminded of that fun event when an auction item was called due. One of the things you could bid on that night, was a sermon topic. The idea being that the winning bidder and I would sit down at a later date, with or without fruity drinks, and talk about a sermon theme.
Well, Bill and Liz Werth, long-time members of this church, were kind enough to invite me in to their living room one afternoon to come up with a message for this morning. And wouldn’t you know that as I walked in, my attention went straight to a wonderful photograph that seemed to speak to this whole occasion.
It was a large group of happy looking people, multiple generations, with Bill and Liz right in the middle. With those deep shades of verdant green, and the brightest of floral explosions, it could only be one location, which was verified for me by the fact that everyone in this photograph was wearing a bright, loud, multicolored Hawaiian shirt. Aloha-luia!
I think God works through many mediums. The chief one for us, as Congregationalists, is the Bible. We are people of the book. We honor that text above all others – which is not to say we take every word literally – for we are also a tradition of thinkers, questioners, and interpreters. We understand it in historical and cultural context. Having said that, it is still our central form of revelation. One way to explain it to people that I like is this. We take the Bible seriously, but not literally.
And because of that we are also open to other forms of revelation. One of those is reason, another is tradition, and the last is experience. In the church’s tradition, there has always been room to get divine revelation through human experience.
Which brings me to the subject of roller coasters. Not only do the Werths have a passion for traveling, they have a passion for roller coasters. Ask them after church and they will tell you that they have been on amazing roller coasters everywhere, often getting into parks as early as 5:00 a.m. – and with special privileges accorded to those who are members of the American Roller Coaster enthusiasts.
In fact, I got to see a photograph from a newspaper that
featured members of this group hurtling down the wooden tracks at Kings
Dominion in
Now, let me confess, that I personally am not a roller coaster enthusiast. My dreaded fear of heights keeps me off a kitchen step stool, never mind a hurtling car on loud, shaky tracks. But as I read and researched this organization, I started to get it.
Said one man in the article, “Life is too serious. Sometimes you’ve got to know how to have fun.” And while I don’t personally have fun speeding around at massive heights off the ground, I can rejoice that some people do. What does any of this have to do with our faith? Well, the roller coaster has long been used not just for fun, but as a metaphor for the ups and downs of life.
When you say your life is a roller coaster, you are usually acknowledging the fact that life does not meander along like a quiet country path, but sometimes seems to be speeding up to heights of excitement, or heights of happiness, and then suddenly plunging down to periods of sadness or even disaster.
Our modern metaphor for those ups and downs is the roller coaster, but the biblical metaphor, for people who lived long before these technological amusements, the biblical metaphor has been the peaks and the valleys. Sometimes it’s the mountain tops and sometimes the valleys, but the idea is the same. Sometimes you are at the top and sometimes you are at the bottom. There is no avoiding the ups and downs of life.
In fact today’s scripture is the form of scripture that deals with those ups and downs the most. The Psalms are remarkable in that way. Within one psalm (you may also call a psalm a song or prayer), you can go up the mountain and then down into the valley, and then back up again, and down again. The psalms most accurately express the joy and pain that people have always felt.
In today’s psalm there is even some railing against God. Why do you let my enemies succeed and why must I experience pain, even as I try to live a good life? “My steps have held to your path,” the writer says. “My feet have not slipped.” In other words, I have tried to live right. This same person is experiencing great pain and hardship. Who else would write, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.” This is clearly someone in the valley of sadness, yet still he or she reaches out to God and says, “Be with me.”
And then says, by way of remembering, that things don’t stay stuck in the valley, they don’t stay stuck at the bottom, because where there are downs there will eventually be ups. The writer imagines that time and says, one day, “in righteousness, I will see your face.”
And so for the person writing this painful psalm, the reminder is that it won’t always be this way. Change always comes. But the one thing that people of faith have is this. God sticks with us, and rides that change out.
I recently read an article that was written with congregations in mind, but to me it seemed to apply to life in general. It was called “The Roller Coaster of Change.” In it, the author Gil Rendle suggested that people do the following in order to understand how it is they react to any change they are facing. He said:
1.
Recall a time of great
change in your life. It does not matter whether the change was positive and
exciting (the birth of a child) or negative and difficult (a divorce or the
loss of a job).
2.
Begin at the point
where you first received news of this change and begin to recall the feelings
you experienced as you lived through the change.
3.
With attention to the
sequence in which you recall the feelings, list them on a sheet of paper.
If you do this exercise, the reactions, would, as you can imagine, look a little like the route of a roller coaster, with great highs and lows. This is, of course, normal – as normal as the psalm we just read. That’s the roller coaster of change. In other words, while that psalm comes from someone at a low point, in the end, the person of faith can almost step back from the trauma of the down times and recognize that this is just one stop on a journey, and it will not always be this way.
For if life is a roller coaster, the thrills and chills come awfully close. A scream and a smile are just seconds apart. Or as Jesus said, “So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again.”
Sometimes, we can’t see all that right away. When you’re at the bottom of a roller coaster, you can’t see all the way up to the top. Sometimes we’re just stuck at a low point, worried so much about a future that we feel we can’t control, when that roller coaster creeps very slowly in those dips – that hurly-burly, agonizingly slow ascend – so slow that you don’t know if you’ll ever get out of the dip. We have to remind ourselves what matters, talk to ourselves a little bit, talk to God, and remember that the coaster can and will change course.
As today’s psalm put it, save me from the people who put all their trust in the rewards of this life, save me from the people who think that when things are going well, they are blessed and that they are God’s favored. Save me from the people who view it all so simply and think it is all about the rewards you get in the here and now.
Because, you and I, God, we know that life is more complicated than that. The rewards come and go. But, God, your presence is constant.
Sometimes, it’s in the low points on the roller coaster ride that the deepest truth emerges. It’s in words about the valley of the shadow of death, that we remember the Lord is the shepherd and not you, and not me. Or, as the Werths explained to me when I asked how on earth it was that they got into this roller coaster thing, or the trips to Hawaii with the fun Hawaiian shirts, and the hobbies that include a 1955 Thunderbird, Liz put it this way: The journey began after the death of her mother, and the sudden realization that came to her in that valley, in that low point – live life now.
Live life now. Delight and take joy wherever you can find it. Don’t put your faith in the material rewards or stockpiling for the future, live life now and have fun.
For despite the way those Puritans who founded those churches in the 1600’s are described in the history books, let me tell you, they did not leave us a legacy of sternness. They left us a legacy of freedom – the courage to take off across the ocean, to a new land, in order to live the life they believed God was calling them to. I don’t think you do that out of strictness or out of fear. I think you do that out of joy and the love of life.
That’s why, to get us back to where we started this morning, I do not think those Puritans would be upset at seeing pink flamingos in our church at the Aloha-luia dinner, nor do I think they would be upset at seeing a sermon preached about roller coasters, because life is all about change, and in change, these ups and downs, we experience the divine and Christ. Think about it: in his life, death and resurrection there is no change Jesus didn’t go through. There is no high or low, he has not experienced on our behalf. And so there is no change that he can not be a part of.
In other words, it’s a roller coaster life. There are highs and lows, mountains and valleys, ups and downs – but we’ve got a God who is along for the entire ride.
That’s almost enough for me to get on a roller coaster myself. Almost. Then I realize, like all of you, I am already on one – and in the end, I’m just glad for the divine company that rides it with me.