 Surely God is in
this Place
A
Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church
by The Rev. Anne E. Hodges-Copple
on the Seventh Sunday of Epiphany, 19 February 2006
Jacob is sent
away from home by his father, Isaac. Jacob leaves all that is familiar
and comfortable and ventures off into a different land. Isaac, the
patriarch of the family tells Jacob that it is time for him to find a
wife and that she cannot come from any of the local Canaanite girls. In
this instance the discernment of a call to marriage is not a private
affair of the heart between two adults. NO, something far more
complicated is going on…..The weight of past promises and future
generations rest upon this undertaking. The torch of God’s covenant
with Father Abraham is now passed to grandson Jacob. In order for the
chosen people to grow and flourish, it is necessary for Jacob to
depart. So like his grandparents before him and countless numbers
after him finds he is called to embark on grand and uncertain journey.
He may think it is only about finding a wife. We, today's sons and
daughters of Abraham, know that Jacob will discover how God is at
work in new ways to fulfill ancient promises.
Along the way Jacob picks a place to rest for
the night. He falls asleep and dreams. It wouldn’t be surprising
if he had a restless night of anxious dreams: would he be able to find
uncle Laban’s house? would he be forced to marry someone against his
will? would he return to his family as a success or as a failure? The
dream we hear is about a ladder or a stairway with angels ascending and
descending between heaven and earth. In the dream Jacob hears God
speak. The Lord Almighty tells Jacob that he will be with him until all
that has been promised comes to pass. God doesn’t tell him how…
or where… or when… dreams will come true. God just promises to be a
constant companion and true to his word to provide all that Jacob and
his descendents have been promised.
God is especially available to us in our dreams; our
hopes. our visions. Dreams for the future give us the courage and
energy for the present.
God speaks to us in dreams. Just as we
sometimes need to leave one physical place and go to another, so dreams
take us out of our ordinary and conscious ways of seeing things and
allow God to tell us of how things should be on earth as they are in
heaven.
Fifty years ago Dot and Cliff Baucom dreamed of a
new parish home for their growing family. Did they receive a
premonition that those pews at Saint Philip’s might not be able to
contain the herd of Baucom children to come? Florence Blakeley
dreamed of a new Episcopal congregation in North Durham where she could
introduce other non-cradle- born Episcopalians like herself into the
new found pleasures of the Book of Common Prayer. Did she imagine in
her wildest dreams that she would become a spiritual mother to
generations of confirmands who would also come to love the Book of
Common Praye?. In 1956 Jim and Bertie Belvin dreamed of a
parish where hard work and good times would a community of friends to
love and serve the Lord. And whatever their hopes and fears were for
their wild child Jimmy, they saw dreams come true as children and
grandchildren were raised in just such a beloved community.
Over these last fifty years countless people
have felt the presence of God, in the worship, fellowship and mission
of Saint Luke’s. There have been prosperous times, nail bitingly
uncertain times and even deeply sad times. Some dreams have been
realized, some dreams deferred and new dreams have emerged for the
members of this parish who have come and gone over the years.
When Jacob wakes from this vivid and dramatic
experience of God’s abiding presence he wants to mark the
occasion. He cries to himself: "Surely God is in this place
and I knew it not!” He believes he has discovered a gateway
to heaven. One of those thin places the Celts talk about where the
boundaries between heaven and earth, things seen and unseen are
especially porous. Jacob might have been tempted to stay put, pitch a
tent and hope a suitable suitor would happen by to find him there,
close to God. But, no, Jacob marks the place with a pile of stones, and
moves on. He moves on into backbreaking years of sheep and goat
herding. He moves on toward years of exploitation by his uncle
Laban. And years later, when he finally journeys back to
the land of his father and brother, he will have a very different
nocturnal encounter with God. There in the dark down by the the river
Jabbok, a mysterious messenger will grab hold of Jacob for a
wresling match. And this fresh but painful encounter with God will
leave Jacob not just marked but also wounded.
But Jacob didn’t know all the trouble that was ahead
of him. Such members of Saint Luke’s fifty years ago couldn’t know the
highs and lows ahead of them; just like we can’t know today what joys
and sorrows are ahead of us; Jacob marked the spot with a
pile of stones and moved on.
In Scotland and in many parts of the world,
people leave a pile of rocks to mark a place of significance.
These sometimes small, sometimes large piles of rocks are called
cairns. You might find one marking the summit of a mountain. You might
find one on a difficult trail providing a key navigational marker for a
hard to perceive turn. Or a delicately balanced pile of rocks might be
found along a well traveled path; a reassuring sign that others have
passed this way, too. A cairn communicates from one traveler to
another a significant moment, a turning point, a chance to stop, find
new direction as well as received the encouragement to go on.
There are many significant cairns in the journey of
this parish so far. In the Sprague Community Room you will find the
handsomely framed and newly hung charter where fifty years ago thirty
members left their “mark” on a document that started the official
beginning of the Saint Luke’s sojourn. Whether we can see them or
not, this parish has left cairns along the way at St Barbara’s Church
on Watts Street and along Club Blvd where a previous church building
once stood. These piles of memories that are not just left in the past
but are a part of who we are today. If it is not stretching the
metaphor too much, in my mind’s eye I can see cairns of ice cream
piled on sugar cones. Though I was not a part of Saint Luke’s in those
years, the legacy of those ice cream Sunday fundraisers lives on in the
incredible ability of this parish to raise funds for the special needs
of friends and strangers near and far.
How lovely are the several dwelling places and
countless events where this congregation has experienced the clear and
present embrace of God’s love. And how grateful we are today to
see friends from the past, companions on the way, who have gathered
around a new altar to meet a new generation of Saint Luke’s
parishioners. From my perspective as a new rector I see lots of
angels around this sacred space, quietly and humbly ascending and
descending stairways between heaven and earth; each in his or her own
way adding his or her own dreams of God’s kingdom to our parish
cairn now so very visible in the crossroads of Hillandale and I-85.
For the last year we have been renovating our
facilities. Just as many of us have had hips and knees replaced
as well as hearts rewired, we have had to take some time energy and
financial resources to get church buildings in good working order. And
I applaud, support and give God thanks for these efforts. While fifty
years may seem long in human terms, in institutional terms, this parish
is still quite young. We are still just getting going. Though we
might gladly and confidently claim that “surely, God is in this place,
and we know it well,” we cannot, we must not allow ourselves to
sit back, relax and be lulled into thinking “We have arrived….” Saint
Luke’s as a parish, just like the one, holy, catholic and apostolic
church to which we belong, has a as a long way to go. God is not done
with anyone of us yet.
Over the last few weeks, well the last seven
months if you really think about it, church buildings, all over the
country have been destroyed. Grand historical churches in New
Orleans and in Chicago have fallen to floods and flames. Small rural
churches in Mississippi and Alabama have been felled by winds of mother
nature as well as set ablaze by an evil side of human nature. But
these churches, these holy communities of Christ’s abiding, healing,
and renewing presence have not been destroyed. These communities are
moving on in faith. I heard a pastor on NPR this week talk about the
burning down of his church in Alabama. “The most important thing to do
first,” he said, “is forgive the people who did this.” There was no
sanctimony in his voice. He was taking no holier than thou moral high
road. What I heard in this young pastor’s voice was sorrow mixed with
compassion and buoyed by faithful confidence. His first concern
after the safely of his parishioners was that any human being could be
so depraved to do such a thing and how much such people must be in need
of the reconciling love of God. This pastor knew that his congregation
was not destroyed. This congregation knew they remained a community of
prayer built upon the sacred ground of God’s promise which hearts full
of hate could not destroy. That’s living into God’s dream of
the kingdom of heaven.
The challenge that faces our parish family today is
to bring the energy, dedication and dreams of the past fifty years as
well as our combined hopes for the next fifty years into a spiritual
renovation of our present sense of being a parish community. The
continued physical renovations of our church buildings and grounds will
mean nothing,-- worse, --they will be idolatrous, if we do not
pour as much energy, resources and imagination and more into renovation
of our sense of being a parish family called to serve to God by
reaching out to others.
There is no question that we have reached a major
milestone in the life of our church. We are most definitely a church at
the crossroads. Despite the encroachments of expanding highways,
despite the vulnerabilities of being located at such a visible
intersection, we welcome the invitation, the challenge to live our
faith in the crossroads of life. A crossroads where the gifts of
the Spirit meet the needs of the world. But we can’t remain in the
crossroads. That would be a rather silly, pointless and dangerous thing
to do. Saint Luke’s is a parish most definitely going places. We have
places to go in Belize and in Mississippi; we have people to see in the
hospital and in their homes. We have good news to proclaim in
English, in Spanish and in whatever languages of loving service we can
learn to speak. Like Jacob, we mark this day, this time and
this place where God speaks in our dreams and breaks into our lives.
Yet, we also must also wake up, stand up and walk into a future full of
God’s promise. Amen
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