Sunday
January 1
Resolution
By Marsh Chapel
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Thirty years ago, I was given a precious gift. The gift was given following a pastoral visit, in which a woman mentioned that she had written a journal entry about her first time in worship, in our church. With some trepidation, not knowing what it might hold, I tentatively asked if she would sometime give me a copy, which sometime later she did. She gave me the copy about nine months later, on the day she joined the church. In a moment, I am going to read you the journal entry. I have permission to do so, and have done so in other (mostly teaching) settings. The author died two years ago, after many years of faithful service and membership in that church. She was an individual, a real person, very different, somewhat zany, a hoot. She led for decades the church’s bell choir, named ‘Hell’s Bells’. I bring her journal entry because, for her, finding a place and way to worship, a church family to love, and church home to enjoy, was simple salvation, connection, empowerment, meaning, belonging, the alphabet of grace and the winning experience of love. Have you found a church family to love and church home to enjoy? Have you found a burning fire, a hearth before which to warm, to wonder, to pray, to pause, to listen, to learn?
This week with one son and one son-in-law, I sat before a beautiful hearth, and a roaring fire. Let me add that both son and son-in-law are solid citizens, if I may, the former, a hiker and camper, an attorney and church lay leader, the latter a PhD from Princeton, a senior minister and an Eagle Scout. They know about fires, starting and feeding and tending them, is what I mean. Yet, in that evening, one asked, ‘Is this fire real, or is it gas fed?’ Because the fire was so well built, 2 logs by 2 logs by 2, and because it burned so cleanly in the venerable, hearth—a kind of perfected beauty—it did resemble what has become, sadly, the norm in public hearths, gas not wood. So, the question, I am emphasizing, was not out of place. But the fire was real. I had been there earlier to see it built and lit and fed. I have age, more winters on the back, more time around fires. And, I love a beautiful hearth and roaring flame in it. The fire was for real. Yet, the next morning, the other asked, ‘is it really for real?’ Come and see, was all I could say.
Come and see is all I say today, for this New Year’s sermon. That fire you admire, that worship service burning and blazing, which you hear over the radio, or on the internet, or which you admire from afar, or of which someone has told you—it is for real. It is. Come and stand closer. You will feel it. Your life needs, demands, requires, and will open up in warmth before such a sturdy fireplace. Come and see. Kings to the brightness of his rising did come, long ago. To worship. Worship. Somewhere. It need not be here. But somewhere.
Have you no 2017 resolution? Here is one: go to church. Why? For the mystery of the burning fire. For its beauty and warmth. For its darkness lit by the licking flames. For its allure, its millennia old draw, its gathered people. For the different women and men whom you will find—a group not a part of your extended family, not a part of your familiar neighborhood, not a part of your workplace, not a part of your cyber network. A woman, hymnal in one hand and baby in the other, rocking in the fourth pew, here, on Christmas Eve, singing the Carols. A man, alone in the balcony, wrestling off the dark difficulties of life. A colorful family with squirming children. A widow, grieving, whose grief is unlike any other, as every grief is unlike any other. A preacher trying for both honesty and kindness, both truth and love. A choir giving it their all, all the time. A table set, as today, with remembrance, thanksgiving, and presence; with faith and hope and love. You don’t believe? Worship until you believe it, then worship because you believe it. (John Wesley’s admonishment to preachers). It will come, over time, believe me. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And guess what? If this is your resolution, you have already started to live it! Here you are, today, listening by the internet or radio, or seated in the pew, or wandering the back rooms, narthex, hallways and byways of the chapel. Have you no 2017 resolution? Here is one: go to church. Thirty years ago, one did so…
(The preached sermon at this point concluded with the journal recollection of a first time visit to a church, by a woman who later joined that church: the detailed journal piece remembered what it feels like to be new, in a new place, unknown to others (regulars in any church need steady reminder of this) and remembered the sheer joy one finds when finally, in person, one discovers a church family to love and church home to enjoy (those listening and participating only by radio\internet need steady invitation to this)).
– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.
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