This week, we held our seventh cottage chat. I have so been enjoying these cottage chats, because they give me a deeper glimpse into the people and character of this congregation. I have also been enjoying getting to know the values and dreams that you all hold dear. One of the values that has popped up again and again in every cottage chat has been community. You, as a congregation, value the way that you interact with one another and expect that there is something different about the way you interact with each other versus say, someone you meet for the first time on the train or at the grocery store. People have stories about friends and adopted families. The ways that this church family has stood beside and cared for one another in times of joy and sorrow. Essentially, how we have lived out – going into the world, watching for Traffic, Holding Hands and Sticking Together.
I know that this does not merely come by luck of the draw, instead, it happens intentionally. I can imagine that if this morning is an average morning, some of us came to church this morning with heavy hearts weighed down with burden, anxiety, fear, and need. Some of us came with uncertainty and confusion, looking for a place to find that kind of community that others delight in. Many of us are carrying pain unbeknownst to anyone except God.
There is an African proverb that says if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. This more than a poetic sentiment, this is our reminder that God calls all of us to walk in the path of God’s way, not just the persons who can run the fastest, quote the most Bible, and stand in the light of God’s promises. God calls us the whole of the body of Christ.
When we walk as a community, we realize that some of us can run marathons. We have the endurance and strength of one who has trained for the long term. When we walk as a community, we realize that some of us can barely make it to the car. We are challenged by the physicality of movement, the current situation that we find ourselves, and the pains that accompany us. When we walk as community, there are always some who walk with eagerness and excitement and those who trudge along with dread and fear. But we all walk seeking God’s way.
A former park ranger at Yellowstone National Park tells the story of a ranger leading a group of hikers to a fire lookout. The ranger was so intent on telling the hikers about the flowers and animals that he considered the messages on his two-way radio distracting, so he switched it off. Nearing the tower, the ranger was met by a nearly breathless lookout, who asked why he hadn’t responded to the messages on his radio. A grizzly bear had been seen stalking the group, and the authorities were trying to warn them of the danger.
Like the ranger, we too have a two-way radio in order for communication with God. We talk to God (that part is most emphasized); but also God talks to us through the Bible and our relationship with God. How often do we turn off the radio? Close the Bible? Put it on the shelf and allow it hold the names and dates of our family, but little else.
Our scripture lesson for this morning comes from Psalm 119 – pretty close to the center of the Bible – if you play the game of closing the Bible and trying to open it smack dab in the middle. But Psalm 119 has another distinction – it is the longest chapter in the Bible. With 176 verses, the psalmshares much wisdom in the psalm of law. If we were reading this psalm in the original Hebrew, we would notice right off that it is organized as an acrostic – That is to say that all 176 verse are organized alphabetically. There are 8 lines for each of the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is a memory device used – can you just hear it in a one room school house being recited by ancient children? And in that recitation, we learn much about God’s way.
Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament scholar, points out that the acrostic provides, “a form commensurate with the message. The message is that life is reliable and utterly symmetrical when the Torah is honored. And so the psalm provides a literary, pedagogical experience of reliability and utter symmetry. A Torah-ordered life is as safe, predictable, and complete as is the movement of the psalm.” That is to say, the 119th psalm reminds us how we need the God’s ways as shown through the Bible to structure our lives around.
The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey on religious knowledge in the United States. The survey that found that Americans who identified as Christian knew less about world religions in general, and often less about their own religious tradition in particular, than atheists, agonistics, or Jews. Forty-three percent of Christians did not, for example, know that “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not one of the Ten Commandments. The survey illustrated a disconnect within American Christianity between religious feeling, which appears to be ample, and religious knowledge, which is much more scarce. Why study my faith, when I can feel it in my heart? This section of Psalm 119 affirms no such division between knowledge, discipline, and faith.
The wisdom of the snippet of All I Ever Wanted to Know I Learned in Sunday School finds grounding in the psalm and the epistle lesson. Look for traffic, turn away the disgrace I dread, now is the moment for you to awake from sleep. There will be and there are times for all of us in which challenges, disasters, and crises are our daily bread. There are medical unknowns; there is pain unconfined; fear can take over; grief can seize our day; addictions and mental health issues can limit our true gifts. We need God’s way and we need one another to figure out how to live it out.
This summer two studies were released about children and reading. The first one is from the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraging parents to read to their infants as their official recommendation. Something many of us already knew. But here is the second, when our children don’t see us read, they are over 50% less likely to pick up a book themselves. Now, I love books, so I want to see our children reading great classics as well as Captain Underpants and My Weird School, but more important than that we, the community, who walks together wants to see our children and youth pick up their Bibles and turn to them. These studies remind us what the wisdom of the Psalm already showed us –we who value and cultivate community rely on one another as examples of how to live. When we see that no one in the community turns to the Bible for wisdom, we are less likely to dust off the Bible and dig in. When we live in community, we are influenced by the example of others, and they are influenced by us.
As Mark Twain quipped, There are few things harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. As we walk in community, may you be and see the good examples of those who rely on God’s way and word.
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
Harold M. Wiest, Power for Living, p. 109.
Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 40.
http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/
http://aapnews.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/24/aapnews.20140624-2
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/05/13/kids-dont-read-books-because-parents-dont-read-books/