Sermon for May 25th

Sermon for May 25th

I remember, years ago, sitting in a hostel in Vancouver with my brother and two close friends. We were on a road trip to attend a music festival in Vancouver, which involved some of our favorite bands. The trip was an awesome one, filled with hours spent in the local record stores, great conversation and of course, attending the festival. We even named our rental car Christine after the Stephen King horror movie of the same name about a possessed killer car. We had watched the movie the day before we travelled and were horrified to discover that our car had a weird tendency to speed up without any of us pushing down on the gas. Hence the name Christine.

But for all the fun, fellowship, and music that went along with that trip, it was a conversation in the common room of the hostel that has stayed with me the longest.

One of my friends had been taking several philosophy courses at college. He was always a highly intelligent and curious person. But the philosophy classes had been a little more intense than he had expected. He had grown up in the same church as my brother and I and his faith was always very important to him. The philosophy courses that he had taken, while interesting, had challenged everything that he thought he knew. After encountering a number of these thinkers, he began to feel like he had been set adrift. In his own words, he felt like a piece of Styrofoam bobbing up and down on the waves of the ocean during a storm, unable to ground himself and take any control of the direction he was going. It was an awful feeling.

It was not until he encountered the works of Paul Tillich, an existential philosopher and Lutheran theologian, that he started to feel grounded again. In the work of Paul Tillich, he was re-introduced to the idea of God’s grace and what that meant, even in a chaotic world like ours. It was this grace that assured him that God loved him, and that God would always love him and that this was a free gift given by God, unearned by us, but granted because of who God was. When my friend was able to re-ground himself in that truth, he could feel a measure of peace again. He could feel a measure of stability. He felt rooted once more.

That conversation has stayed with me all my life. This trip happened even before I entered seminary and even with all of our courses on theology, my friend’s comments that night were some of the most profound I have ever heard on the subject of grace. For him, It was an anchor point in this chaotic world. It was a touchstone. Even when everything tries to undercut our sense of self worth and well-being, this reality always persists. We are loved. We are cherished by God. And that never changes.

This is the promise that Jesus offers in the passage from John.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

This peace rests in the ever constant, never changing, nature of God. God is love. God is our peace. And both that love and peace are gifted to us.

It is our anchor in a world that would toss us and even capsize us. It is the way we persevere, even when things seem impossible.

The same friend with whom we had that conversation has gone on to work in the film industry. (I have never told him, but I think he would have made an excellent pastor. He is kind, compassionate and has an exceedingly keen mind. But movies were his passion).

Although he hasn’t made a movie for a while, I have been struck by the quiet, introspective nature of the films he has made. Although they are quite distinct from each other, they have a similar undercurrent. The first one is a beautifully shot documentary about an auctioneer. Although the story revolves around this man’s life, the story is really about the death of the small family farm and the grief that comes along with the loss of that lifestyle, which was such a part of the fabric of rural Western Canada.

The other piece was about a young, painfully shy woman who befriends a man she encounters at her workspace. Although he is friendly to her, she misconstrues his friendly nature as genuine friendship, or even romantic interest and her actions, though well intentioned, end up driving him away from her.

Though both are sad, melancholy pieces, there is, lurking under the surface, a measure of hope. For the young woman, there is a sense that she has learned a great deal from her experience. The movie leaves her with a measure of hope, with the idea that perhaps she has come to understand herself a little better. With the documentary, although there is grief surrounding the loss of the family farm, there is the knowledge that there is and always will be an indelible mark on this part of the world from the generations of people who forged Western Canada into what it is, and that heritage needs to be acknowledged.

In both films, that same measure of hope that he found in Paul Tillich surfaces. There is always something to hold on to and to anchor us, even when the world changes around us.

So, what anchors us? When Jesus speaks these beautiful words:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

What comes to mind? What is your peace, even amidst life’s storms?

I want you to take a moment and consider that question. By considering that question, you are also considering the ways in which you see God in your life. How does God manifest God’s self in your day-to-day life, offering hope into often hopeless situations? How do we know God’s peace? I invite you to take that time now.

I will always remember that conversation with my friend, all those years ago. I will remember the existential dread that he demonstrated earlier in the conversation, a dread that was replaced by peace when he reiterated how God had found him again through the writings of Paul Tillich.

I don’t know Tillich well, but there are many others that remind me of what God’s grace is all about.

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, a pastor and theologian I have referenced before, always reminds me what God’s grace and peace are about. Her work is saturated in it. I leave you with a quote about God’s grace, one of many from her I could have chosen:

“God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own garbage. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”

Amen