Gloria Dei

The countdown is on… It is now about 50 days until the election of our new President, and things have certainly heated up.  Just to stay informed, without fail, I read the New York Times editorials every day online, I listen to some of the pundits on NPR as I drive to and from work, and every once in awhile, I even catch a segment of the Colbert report – for balance -  before I go to bed…  None of which, I might add, seems to have a firm grip on what’s going on in this strange political season of 2008.  Frankly, I was relieved this past Thursday when the nation – including our candidates and their barrage of advertisements – was silenced for a time to remember the tragedy of 9/11, now 7 years ago.  At that moment, at least, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding of our common humanity and the importance of coming together and claiming the values that ground us. 

On April 6^th, if you recall, we celebrated 100 years of ministry with a wonderful worship service that included the dynamic preaching of our Bishop, Mark Hanson.  If you were there you might also recall that Mark was enthusiastically about the business of helping us claim the values that ground us as members of a Christian community.  At one point in the sermon  -- do you remember – he asked us to turn to one another and introduce ourselves as we did last week. But, after that brief exercise, he asked for a show of hands, saying … “How many of you began your introduction with the words I am a Christian?”  I don’t think the response was overwhelmingly positive. 

It is hard to claim our common ground in this 21^st century, I suppose.  There are so many competing values that beg for our attention and fidelity. Are you a Republican or a Democrat, or maybe an Independent?  A lot of people move in that sphere… Are you a liberal or a conservative?  That works for others… Are you a member of the Christian Right or are you a “progressive” Christian? There are as many descriptions and divisions of us human beings as there are people claiming some kind of loyalty to a way of thought or a way of being in our world.  That makes for a pretty interesting conversation, I suppose, and an affirmation of the diversity of God’s people. But it also can leave a lot of folks longing for a firm place on which to stand and stake a claim on that which we value most… a claim that does not change with the prevailing winds of politics or economics or a sense of our own personal need to be right .

Today, we are invited to gain a firm footing on the solid ground of our faith that is rooted in a God whose sign of fidelity to us is a cross. For us Christians, no other symbol so clearly conveys the story of God’s love for us than that instrument of sacrifice, humiliation, and defeat on which our freedom was won. Yet, when buffeted by the storms of doubt and struggle, when confronted with all of the choices and the possibilities for our lives, we will too often waffle when we are asked to claim what matters most to us most, what is at the center of our lives and guiding our decisions. Uncertain, we are tempted to offer replicas of a faith in Christ, only the outward signs of this world’s measure of what is good or better or best… Like costume jewelry made into the form of a cross, we risk living a facsimile of the faith that is in us rather than following the genuine article.  That is to say, we too often give lip service to our faith rather than actually living out of it.  Instead, we choose the comfortable, the popular or the more prestigious, or we say nothing at all about our God reflecting the influence of temporary loyalties and not the deeply seeded faith we come here to proclaim.

We are a strange lot, to be sure.  Led by a cross, we, the people of God shrink from its full meaning. We fail to realize that this sign of God’s liberating love can open for us a relationship that we long for, a relationship that claims us only out of love and saves us by grace alone. The cross teaches us that our victories in life are not measured by our power over something or our human success but by our willingness to be vulnerable in the face of a love that gives and forgives and heals.  The cross is a constant reminder of the intersection of that kind of abundant love and our lives.

In what started out to be one of those casual summer vacation conversations with old friends, I was asked – “How do you know your faith is real? In that context, it took me by surprise.  I have to say I stumbled a lot – probably because I thought the question was coming  from a skeptic who needed to be convinced otherwise. But I was wrong.  This man – a very deliberate and quiet Quaker, only wanted from me a witness to how my faith is alive today in the face of so many competing demands.  He actually pushed me to make it simple and claim what is at the center of my life.  That question has stayed with me and I continue to reframe my answer.  But the simple truth is that the best answer I can give is that Christ is at the center of my life and, when I allow for it, his compassionate love informs my way of thinking and being in the world.  And it is the cross, that we honor today and revere in our lives, that is the sign of power in weakness of new life in death, of love overcoming hatred that points to that love.

 In this new year of learning and worshiping and living with one another in our community of faith, we are going to encourage every one of us to examine what is at the center of our lives.  The pastors and staff have heard from you about the stresses of daily life.  We have felt your desperation in trying to find time and focus.  We have missed your presence as more and more people think they need to use Sunday mornings as the time to refresh our energy, to catch up,  to take a break… But we also know that balancing life from the outside in, seldom creates the peace and solid ground we long for… No matter what strategy we might use to keep it together, to order our lives, it cannot cut to the heart of the matter if we don’t claim who and whose we are.

Claiming a centered life in Christ does not change the calendar of events, does not provide an easy answer to reducing the stress in our lives, but it does give us a deep and abiding sense of who we are in this world and how we need to go about living in it.  Not one of is exempt from this need to center our lives.  No matter how long we have lived on this earth, how placid our lives may have become, still God is calling us to renew our faith in Christ, to claim it with confidence and to be a witness to Christ’s  love shaping our lives – our priorities, our decisions, our generosity and our service to others.

As we look to the cross and its message of unconditional love, we discover again and again the longing of our hearts to be so loved.

Today, one of our members, Jonathan Sage- Martinson, will share with us his family’s story about a commitment to live more intentionally out of the values they claim at the center of their lives.  Listen, won’t you?  Take it in. Let that witness provoke your thinking, and join with us now as we learn together what it means to be centered in Christ and to live The Centered Life.