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Homecoming 2006 An Ingathering Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday September 10, 2006
Reading On Going To Church A. Powell Davies Let me tell you why I come to church. I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened—sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men (and women). I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do. I need to be reminded that there are things I must do in the world—unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of idealism. Workaday enthusiasms are not enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its best—and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church. It may seem as though the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen so. In a congregation we share each other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than in a church service. That is certainly true of a pulpit, for a pulpit is the most intimately lonely place in the world—yet it is a loneliness that has strength in it. Perhaps this is because the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing that can be shared — that must be shared—if the spirit of God is to find a full entrance into it. We meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we seldom do so in the consciousness of our souls’ deepest yearnings. But in church we do—in a way that protects us from all that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same yearning, the same spiritual loneliness, the same need of assurance and faith and hope. We are brought together at the highest level possible. We are not merely an audience, we are a congregation. I doubt whether I could stand the thought of the cruelty and misery of the present world unless I could know, through an experience that renewed itself over and over again, that at the heart of life there is assurance, that I can hold an ultimate belief that all is well. And this happens in church. Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. The soul will always seek its nurture. For religious experience — which is life at its most intense, life at its best — is something we cannot do without.
Homecoming Prayer September 10, 2006 Rev. Jonalu Johnstone Spirit of Life and Love, We call on your presence here with us today. We have arrived from our singular lives, bringing a wealth of dreams, doubts, concerns, and cares with us. Some remember their long histories in this place, and are comforted by its streaming light and familiar faces. Others have no such associations and see this place as novel and unknown, themselves adrift in a sea of strangers. Some return refreshed by summer travel and relaxation. Others have returned week after week here, without a break defined by school or vacation schedules. Many of us bring personal worries – a child misbehaving, a marriage stumbling, a relapse, a relative grown weak and ill. Others can barely contain their joy at a new relationship, an unexpected opportunity or an honor bestowed. The memories of year-old hurricanes barely passed, we approach September 11, the anniversary of horror and destruction on a scale we had not imagined until five years ago. The state of the world, the state of the war, the state of the environment weighs on our hearts. What’s more, a number have been rocked by a personal tragedy and death within the congregation. Yet, we are glad to be together, to reclaim remembered faces and the warmth of hands offered in friendship. We gather here as we gather nowhere else. Among family, there may be more familiarity. At work, more sense of striving. In the market, pursuit of goods. Here in church is our only time to reach in and know our own deepest places, while reaching out for one another in happiness and in grief to offer and receive reassurance larger than our own lone selves. And to reach beyond ourselves to that which is unknown, the mystery ever-present in life and death and love. May we find here today what each individually seeks. May all feel welcomed and held. May every soul be nourished, every heart be filled, every mind find satisfaction. May our joys multiply and sorrows be eased. So may it be, AMEN
Homecoming 2006 An Ingathering Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday September 10, 2006 Come, come, who ever you are; Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come. May these words from the Sufi poet Rumi be a welcome to a brand new year—well at least a brand new church year. Those of you who are new—but not so new—amongst us, may have noticed something a little different about us today. If you have just started attending this summer—don’t be frightened by all the pomp and circumstance of flowing robes and processing choir. It’s still us. For the long-timers who haven’t been around since May—I have a secret for you—the church actually meets all summer long! I swear it does. We do exciting things in June, July and August. We may be a bit different in the summer—but it’s still us and we’re still here. Come, come who ever you are… Again this year, at our Staff Meeting on the first Wednesday before the first Sunday after Labor Day…it sounds almost Easter-like in significance that way doesn’t it? At any rate at Staff Meeting this week we voted on whether to go forward with starting the Church Year. I do this each year and, once again, the vote was unanimous—in favor. Of course we didn’t use paper ballots and the vote may have been rigged. One of these years someone is going to vote no—or worse yet—abstain. We’ll see how funny I think it is then, right? I am bouncing around these ideas about church seasons, restarting and transitioning because it is important to note transitions. The Christian tradition draws from a liturgical year echoing and retracing the Christ-story. Christians are now in the segment of the liturgical calendar called “Ordinary Time.” Their calendar is biding time, waiting to loop on itself in November—with arrival of Advent and the subsequent move through Lent and Easter and then on to Pentecost. Right now, though, they are waiting for something to happen. Come, come, who ever you are; Wander, worshipper, lover of leaving. Our arm of the Free Church doesn’t follow a liturgical calendar. We don’t have an over-arching mythos that sets theological way-markers along our journey. This does not change our deep, archetypal, need to distinguish time from itself—to set aside certain times and lift them up as different, special and particularly holy. That archetypal need to proclaim some times as ordinary and others as holy—still exists though. We still face a deep need to observe what the ancient Greeks called Chronos and Kairos. This need does not explain how Unitarians got in the habit of, first, closing and, now, gearing down for the summer—it does point out that we accrue a benefit from the living tradition. Our need for an existential, ontological, change helps explain why this pattern persists in an era when few of us are working in the fields and we all have the benefit of air conditioning—as so aptly noted by our flower donor this morning. Come, come, who ever you are; Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Ah, yes, despair. I wish I could stand before you and say—in Kielor-esque fashion—“It has been a quiet week at First Unitarian…” But I can’t. It hasn’t been quiet in the world and it hasn’t been quiet in this world. Passing the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this week almost emptied me. Re-seeing, rehearing and renewing the experience of the loss of New Orleans was, at times, more than I could stand. Of course, as I was seeing and hearing and feeling the effects of that natural disaster, I was feeling the looming presence of something else. While reliving a natural disaster that was exacerbated by the all-too-human inability to provide efficient institutional response I felt something else drawing near. None of us, I suppose, can avoid the drawing-nigh of the five-year anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Those of us in Oklahoma City, through our experience with the Murrah building, know better than most the emotional and spiritual toll that these anniversaries—with their accompanying hype—take. Those are all worldwide, nationwide, tragedies. On the more local scale, our church was rocked this week by the suicide of Michael Newnam—a friend of this church and a long time companion to one of our own—Nora Kenny. We display our candle of remembrance for Michael today. His death was, as all suicides are, ultimately senseless. It is impossible for the living to make sense of what happened. In the light of this candle may we remember that we never really know what might be going on under the surface of another person’s life. In the light of this candle may we remember we have resources—and may we pray that it is enough. In the light of this candle may memories of the good Michael did in the world shine. All of this is not to deny personal traumas and losses in our own lives that add to the weight of this time. These difficulties are ever-present. I know of new diagnoses, injuries, financial setbacks, relationship tensions and other stressors that are alive and afoot in our midst. We bring all these things with us into this holy, set aside, time. This is why we gather in community. This is why we set aside this time as Kairos—a time qualitatively, experientially, ontologically, different than the rest of our life. We have a deep need for this time, for this place, for these people. This is not to say that people don’t bring joy to our midst. We do. We honor life as a gift because we need to celebrate as well as mourn. We gather and recognize both of these realities in community. Come, come, who ever you are; Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come. Part of our transition between summer and church year, part of our way of making this advent, is in the music we shared this morning. We just sang the piece written for our church’s centennial in 1993. Earlier we sang "O Life that Maketh All Things New"—a hymn sung every week by this congregation from the 1930s through the mid 70s. There is also the anthem our choir sang this morning. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is among the best-known poems in our culture. Its musical setting by Randall Thompson is beautiful. Our sharing it on this Sunday is among our dearest traditions. Two roads
diverged in a yellow wood, I spent some time, amid the assault and tumult of the week, reflecting on this poem. I thought of its imagery. I placed myself in the poem as both the pausing traveler and as the legion who had gone before. Had they, too, stopped? Had they hurried on without notice? Had the other path once been the “one less traveled by?” Where were they going? Where am I going? Where are we going? What does it mean that we, as a religious community, have chosen to use this piece—set beautifully to music—as a sign-post and way-marker for our transition from Chronos to Kairos—from sequential time to time pregnant with possibility? How does the way we use this piece change our experience of the poem? I have generally considered this first Sunday of the church year “Ingathering Sunday.” A great many congregations call it “Homecoming,” though. For whatever reason this is not the framework I have usually employed. Perhaps I never had good experiences attached to “Homecoming” in High School or College—I’m not claming to suffer from Homecoming Trauma but perhaps my lack of positive association leads me to prefer “Ingathering” to “Homecoming.” It could be that “Ingathering” fits with my self-image of minister as “Cat Herder” better than “Homecoming.” Despite all this I mentally framed today’s service as “Homecoming.” I find myself wondering if that “has made all (or any of) the difference.” Of course it could be that I am caught in a mental feedback loop and there isn’t a lick of difference between Ingathering and Homecoming. I hold out that possibility. Still, getting back to Frost’s poem and our use of it, I wonder how the traveler’s experience is different if headed home or simply onward? What is it like to be headed home—to a homecoming? 1997 marked my first year as minister in Las Cruces, New Mexico. New Mexico may not be new—and it may not be Mexico—but most assuredly is not Oklahoma! Bear in mind that I am a dyed-in-the-wool Oklahoman. Linda, Scott and I drove back to Oklahoma for winter vacation on Christmas Day in 1997—a snowstorm and adverse weather in the Texas Panhandle forced us to take the southern route, using Interstates 10 and 20 rather than 40. I had been driving for about 8 or 9 hours when we hit Abilene. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Abilene. It will never make it on the list of one of America’s scenic wonders but something happened to me there. After hours of driving through snow in the Chihuahuan desert, the weather cleared and the lay of the land suddenly looked familiar. I could see Cottonwood trees marking creek beds. Rolling hills with barbwire fences separated ranch from homestead in a way that I recognized. Suddenly my road-weariness was gone, and while I had planned to turn the driving over to Linda outside of Abilene—there was now “No Way” to pry my hands from the wheel. I was the horse who has seen the barn. Bearing this in mind, what does Robert Frost’s mythic traveler see if headed home? What does this sojourner behold on an outbound journey? Is there a difference if one is simply “wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving?” A couple of weeks ago, in a Seeker Service, I shared a excerpt from Moby Dick. Melville observes that the world is like a ship and the church a ship at sea, “The world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.” I believe that theologically, philosophically, spiritually, we take the stance that we are on a passage out—not a voyage complete. This is core to our perspective. That being the case, why bother with “Homecoming” at all? I think this passage out and not a voyage complete is consistent with Robert Frost’s traveler and Rumi’s wanderer—even while it sits in tension with a yearly Homecoming from Chronos-time to Kairos-time. Can you feel cognitive dissonance between the outbound sense of the Frost poem and its use on “Homecoming” or “Ingathering,” Sunday? I may be making too much of not enough. “Much ado about nothing,” the Bard might observe, but I think there is something in this tension. I will grant that the origin of this tradition is independent of any insight the tension might provide. While admitting that the anthem was never intended to create this particular tension I remember that what began with a lack of Air Conditioning in an Agricultural Society led to a change in church seasons that brings us a useful division of time. So, too, as a community that shares a meta-story of a voyage outward, the pausing in a way that few travelers on a voyage complete seems appropriate. Except of course when we share it, by tradition, on the Sunday we focus on Homecoming. We can discover in this a creative tension that underpins something unique about this church. I am fond of saying that I don’t believe in fate, but only an idiot denies serendipity—and that certainly applies here. As we gather together formally, renewing our bonds—it is good to be reminded that our real direction, our true story, points outward. It is good to have the experience of returning to a time and place forever being made new. A piece of this tension, though, reminds us that our vision, our direction, our stance and our gait are out into the world not away from it. We are reminded to begin the new year together by pausing—looking through the undergrowth and considering which path to trod knowing how way leads on to way. The bottom line is that while part of us believes we are returning home the truest part of us knows that we are renewing our common, outward, journey into the world. Come, come whoever you are. Ours is a passage out, not a voyage complete. Let us seek outward ways in want of wear. Let us feel the freer step, breathe fuller breath Discover the life that knows no death Rejoice in the Now And ultimately find all things made new. AMEN
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