The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Joshua 24:14-18
- John 6:56-69
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The Sermon title is Where Would You Go?
Early Thoughts: Let us begin with a memory...
It is 1991. I am meeting with representatives from the M&P Committee as a first step in entering the candidacy process. During this meeting one of them asks if I am sure that the UCCan is the right place for me. He says that over the last couple of years he had heard from many members and clergy who were realizing that they may have been in the wrong place. At 22, as a third generation UCCan person who had grown up in that specific congregation since I was 2, I found it a very odd question. Why would it not be the right place? 30+ years later I see it was actually a very wise question. [In hindsight I have to wonder if the 1988 General Council Decision regarding human sexuality was a part of the background to this question.]
Sometimes we need to be challenged, we need to be pushed to consider if we are in the right place --even if we see no reason we would go anywhere else.
The sixth chapter of John begins with a miracle story. Jesus feeds thousands of people with just a couple of fish and a few small loaves. The chapter then has an extended discourse on Jesus as the bread of life. Now, as the chapter comes to a close some in the crowds are finding that the teaching is too hard and are falling away. So Jesus asks those who are still there if they also wish to leave. They return with the question "where would we go?". In Jesus they have found the path to Life, in Jesus they have met the Word Made Flesh. Why should they leave?
In our other reading we stand at Shechem with the people of Israel as Joshua, the successor to Moses, the one who led them across Jordan into the Promised Land, gives his final address to the people. He has reminded them of all that God has done since the time of Abraham until this very moment, then he challenges them, asking if they will remain faithful to the God who led them there or will they fall away to the other gods worshipped by their new neighbours. The people respond that pf course they will remain faithful. [It is worth mentioning that in the next verses Joshua tells the people that they are not going to keep their word but that this day will be a witness against them when they fail at the task.] How could they turn away from the God who has done so much for them? Where else would they turn?
How might we answer these two question, the one asked by Jesus and the one aske by Joshua? When things get challenging will we fall away? If we did where might we go?
IT is a harder question than it seems. The easy response is to pretend it is an odd, even irrelevant question. Surely we would stay where we are, we would not fall away. So maybe the first thing is to ask ourselves what might lead us to fall away. After all what leads us to look for a new path/place may shape where we would end up going.
If we are honest with ourselves and each other we know that we change over time. A place that has always felt like home may eventually feel like a foreign land (either because it changed or we changed). Sometimes to be faithful to who we are and to how God is moving in our lives we need to find a new place, a new expression of the faith, a new home. SO how do we know where we might go as we look for the words of truth and life?
And for the record, my answer to the question about the UCCan from 30+ years ago is the same. I love my ecumenical partners and colleagues, but this denomination is where I find the best expression of my faith. Where else would I go?
--Gord
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