July 11, 2021 – Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Connecting with the stories of God’s people throughout time – ‘staying on the rails with God’
Let us pray. Gracious God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us wherever we may be gathered in this worship. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
In my experience, as we faithfully fulfill our roles as Christian disciples in this life, sometimes – often I think - we’re looking for very specific spiritual guidance – perhaps to resolve some kind of moral dilemma in our lives, perhaps to make what we’re trying to discern is a faithful decision, and carry out the most loving action in a certain situation.
Well this sermon is not going to deal with any of those specific situations. Instead, I would see this as a “big-picture” sermon – the kind of sermon where you sit back in your chair, or lie in your summer hammock, look up to the sky and ask that question, “What’s it all about – this ‘trying to live the Christian life’?” And how do all these stories and teaching in the Bible somehow fit into my life?
Well, the Collect Prayer this morning and the 2nd Reading from Ephesians make some of these very profound, far-reaching claims – big-sky kind of claims. So let’s start there. In the Collect we prayed this opening phrase: “Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Let that sink in for a minute – “you have made us for yourself.” God has made you and me for God’s self – not metaphorically, or analogically – really! And therefore, the Collect continues, “May we find peace in your service, and in the world to come, see you face to face.” Again – REALLY – not spiritually, or theoretically – that’s it. And that’s not just what we might call a 50,000 foot view – I think it’s probably more like a 50,000 mile view of life and God!
And then, in today’s 2nd Reading – the Letter to the Ephesians – we read these glorious claims: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world … He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” So what do you and I do with these fantastic statements – these exotic truths? How do they fit into and express themselves, not in the middle of a worship service, but on a typical Monday morning in yours and my lives? How do they come down from that 50,000 mile view – right here – into what Google Maps might call a ‘street view’ – how do they apply?
I want to construct a kind of mental-picture for you here this morning to describe what this might look like in our lives. Imagine the Scriptural stories, the doctrinal and theological history of the Church, the worship and liturgy that we do gathered together, like one, long, straight, steel rail running continuously – like half of a railroad track. It stretches back through history to the beginning of time and forward to what appears to us to be infinity. It is all one coherent story – Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Aaron and Miriam, Jesus of Nazareth, Paul, the early Christian martyrs, the Medieval Church, the English Reformation, new Prayer Books, the ecumenical movement, and finally the call to be an inclusive Church in our contemporary, 21st century history.
Then, imagine another steel rail that represents your life. Sometimes, that rail runs very close to the God-Bible-Church rail. Other times, it twists and turns and veers off far away from that rail. But this second rail is yours and my reality – this is where we live – your relationships, your job or retired living, your world of pandemics, and graves of indigenous children, “Black lives matter” and systemic racism, poverty, war, oppression, and genocide. That’s all part of “this rail”.
So how does the ‘God-Bible-Church’ rail have any influence over you ‘life-rail’, which twists and turns all over the place? Well – when you pray, when you participate in Sunday worship, or offer service to others in the Christ’s name, your ‘rail’ comes alongside that ‘God-Bible-Church rail, and you make a secure connection between the two rails. It’s like hammering in a large wooden railroad tie that pulls the two rails together. And in that connection, your life is guided and graced by God’s life. The two rails travel alongside each other. Every time you try to learn about how the God-Bible-Church story speaks to your life story – every time you work at that – you make a connection between your life-story and God’s life. You hammer in a new ‘railroad tie’, which enables your life to be guided by God, and keeps your life-story on God’s path for you.
So, just as our Collect Prayer helped us to know where we’ve come from – God made us for God’s self – for God to take delight in you and me – it’s also helpful to know where these life-story “rails” are headed into the future – where they’ll eventually end up. The Letter to the Ephesians, our 2nd Reading, tells us this: “He has made known to us the mystery of God’s will, according to God’s good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” So eventually, the two rails are to merge. Our life-story becomes part of the God-Bible-Church story.
So that’s the ‘big picture’. Now, what about mine and your lives on Monday morning? What about the pandemics, the residential schools, and the systemic racism that we struggle with? How does that God-Bible-Church life-story ‘rail’ have any impact on my real life? You and I have to look for it – pray for it – seek wisdom from each other, as fellow Christians. Can you even see the God-Bible-Church rail, or has your rail veered so far off on its own that you can’t even see God’s rail? If so, seek it out – engage in prayer, Bible reading, help from other disciples, and when you do connect with God’s rail, nail it in with a ‘railroad tie’ – learn from that connection and apply it in your life.
Every time you and I do that we learn and we grow. The ‘rail’ of our life-story travels closer to the God’s story. We still have the same challenges – the pandemics, the unmarked children’s grace, the systemic racism, and our own particular challenges in our personal lives. But, we do know where we have come from (created by and for God) and we know where we are going to (gathered up with all things into Christ).
And don’t wait for the life crises. Don’t wait until God’s rail is far out of sight and you’re feeling overwhelmed travelling alone on your rail. Work at nailing in those ‘ties’ between the two rails everyday – immersing yourself in Scripture, prayer, and Christian learning, and being able to make the deep connections between the ‘stuff’ in your life and the ‘stuff’ in the lives of God’s People in Scripture and the Church. Then, the lofty statements in today’s Reading from Ephesians become real for us. “In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
Amen.
