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This I Believe
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C, Proper 7, RCL)
June 24, 2007
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
Elijah, in the name of God, slew the prophets of the false god, Baal. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, followers of Baal, swore to kill Elijah, who
immediately embarked on a hastily planned sabbatical and left town.[1]
On that journey, he encountered God. Not in the earthquake, wind, or fire – not in the violence of the threats against his life, not in the turmoil of
his fear. No. God spoke in the sound of sheer silence or, as the King James Version has it, the still, small voice. A voice and a conversation that
reminded Elijah of who he was – one “zealous for the Lord” – and what he was to do – to return.
A journey away and apart from life as one lives it, can be a portal to the grace of a deeper consciousness, a greater self-awareness. A doorway to
revelation. A pathway to the “thin places” of Celtic spirituality where divinity and humanity embrace, where celestial and earthly realms touch,
where, even amid the noise of life in this world an eternal silence speaks with a resonant word to the equally eternal depths of one’s soul reminding
one of who one is and what one is to do.
Our functional education discipline calls us to look at how we function, how we, in the words of the prayer, “live and move and have our being.” Our
discipline is decidedly experiential. For it is our journey into and through our experience where we tread on the ground that is the sacred soil of
our life’s stories. The soil into which the seeds of our knowing about life and ourselves are planted. The soil from which grows the budding and
ripening fruit of our self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-revelation.
Charles Penniman, the founder of functional education, believed that learning happens in the concrete experience of our facing real issues, concerns,
and yes, at times, problems. There we learn. There we are given more greatly to reflection and remembrance. Ideas, even theological ones, confined only
to the classroom of abstract rumination – where, I admit, I love to spend time, for I was born to think – can expand conceptual horizons. But it is in
the crucible of experience that I can test “truth” and discover what is truly true for me. Who knew that Penniman was Celtic?
All this comes up for me as I continue my journey through my sabbatical and now back to you, St. Mark’s, my community. My sabbatical – certainly
launched under more auspicious circumstances than those that confronted Elijah and, also unlike Elijah, undertaken with a promise that I would return
– was a grand journey of discovery of who I am and what I believe I am called to do. Now. I have returned changed to a changed community. I am not
who I was and you are not who you were when we parted company last July. We – each and both – are “other,” both to ourselves and to each other. So,
in the words of Oscar Hammerstein, we are in a new period of “getting to know you, getting to know all about you.”
So, my friends, speaking from my mind and heart, let me begin to share anew with you who I am. I am first always a person who shares life with you
in community.
I am a person who stands in our pulpit as a preacher and in our classrooms as a teacher who always strives to make a connection between the sacred
scripture of our faith and the equally sacred scriptures of your and my life’s stories.
I am a person who stands at our altar as a priest holding holy vessels of holy food. Offered openly, without distinction or restriction, to all. Offered
as a symbol and constant reminder of our need for spiritual nourishment to strengthen our spirits, our wills that we might fulfill the promises we make.
Promises, as expressed in our Mission Statement: “To welcome people wherever they are on their faith journey…(to) celebrate the gifts of God that empower
us to engage boldly in the struggles of life…to care for others with love, justice, and compassion.”
I am a person who stands with you as a pastor, listening to your stories – your joys, your sorrows, your fears, your hopes – and you do the same for me,
all as a sign and proof that none of us is meant to live or die alone. We are community.
These things have been true since the moment I joined you on June 1, 1998, and, I pray, shall continue to be true in the days to come.
Now, at least one thing is new. That is, my clarity of vision about what I believe that I and we are called to do. As Jesus and his
disciples, in other words, in community, went to the country of the Gerasenes[2] beyond the comfort of their familiar Galilee,
I believe that we, as a community, are to reach out to the world.
To begin to share the shape of that vision, I offer but two among many overarching ideas…
In the mantra of the real estate industry, “location, location, location,” I believe that we are called to forge an intentional, ongoing relationship
with the legislative citadel of our national government that stands only three city blocks away. The nature of that relationship that preserves our
integrity as a spiritual community and positions us prophetically to speak our truth of inclusion and toleration to power is for us to discern.
Nevertheless, this I believe.
In the name of our functional discipline, which has cultivated in us, as a community, an ability and willingness to speak and to listen to one another
sometimes with the grace of eager reception and sometimes with the mercy of weary toleration, I believe that we are called to take this way of being in
relationship out into our fractious world and larger church. How we do that in ways that allow us to continue to nurture the vitality of our community
is for us to discern. Nevertheless, this I believe.
My friends, you are my community. Whoever I am and whatever I do, I want to be and do it with you. The sabbatical is over. The journey, our journey
continues…
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.
Getting to know you, putting it my way,
But nicely,
You are precisely,
My cup of tea.
[1] The Hebrew scripture appointed for the day is 1 Kings 19.1-15a.
[2] The gospel passage appointed for the day is Luke 8.26-39.
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