Children of God

Through all of my childhood, my family of origin moved every two or three years.   So, in many ways, my  only consistent “home” was Grandpa and Grandma Campbell’s home in West Texas.  Every Christmas through New Year’s my parents and brother and I would make the long drive from East Tennessee to Texas.  I forget how many days we drove.  From a kid’s perspective, it seemed an endless drive, often through rain and snow and sometimes ice.  We would usually arrive in Crowell, Texas by night.  In that part of the state, the land is pancake-flat.   You can see great  distances.  And at sunset, the only sight on the horizon is the silhouettes of oil rigs and grain silos.  But the Campbell  farm was even far from the silos.  After miles of nothing, you could see a single, bright white light.  They had a powerful outdoor light shining on their driveway.  The light was visible long before their house was.  When I saw that light shining, I knew we were close to Grandma Jean’s house.  Close to the journey’s end.  Close to Christmas.  Close to home.

This memory of their home is bittersweet, especially since the death of my grandparents.  When Grandma died in 2005,  my mother and her brothers divided up the belongings and  then one of my uncles bought the property from my Mom and her other brother.  The family, which really had only all gathered on holidays, was dispersed.  There is no center to the Campbell family.  We are increasingly separate from one another.

 Thomas Wolfe wrote the novel, You Can’t Go Home Again.  Those words come from his protagonist, George Webber, who  realized, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time. . .”

On this third day of 2010, a new year and the beginning of a new decade, many of us have recently “re-gathered” with family or friends for Christmas.  Perhaps you too, have discovered really that you “can’t go home again.”

“Hear O nations. . . The One  who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd a flock. . . They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine and the oil. . .and their life shall become like a watered garden and they shall never languish again. . .Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. . .I will turn their mourning into joy. . .and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord.”

The reading from the prophet Jeremiah  is an image of dancing, singing, overwhelming, over-the-top grace.  And it is given to people who know the pain of loss and exile.   For what had happened was that over generations, the people of Israel had had a selfish, nearly magical hope in God.  They had acted as though God existed to serve them.  They thought that the covenant relationship with God was unilateral.  That God was obligated to take care of them now matter what they did.  Too late, they realized  that they were wrong.  And that left them no hope.   They were defeated by enemies and exiled to Babylon.
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Exile is the place of loss of certitude and language.  Exile is the experience of being cast out into an unfamiliar world.   Everything has changed and continues to change. You cannot go home. That place no longer exists.

Theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz writes about her experience and the pain of being away from her own country of Cuba against her will. She lives apart from her family and her community. The longer she is away, she says, she lives with the anguish that she might someday forget her country.

On NPR this week, I heard an interview with elders and youngsters of the Hopi nation.  Fewer and fewer Hopi can speak their own language.   One of the young people expressed it so poignantly.   "When we no longer speak Hopi, it is the end of the world."  It is this kind of exile that was the context for the prophet Jeremiah.

But the passage from today’s text gives a reason for hope.  The word in Hebrew is kah-VATS,  to gather.  God will gather up all the people.  Verse 8 reads: God is bringing back God’s people from exile!

 There is a new beginning.  In verse 9, comes the powerful proclamation: “I have become a father to Israel”.  These people who were homeless and scattered over the earth, will become a family  again.  God will gather the scattered remnants,  the blind and lame, the pregnant ones and those with tiny infants, God will recreate as them as a people, as children of God.  What they can’t do for themselves, God will do, because of God’s love.

From another of today’s readings, the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3:6, we read “. . .the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers  in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.” While the message from the prophet Jeremiah was good news to the people of Israel, that good news has extended to everyone else, as well!

And from John 1:4, “and in the Word was life and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  God will gather up ALL who respond.  The life is the light of ALL people.

If you’re new to Westminster on this Epiphany Sunday, you may not know that this is the day of the year, in which we receive an Epiphany star with one word on it.  The star and word is meant to be a gift from God to you this day and for this year.  I’d like to suggest is that while the word may be a beacon in this year, the real gift of Epiphany Sunday is the gathering we are today.   For God has gathered us, whether we are joyful, or whether we are suffering in exile; whether we are the lame  or whether we are dancing–God has gathered us.  And we are God’s children and heirs.  There is a bounty of love and grace that God is giving us, in community.    We can be a light to one another and to the world.

2010 is most likely the year in which we will welcome a new pastor to Westminster.  In the process of that, we will be changing.  We will be sharing our experiences and articulating our common hopes and vision.  We will try to hold on to the essential parts of Westminster, and we hold lightly and let go of what is non-essential, and in need of change.  One thing we can be sure of:  We won’t go home again, not in the same way.

Thomas Merton wrote that "no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not."   Reality . . .is the joy of the cosmic dance.

We are reminded of our own holy dance with God when we walk down the center aisle of the sanctuary with newly baptized children, and when we welcome them as our brothers and sisters.  We are reminded of our holy dance with God and our kinship to one another as we gather around the Lord’s table.

Rachel Remen writes: "A blessing is not something that one person gives another. A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of  relationship in which both people involved  remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another."

That is the gift of our gathering today, and the fabric in which the constellations of our stars shine.

How do we respond to the grace of God?  Can we be described as “satisfied” with God’s bounty? Or radiant with the goodness of the Lord?  What would the world be like if we were?
What would that mean in our relationships with one another?  Or our relationships with those who are different?  Who might be radiating God’s goodness to us, whom we might not expect?  What will Westminster be like as we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit shining in and through us, in the changes that are to come?