“Come and Be United”
Luke 13: 31-35
March 3, 1996
This past Sunday, many of the parish gathered at 3:00 p.m. for John Bloom’s memorial service. It was a magnificent service, with splendid music from a combined group of our own choir and many of his former students as well as choir directors throughout the area. The service concluded with a moving Eucharist. I had the privilege of preaching the homily. While I was working on the sermon, it occurred to me that this was different from most funeral orations. The difference was between what I would call obituary words and eulogy words. Obituaries are about what people do in life, about their achievements and triumphs. Eulogies are about how people relate to each other, their connections. Sunday’s service was about connections. We were celebrating the ways that John had touched our lives.
Recently, I ran across Rabbi Kushner’s sequel to When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In it, Kushner suggests that there are two acts in everyone’s life. He names them “achieve” and “connect.”
Act one, he suggests, is called achieve. Much of life for human beings today consists of working on this first act. The problem, Kushner says, is that people think it’s the only act. As a result, right up to their last breath, many people are making life revolve around the next sale, the next promotion, the next victory. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that the person who dies with the most toys does not win. In all his years as a rabbi, Kushner says he’s never heard of anyone say on his or her deathbed: “I wish I had gone to the office more.” Instead, they often say: “I wish I had loved more, spent more time with family and friends, connected more with people.”
Act two is about relationships, connecting with people, and being in community. Unfortunately, Rabbi Kushner points out, in our society, few people think about act two until they have had a mid-life crisis or a near-death experience. It seems like people rarely begin to raise questions about what life is all about until tragedy strikes. Kushner ends one of his chapters by saying: ‘While it is never too late to open the curtain on Act Two, think of all you miss by waiting for something bad to happen.”
A friend of mine once used a great analogy in making reference to a frustrating experience. She said that it was like herding a bunch of cats. Just imagine trying to take a bunch of cats across a crowded street. What a wonderful image of frustration. The Gospel this morning is about herding cats. The words that the Gospel writer reports that Jesus says is that God would gather all the people in Jerusalem. This is simply a metaphor for God’s wish to gather all people under one roof . . . or together in heaven. What is really being said here, underneath the words,
is that our God is a gathering God. God’s plan is to have people connect, come into community, come into relationship with each other. The truth of the human condition is that I need you to be fully me. I need to be in a relationship to be fully what God wants me to be. And Sin is my persistent doubt that I really don’t need you. Thank you very much, but I’ll go it alone, or at least go it with people of my own choosing. And therefore, Jesus in our Gospel expresses God’s frustration. “It’s like herding cats.” Only Jesus puts it this way. “How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. . . And you would not.” Connecting, coming together, relationships, that’s what life is all about . . . and yet we so often forget. It’s not until we are faced with some joking experience, some reminder, that we remember that God really wants us to connect with each other.
Many years ago, Walter Lippman, the well-known journalist, was asked: ‘What is the job of a newspaper?” Everyone expected him to offer a treatise on the newspaper’s task to mold or help form public opinion, or to report on world events. He said neither. Instead, he offered a one-sentence explanation:
“The job of a paper is to bring a community conversation.”
I like that – and I would simply echo his words about a parish church. The task of a parish church is to bring a community of strangers into conversation. In other words, to have people connect, relate, become friends – or to use those overused words in our culture – to find togetherness. This is what we’re about as a parish church. And without this, anything we do – any achievements, any buildings, any good works-are meaningless. They are an act one. Good for our obituaries, but not helpful for our eulogies. American Christianity, unfortunately, is all about act one and very little about act two. But God willing, a parish church keeps us reminded that Act Two is where we meet God.
This is a different kind of sermon than I regularly preach. This sermon really has no ending. It’s at best a kind of do-it-yourself sermon. The ending of the sermon takes place in the Gallery after the service is completed. You are invited to find a table and connect with the people at the table. Start a conversation, begin the process of turning strangers into a community. As you go into the Gallery, you will see a sign above the door in Spanish. (I don’t want you to think my sabbatical was wasted.) The sign says: “Estamos Unidos.” It’s a term that I learned from Mexican people in Northern Sonora. As most of you know, the Spanish words for the United States are “Estados Unidos,” which means: ‘We are united.” They mean we are united by a common desert, common mountains which defy any walls or boundaries. And so today I am asking you to come under the banner of “Estamos Unidos”. . . we are united. . . by our humanity, by our conversations, by our connections, by our relationship to God. What you are acknowledging by finishing this sermon is that Christianity is not primarily about beliefs, not even primarily about the teachings of Jesus. It’s not even about following the rules. The bottom line is that it is about connections with God and each other.
It’s near enough to St. Patrick’s Day to make some concluding remarks quoting an Irish Saint, Brigid, by name. I am told that she saw life as a feast of befriending. And she hoped that heaven would be in terms of gallons of beer. (Sorry, we can’t have that in the Gallery.) Here is what Brigid wrote: “I should like a great lake of Ale for the King of Kings. I should like the Angels of Heaven to be drinking through time eternal. I should like excellent meats of belief, and drink of pure piety. Barrels of peace, vessels of love, cellars of mercy. I should like the people to befriend each other in their drinking. I should like Jesus to be there among them in their party, and everyone to be friends. For God made us to befriend each other.”
The invitation comes from St. Brigid and from me. Come and be a part of a great feast – in the Eucharist as well as in the Gallery. Come and be united. AMEN.