Why are we Here?
James 2: 1-5, 8-10, 14-18
Mark 8: 27-38
September 15, 1991
Let’s begin this welcome back Sunday with some personal questions. Actually, during the next few months I want to raise with you a few of the basic questions of life. Questions we often ask in the middle of the night. Questions we raise while looking into a mirror in the morning, questions we raise at midday but rarely do we answer.
As we start this sermon let me share one of the oldest stories in the preacher’s barrel. Many years ago there was a poetry competition. It was to find the shortest possible poem. The contest was nearly won by an entry entitled fleas. The verse went, Adam had em. The winning poem was not only shorter, but it touched deeply into the question that we often ask ourselves. It went this way, I, why?
My guess is there’s not one here who has not raised that question in one form or another period I cannot lie? Why am I here? What is my reason for being?
We often raised the question in a whiny, complaining sort of way. Why me? Why me? I know that’s the way the question sounds when my day has turned sour, why me ohh Lord? But in the back of that grousing stands the basic bottom line, why am I here?
If we listen to the wisdom of the world, we’re here to consume, to spend money, to live the good life. And a lot of us live with all the gusto you can come on you can only live or come this way once. Let’s be honest as we come together in the beginning of the fall season most of us would like to win the lottery. We’re not selfish God will even split it but we would like a little more. We’re consumers at heart. And for the most of us, the trick is how to be a consumer without appearing to be greedy.
Get scripture, our epistle and gospel ask us, challenges us. For what does it profit a person to gain everything, what does it profit a person if he can’t love his neighbor? Who are you becoming? Why are you here?
Scripture time and time again says you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both. That’s the message. And the answer to this challenge is dependent upon how we see ourselves.
TS Eliot in his magnificent poem, the rock, writes, when the stranger says what is the meaning of this city? Do you buddy together because you love each other? What will you answer? We all dwelled together to make money from each other or this is a community?
These are the fundamental questions we must wrestle with as we begin our year together. What is the meaning of our coming together question why am I here?
Jesus said Cortana you can’t win the whole world and lose your soul without relationships. Why am I here? To be with you and you with me.
Now that’s a radical gospel it’s saying we’re not here to learn more about scripture. You’re not even eared to have a wonderful worship experience. We’re here not a relationship with each other period do you believe that? I think if you really did every one of you would make a beeline and join a cell group or some other organization in our parish where that’s what it’s all about, relationships.
Someone recently asked me what I would be if I were not an episcopalian. And frankly it gave me pause. After a while, I found myself saying, probably a member of the Society of friends, better known as the Quakers.
George Fox, one of the great Saints of that movement, once wrote about his religious experience in these words, as I was sitting in a friend’s house, I saw a great crack go through the earth and after the crack there was a great shaking. He went on in his journal to say that the earth was people’s hearts, which were to be shaken before the seed of God was raised after the earth. And so it was Carmel for the Lord’s power began to shake them. It was from this understanding people started calling them shakers, and then it evolved into Quakers. I sometimes wonder what it would take to shake us up, to crack U.S. Open, to make us Quakers, to help us become a Society of friends
Episcopalians are often referred to as God’s frozen chosen for some good reasons. We desperately need to be shaken up. I think George Fox would have said, we need to find out who we are and why we come together. And then, God willing, we may become a Society of friends.
The great secret of the Society of friends is that they come together not as a like minded individuals, not as a homogeneous group, not as the frozen chosen, not even as a group with a hierarchy of clergy. They come together as Quakers who recognized the seed of God which lies in each one of us, those who see each other as ministers, and those who are ministered to. Their greatness lies in their relatedness. I , why? Because of you, because of me. Because we are friends.
It has been said the two most important days in a person’s life are the day of which they were born and the day on which they discover why they were born. My hope for each of us is that the second day will come and we will discover why we were born.
I, why? Why am I here? To become a Society of friends
. Let us pray. Ohh God, help us to live more fully, to see more clearly, to listen more completely, and then to love more deeply. Check us up, and then draw us together in a more intimate relationship so that we may be here for you, and for each other. Amen