#lookingforgod

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Crystal Lake, Illinois July 5, 2015

Psalm 139:1-10; Mark 6:1-13

Audio link

It had been a rough few days. Camping had been not quite a disaster. My family went tent camping down at Starved Rock State Park. It looked from the weather reports as though the rain would pass through Wisconsin and bypass Illinois. And while we were there, it did. It had been raining there quite a bit, however, as evidenced by the Illinois River flowing over the visitor center parking lot. And that meant that it was wet, and hot, and buggy.

I was miserable, and did not want to be there. And I let everyone know it. But we made it through the first night, and managed to get going in the morning. The boys had walking sticks they’d acquired at Vacation Bible School the week before, so they were excited to hit the trail. We marched along, seeing beautiful scenes of the river, the rocks, and the trees. Eventually we made it by trail to the Visitor Center, which was not itself flooded. And there was air conditioning, and food, and cold water.

With directions now in hand, we found the way to get down into the valleys to see the waterfalls. We even got the kids to stand still long enough for some nice pictures. After that we hiked out and went for ice cream. But back at the campsite, Felicia got a call that her sister had been in a car accident. While she was processing that, I noticed that what had seemed to be mosquito bites on the boys were swelling up really big. We quickly ate our dinner and headed for the hospital.

With assurances from the ER doc that they were not dying, just having an allergic reaction, we decided that I had better pack up the campsite so we could head home. I left them at the hospital, and as I packed up, the alerts began to come in about tornados hitting just north of us. Felicia and the boys caught a cab to a motel, and I finished packing up. I made it to the motel just before the heavy rain started.

Nice story, Dave, but what’s your point? Well, the title of this sermon is “Unexpected Places.” Where do we find God? In the church sanctuary during worship, I hope. Maybe we find God at the lake shore, on the mountain top, or at some camp or retreat center. The writer of Psalm 139 speaks of God being found in heaven, in Sheol, even at the farthest limits of the sea. “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” God can be found everywhere, of course. But I think we have to be looking in order to find God, especially in unexpected places.

I certainly wasn’t looking for God in the heat and humidity at Starved Rock. But I appreciated the Visitor Center with its air conditioning that much more. I was delighted by the beauty of the waterfalls. But over the next few days, as I shared the photo of my family taken there with friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, I gained a much greater enjoyment. Mosquito bites, nope, not looking for God there. But the ER trip gave us time to reconsider the value of staying another night in the tent. The next morning was much more pleasant than it might have been.

When Jesus came to his hometown, the people of Nazareth were looking for God. It was the sabbath, and they were gathered in the synagogue. But when God appeared in the unexpected place, in this carpenter, the son of Mary, they weren’t looking there. “He could do no deed of power there,” Mark says, perhaps because of their unbelief. Maybe they were so used to seeking God in the familiar places that to find God in the unexpected was just too much to wrap their heads around.

This event is followed by the first major act of delegation by Jesus. He sends them out, the twelve, into the villages. He warns them that some people are not looking for God in the unexpected arrival of these fishermen-become-disciples, and might treat them like we do when certain people come knocking unexpectedly on our doors. Jesus sent them anyway, because he knew that in unexpected ways they would find welcome, and be empowered to share their message and bring healing.

This past weekend I travelled to Cleveland to the United Church of Christ General Synod, the national meeting of the church. Due to the generosity of many people in this church, and in the wider church, I was able to attend as a delegate from the Illinois Conference. Next Sunday I will talk in more depth about that event at the First Forum here in the Library at 8:30 a.m. I had many wonderful experiences, saw many friends from around the country, and encountered God, even there, in some unexpected ways.

I had gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to catch my plane. I was able to sleep a bit on the flight, fortunately. I walked through the terminal waiting for my phone to turn on, looking for coffee, when I received a Facebook post. “Supreme Court rules in favor of Marriage Equality.” I was thrilled, of course, but that was not the unexpected part. The post came from a friend of mine, a lesbian pastor in Michigan whose wife (yes, they were already legally married) is a lawyer working for Equality Michigan. Her update came two full minutes before the New York Times update appeared on my phone.

At dinner one evening with friends, two women and two other men, we had been talking about issues of privilege and equality, about who has power handed to them and who has to fight for it. I was running late for the next business meeting and I wasn’t going to be able to finish my steak. So I turned to the guys and said, “Do you want the rest of my steak?” My friend Nicole asked, “What about me?” As I turned red and covered my face with my hand, we all burst into laughter. Thank for friends who are able to point out my faults in love.

We live in a time when we all recognize the church is in decline. Membership and attendance numbers are going down , in small town congregations, churches like ours, and even in the fundamentalist mega-churches. And yet we celebrated 67 new UCC churches that have been started since the last UCC General Synod in 2013. That is 20 more than 2 years ago, and more than at any time since 1957.

I attended a workshop hosted by the Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi. Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? We heard a lot about New Orleans, but do you remember hearing anything about Biloxi, MS? It was like a nuclear bomb went off there. There are neighborhoods where there is still nothing left. Members of the Back Bay Mission struggled to respond even as their own homes and headquarters were washed away. It took time, but they were able to begin recovery efforts. With help from the UCC Disaster Ministries, Back Bay Mission is still a vital resource for the Gulf coast region. The speaker at my workshop said “UCC Disaster Ministries sticks around. They are not the first ones there, but they are the last to leave.” Everyone loves New Orleans, but down the coast in hard-hit Biloxi, God is still showing up.

This was a UCC meeting, so justice was sure to be on the agenda. A resolution was passed calling on the whole church for a just and compassionate response in the wake of the murder of nine members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It reads, “We reach out in Christian love to communicate… our deep sympathy for their loss and the shattering of safe space in their house of worship, and to assure other houses of faith in Charleston that we stand in witness to their faith and courage.” God was there at bible study in Emanuel AME, even if the shooter didn’t expect God to be there.

We find God where we look for God, and though it may not occur to us in the moment, God is often found most strikingly in the unexpected places. This was news to most people in ancient times, just as it is news to us today. That is why we still find the cross to be a strange symbol for our faith. It was, after all, a symbol of Roman Imperial power. It was the tool of torture and death for those who dared rebel against Rome. Who could have expected to see God in such a horrible device?

It was, and still is, quite unexpected to find God in the frailty of human life. In the person of Jesus we unexpectedly find that God can not only identify with our weakness, but has been tested in every way, just as we have. The good news is that God is to be found in the unexpected places. When the people are conquered over and over again, and even sent into exile, they are not abandoned. When the Christ is nailed to the cross, God is still there.