Sermon: "Pardon Our Appearance"

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

September 30, 2018 – Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 8:22-24, 27-30, 41-43; Matthew 16:13-20

“Pardon Our Appearance”

As many of you know, at the beginning of the summer a tree fell through the roof of the parsonage, where I live next door with my wife, Stephanie.

In the midst of a wild thunderstorm, which later was identified as a microburst - a pine branch that was nearly as tall and wide as the tree itself broke off and landed across the family room on the back of the house, punching a gaping hole in the roof.

I was in Miami when it happened -

on our Youth Group mission trip with 20 teenagers.

Thankfully, my wife, who was in the house when the tree fell, was not injured. And we are forever grateful for those of you in this congregation who rushed over to help move the contents of our family room as the rain was pouring in,

who offered meals and a place to stay while the power was off,

who coordinated with the insurance companies and arranged for the tree removal – which required the use of a crane to lift it,

and who for the last four months, have overseen the continuing repairs and reconstruction that may take until Thanksgiving to be finished.

If any of you have ever had a tree fall on your house, or experienced flood damage, or had major remodeling work done to your home of any kind,

you know what’s like to suddenly find yourself living in a construction zone.

Where for months at a time your daily routine includes a steady stream of roofers, painters, electricians, drywallers, insulation crews, and floor and window installers.

Next door, we also threw in Critter Control for good measure.

The one silver lining of our tree mishap is that the squirrels who were living rent free above the family room, were suddenly evicted.

If you live in the village and they’ve since moved into your home I sincerely apologize.

If you’ve ever lived in a construction zone, of your own choosing or not,

you know that the need for “flexibility” and “patience” also becomes part of your daily experience.

As contractors arrive to work earlier than expected, later than expected, or not at all.

As individual projects get delayed, added on, or rescheduled, which in turn affects the scheduling of everything else.

And for months on end, you find yourself living amongst boxes and furniture that has been moved from other rooms,

sweeping up debris and dust that magically reappears the next day,

and making arrangements to be out of the house when smells and noise and flying particles make it uncomfortable or unsafe to be there.

Living in a construction zone is inconvenient, to say the least, and at the most, wears on our ability to absorb the other inconveniences and challenges of life with grace.

If you’ve ever lived through a kitchen remodel and found yourself snapping at your spouse or melting into a puddle of tears because you can’t find the can opener, than you know what I’m talking about.

This summer and now into the fall, we’ve also experienced what it like to work and worship as a congregation in the midst of a construction zone –

as we replace the fire suppression system throughout the building.

We have exposed pipes in our offices and meeting spaces,

furniture moved or piled up making rooms inaccessible,

and dirt and dust accumulating on the walls, the carpets, and falling from the ceiling over our heads.

I’ve lost count of the number of times people have picked bits of insulation out of my hair.

And as we embark upon a capital campaign to help us further care for these historic buildings, by updating electrical systems, replacing windows, remodeling the kitchen so we can better serve the community, and repairing and repainting weather-worn clapboards, we can look forward to a few more years of living and worshiping in a construction zone.

With all it’s unpredictability, uncertainty, and at times tear-inducing frustrations and inconvenience.

But this shouldn’t surprise us at all.

To be a church in the world is to willingly embrace life in a construction zone.

Where God is at work – within us and through us – on a daily basis.

When we think of the world that we live in, the world that we see when we turn on the evening news or scroll through our newsfeed online –

it can feel like we’re living in the midst of an endless torrent of human restoration projects that are perpetually left unfinished.

Poverty, oppression, violence, injustice of every kind.

All calling out for us to show up and tackle the hard, hard work that needs to be done, knowing that as human beings we simply don’t have the power, the resources, or the strength, to tackle it all on our own.

It can be frustrating, and disheartening, and soul-sucking to look out at the state of the world and realize that we just don’t have the will or the way to work together to fix it.  As if we ever could.

It is tempting, in the midst of that sense of frustration and feeling of powerlessness, to see the church as a sanctuary,

as a place to tune out the world out there, and find peace and comfort in here – as we pray and sing about a utopian world yet to come.

The truth is, we have a God who has the power to do amazing and difficult things.

And through our prayers we ask God to use that power to do amazing and difficult things, for us and with us and through us.

But to put ourselves in the midst of that kind of power is not always a safe and comforting place to be.

Author Annie Dillard, offers this dose of reality for those of us who sign up to be followers of Christ in the world: She writes,

Why do people in church seem like cheerful, tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT (on) a Sunday morning.

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church;

we should all be wearing crash helmets.

Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”

When we call on God in our prayers to move in us and through us and to help us to heal this broken world, we have to know that healing always involves tearing down the old and building up the new.

We’re actually requesting to live in a construction zone – with all of its uncertainty and inconvenience and piles of accumulating dust, that never seem to go away.

Jesus knew that this was a message, a call to a way of living that his disciples were not ready to hear.

Which is why he turned to them one day and asked them,

“Who do you say that I am?”

Because he kept hearing the people talk of a Messiah who was going to liberate them by seizing control from their oppressors,

by leading them into battle, or rising to power as their king;  

taking the unjust world they lived in and simply shifting the pieces around,

putting them in charge, and imprisoning, killing, or oppressing those who had done the same to them.

But that’s not the world that God is seeking to create, and it’s not the kind of Messiah that Jesus came to be.

So Jesus asked them, “Who do you say that I am” and while the others named human prophets, who lived their lives calling for repentance and revolution and ultimately died as all humans do, only Simon responded by saying,

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

Simon, as flawed and as human as he was, had a moment where he looked at Jesus and said, “There’s something different about you.

You’re not like the others that came before you.

It’s as if you have some supernatural connection to the Living God himself.”

And for that expression of faith, Jesus gave Simon a new name, Peter – which means rock, and it is on this rock solid expression of faith in a God who has the ability to do amazing things, that Jesus intended to build his church.

Peter, as we know, was a work in progress.

In a moment of clarity he sees Jesus as the presence of God in this world and just a short time later, he’s denying that he’s ever met the man to save his own skin.

We’re all a work in progress. We’re all under construction.

I think every church should have a sign above the doorway that says, “Pardon our Appearance – we’re building Christ’s church in the world one human being at a time.”

We really should wear hard hats when we come through these doors,

whether we’re seeking to be challenged or comforted.

Because we never know what work God has in store for us.

This morning, millions of women and men across our country will step into sanctuaries like this one, seeking healing, strength, vindication, and validation.

They are the victims of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.

For weeks they’ve either avoided the national news or been glued to it, unable to look away, as they relive the pain and humiliation of their own experience, no matter how long ago it was, and regardless of whether they said something or said nothing.

They’ve listened while politicians, pastors, self-appointed experts, and their own friends and family, have debated how much time is too much time to hold onto a secret pain,

what behavior or actions of their own may have invited or led to their pain, and what behavior or actions of their abuser can be excused or dismissed because of age, alcohol, and situational or gender proclivities.

Regardless of who we believe or what we believe about the latest accusations capturing our nation’s attention, there is a spiritual wounding that’s happening as a result of these discussions that we as people of faith must address.

As much as we may want to tune out the world and leave this stuff out there,

the truth is we bring it with us in here.

Because it touches so many of us, and so many of us need to hear that what happened to us matters.

That’s really what it comes down to.

Like the woman who tearfully confronted a politician this past week, following him to an elevator and telling him that she was sexually assaulted and reported it and nobody believed her.

Not wanting to deal with her pain, he looked away and walked away.

Through her tears she pleaded, “Don’t look away from me. Look at me and tell me that what happened to me doesn’t matter.”

There are millions, millions of survivors out there – and I know a good number of them are in here – most of whom are women,

surrounded by men, good men, who have no idea how many among them carry this pain.

And when passing comments are made about how long she waited,

or she shouldn’t have been drinking, or boys will be boys,

the survivors around us hold onto that secret a little bit tighter and feel all the more deeply that what happened to them doesn’t matter.

As a church, a community built on the belief in a God who can do amazing and difficult things, we should have the courage to say to the survivors among us, “What happened to you does matter. How can we help with the healing?”

Jesus didn’t call us to build a church that tunes out the outside world, or avoids talking about issues that make us uncomfortable.

And he didn’t teach us to deny the pain of others because we’ve never experienced such a pain ourselves,

or because we can’t believe someone we trust would be capable of inflicting such a pain,

or because we’re fearful that something we may have done, no matter how long ago, may have caused such a pain to another.

Jesus didn’t teach us to deny each others pain, but rather to hold it,

and to heal it, and to take collective ownership of it,

as the body of Christ in the world.

This is the challenge we face as a community of Christ –

as we seek to create church and be church that is both savior and sanctuary,

that is both confronting and comforting,

that is adept at stirring things up and calming things down,

at pushing out and bringing in.

Perhaps we should start wearing hard hats to church on Sunday mornings, and put up signs that say, “Pardon our Appearance – God is at Work”

I leave you this morning with the words of Islamic scholar and spiritual guide, Omid Safi:

"The Kingdom of God on Earth was not merely about saving an individual soul, but also about building a beloved community

Community is not merely a gathering of individuals coming together. Community is an almost alchemical reaction that happens among all that we are capable of being and becoming…

Each of us is like a musical symphony, made up of so many unsung notes. It is the encounters with our fellow human beings that determine what notes emerge from us." 

Thanks be to God, and Amen.