\eplace I
No ke ove

The Fourth Church Pulpit

OH, THE PLACES YOU WILL GO!

October 24, 1993

John M. Buchanan

rTim7oO
Arwe
La<

FOU
PRE
TER
CHU
A LIGHT IN THE CITY

+

126 East Chestnut St. Chicago, IL 60611-2094
Phone: 312.787.4570
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Scripture: Mark 1:16-20

Moses is dead, After forty years of wandering in the wilderness the people of Israel have arrived at a river.
“n the other side they can see their destination, the Promised Land.

Joshua #t-44- (V2, 3

You may not identify with much in the Bible. You may not ever have seen a burning bush, and the voice of
God may never have spoken directly to you, and you may never have seen anyone walk on water. And you
may have concluded that whatever it is that the Bible is about, it is about things that happen to other people.

However ... there is not a one of us who cannot identify with those people gathered on the banks of the
Jordan River, all their belongings, all their traditions, all their history behind them, peering through morning
mist into the future, the Promised Land. How are they feeling that morning, forty years of nomadic wandering
about to come to an end... four decades of a routine they had long ago accommodated about to confront a
radically new future? My guess is that they are anxious, scared. They feel like going back, and if that is not
possible, they are seriously considering going no further. They are talking about stopping right there — “on the

verge of Jordan” — as the old hymn puts it. Which is to say, they are feeling a lot like you and I feel much of
the time.

Who can’t identify -with them? Personal change, movement, is a life reality. One of five of us makes an
actual move every yea pnd I’m not certain whether the people who came up with that statistic even count what
goes on in urban nee orhoodgdike this one where apartment hunting and moving is a common social ritual,
bordering wr sion, opt do know the reality, the anxiety, sometimes the fear, which characterizes a
move. ’

fe

And if we're not moving locatiays, we’re moving from one job to the next, or trying to, or planning to, or
hoping and wishing that we could. | and that move, too, is the occasion of no.little fear ‘and trembling.

(some of us are thinking of making a move relationally, planning to move from autonomy to intimacy, from
independence to interdependence. Some of us are contemplating total commitment, marriage. Ministers know
why brides sometimes weep and grooms faint. It’s not only love and nervousness. This is a frightening move.
Who knows these days how it will turn out? Or to put it more correctly, how can you tell if the person you will
become in ten years will still love the person she or he is in the process of becoming.) And some may be
thinking about a move from dependency in an unhealthy relationship or an addiction to drugs or alcohol, and
the future without it feels very frightening.

Cana some of us know the anxiety and fear which result from one of the biggest life moves ofall... aging
and retirement. It is a defining moment when out of the blue you receive notification that you are eligible for
membership in A.A.R.P. and for the first time perhaps you find yourself thinking the unthinkable, namely that
there is a day ahead when you need to find something to do other than the job which has been your life for all
these years. That change comes after about the same number of years Israel wandered in the wilderness before
ending up on the banks of the Jordan, peering through the morning mist into the promised land and shivering,
not only because it was chilly that day. Who doesn’t know about that experience?

rind
My proposal this morning is that the life of faithfulness is a journey, a moving from place to placelthét this
experience — so very common in life itself — becomes religious, becomes an experience of God's prégénce,

__-0d’s leading, Gad’s grace for us, far more frequently than burning bushes, voices out of the blue or alking on
water.

10/24/93 —1—

The story of faith in the Bible is not an account of people sitting down and figuring out what they believe. It
is a story of people moving on a journey, a pilgrimage. It begins when an elderly couple hear God’s promise and
God’s call and in their old age do something very unlikely - pick up and move. And the story continues when
the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, urged, cajoled, pushed and prodded by Moses, finally pack up and
move out of Egypt and travel through the desert for forty years,/And later, that same people will be summoned
by the prophet Isaiah: to break out of their oppressive routizfe in Babylonian captivity.

“Do not remember the forever thi God says to the people.
“Do not consider the thi

of old. Iam about to do a new thing. Do you not
perceive it. I will m

a way in the desert... .”

The strong implication béing that the new thing, the way in the desert, is actually a highway, upon which
God’s people are to walk; to move.

| And, of course, there is the chapter of the story to which we have our closest affinity which begins when a
man walks by a group of fishermen mending their nets and says:

“Come, follow me.”

It often seems that moving, traveling, getting up and going somewhere new is what faithfulness means in
the Bible. And it is always an experience of exhilaration and energy ultimately, but first it is an experience of
anxiety and fear and reluctance.

In fact sometimes it seems that the opposite of faith in the Bible is not sin or unbelief, but the refusal to
TROVE,

The title of this sermon comes from a distinguished man of letters; a commentator on modern life, the late
Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss wrote wonderful children’s books which somehow also managed to be wonderfully adult
books. jOne of the tragedies of not having little children in your life is that you no longer have a socially
acceptable reason for reading The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs & Ham, Yertle the Turtle, out loud.\Oh, the Places
You'll Go is a book for graduates or for anyone about to move into anew future. I found in it, a word for those
people peering through the mist of the river into the Promised Land) and a word-te-this-eengregation of God's
people_as it prepareste-taunch inte anew fiture, fand a personal word for each of us.

“Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!

You have brains in your head
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.
You're on your own.

And you know what you know.
And you are the guy who'll decide where to go."

10/24/93 - 2

There are some risks. Dr. Seuss warns that the going will not always be smooth or easy.

“I'm sorry to say so
but sadly, it’s true
that Bang-ups

and Hang-ups

can happen to you.

“You will come to a place where
the streets are not marked.

Some windows are lighted.

But mostly they're dark.

A place you could sprain

both your elbow and chin.

Do you dare stay out?

Do you dare go in?"

Sometimes it seems that the opposite of faith in the Bible is not sin or heresy but the refusal to get up and
move.\The young man who came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life was a very good
man. Jesus loved him. He went away sorry because he could not conceive of doing something new.

Dy. Seuss put it this way:

“You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race
toward a most useless place —
The Waiting Place

for people just waiting

for a train to go

or a bus to come, ora plane to go
or the mail to come,

or the rain to go,

or the phone to ring

or the snow to snow

or waiting for their hair to grow."

ss
| Alvin Toffler’s important book, Future Shock, taught us that in a time of rapid social change, when
everything is moving and nothing is pinned down you and J are inclined to create for ourselves what Toffler
called “personal security zones,” areas of life that are stable, unchanging, often nostalgically, based on the past. |

Ape one-of the most poputar“personal-stability- zones," Laubmit, is religion.
{ Regardless of the fact that faith in the Bible is described as a journey, a moving from here to there, we want
stability. “Give me that old time religion.” “If it was good enough for Moses, it’s good enough for me.” We

don’t want to follow Jesus into a new future) We want him to come to us and walk in a garden where the dew is
on the roses and he can tell us that we are his and he is ours alone.

(vtartin Marty, in a now famous quip, once said that the last words of the institutional church will be,

“We never did it that way before.”

10/24/93 —3—

The story is told of a little girl watching her mother — or her father — prepare to bake a ham. At the end of
the process, just before placing the ham in the baking pan, she cut a small section off each end.

“Why do you do that, Mommy?” the little girl asked. “Why did you cut the ends of
the ham?”

Her mother answered:
“That's how my mother did it. Let’s ask her.”

So they called on the grandmother and asked her why she cut the ends off the ham and she responded,
“Why, P’m not sure I know. That’s how my mother did it."

So, off they went to see great-grandmother, and they asked her why she cut the ends off the ham before
baking it. And the old woman, in her nineties, thought for a long time and finally said, ,

“I remember now. I cut the ends off the ham because my baking pan was too small."

thinkérs about

how churches live in this culture, asked rece y, “What is the number one issue facing Christ organizations

Sometimes the Christian church does ont at Lyle Schaller, one of the very best

“This observer places a one senfence issue at the top ofthat list the nee ta
initiate and implement plann change from within.” [Stratégies for Chan

And so we have set out, at this time, to fnove into a new future; an ambitious undertaking. We plan to
rebuild this church from the inside out. Afad in order to SoA we plan to ask one another to think new thoughts
about faith and responsibility and persoyal commitment. We are in the process-of asking one another, in many
instances, to do something radically ne~v — to makéSignificant sees rnd to move our church into the
future. And, at this very moment, we/re contifnting to try, to the best ofour ability, to respond faithfully to the
call of Jesus Christ to go into the wafld in. iis‘ name, in his love. So, a8 we travel and build, we will find a way
to tutor our children and help our Aeightors and teach our young and care for our elderly. And this very

afternoon we dedicate a new thi < The Center for Whole OP Cabrini-Green — a new venture in mission

with ourn¢ighbors. fi ~
aplain at Duke University, wrote a book, What's Bigh F With the Church, in which he

a

form 2a cozy little cubsof the religiously inclined, but to
ead.” <

| One day, at the beginning of the story, he was walking beside the Sea of Galilee. He saw two men casting

their net. Their names were Simon and Andrew. He said to them, “Follow me.” And that is what they did...
laid down their net and followed. He saw two more, James and John, mending their gear, with their father
sitting in their fishing boat. He said, “Follow me.” And that is what they did.

10/24/93 —4—

We wish there were more to it than that. We wish we knew about them and their lives and what made them
~ so ready to move, so willing to accept the risks and uncertainties and insecurities implied in walking away
from job end family and tradition, into an unknown future. We wish we knew that they knew him and had
teason fcr confidence in him, knew where he was leading them. But we don’t. The account startles me every
_-dime I rez.d it with its leanness: invitation — command — response. And I have concluded that this is what the

Bible wants to say and that this is a word from the Lord to me and_te-the.cengregation-— to all of us and each of

us.

Doug-as John Hall, a Canadian theologian who has thought and written about what it means to live your life
faithfully inthis-weebd teaches the church’s efforts to convince people to volunteer time, to get involved in
programs, to give more money, arejnothing but transparent, self-promiotional gimmicks. —.“beating the drum for
God and money” he calls the less they are grounded in, and are an expression of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. To live your Hfe-faithfu egins with a summons to follow, and continues in a life which is moving
always more deeply into the life of the world, a journey that can end up at the cross; a pilgrimage characterized
by living for others, by loving the world for Christ’s sake, by giving one’s resources, skills, passion, love and life
itself — to the cause of Christ

Tan in
It’s nci easy. It’s not easy to do that, particularly in this time and place. } The Culture of Disbelief #s the book
everybod; is reading, from Presi i . The author, Yale Professor, Stephen Carter, contends

that we aze not an atheistic culture so much as an indifferent one when it comes to religion. We can tolerate a
bit of religion. In fact a little religion is good — a necessary political asset, part of the personal appeal package
— happy wife, smiling children of the aspiring political candidate. So long as it is not taken too seriously.
William Buckley said if you mention God once at a New York dinner party you are met with stony silence.
Mention God twice and you don’t get invited to any more dinner parties,

Stephen Carter says American culture regards acceptable religion as a kind of personal hobby like stamp
~-collecting or model trains.

And so for you and me the call can be a radical summons to be different, to act differently, to march toa
different drummer, to travel in a new and different direction, to live for others, to give life away... to put on
the line my energy, my time, my resources ... in love for my neighbors, the children, the future... my Lord.

Jesus called his disciples to get up from what they were doing and to follow him. He promised them new
life. He said they would actually find their lives when they got up from what they were doing and moved into a
new future, characterized by giving life away.

-

That is our secret. It‘is the only-stewardship-werth-your atteHition. The promise is adventure, surprise,
challenge, and through it all — life.

“Out there things can happen

and frequently do

to people as brainy

and footsy as you." Dr. Seuss advises.

“And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too.”

10/24/93 —5—

Oh, the places you will go! Like Dr. Seuss, W. H. Auden thou

"Cc .

Jesus said,

Amen,

10/24/93

ght about the journey and atthe ent orhits

orio,” wrote what I think are among the most hauntingly beautiful lines . . .

“He is the way

Follow Him through the Land of
Unlikeness

You will see rare beasts,

and have unique adventures.

“He is the truth.
Seek him in the kingdom of anxiety,
You will come to a great city

that has expected your return for years.

“He is the life.

Love Him in the world of the flesh.
And at your marriage all its occasions
shall dance with joy.”

“Come... Followme...”