Well, with Easter behind us and Christmas ahead of us,
with the wonderful promises of Easter celebrated
and a lifetime of living as an Easter people unfolding,
here are the questions I have a week after our Easter celebrations:
Have you embraced the wonder found in the Cross’s message that God loves us to death?
Have you embraced the God-loves-us-to-death promise of forgiveness
and in that forgiveness the chance to begin again?
Have you claimed the absolute joy that Christ is risen
and because of it that you, too, can rise again from everything that would hold you down?
Have you?
Because grace, that
undeserved
untiring
unending
unchanging
unyielding
Love of God for you …
that life-giving
life-changing Love of God
that heals the hurts
and binds the wounds
and scatters the fears
is Easter’s gift.
The glory of Easter is not what happened once.
The glory of Easter is what happens again and again and again
when people open their hearts to it.
This is Easter’s message.
As I have thought about this,
I have been thinking about our church:
about who we are and whose we are …
about the message we have and the message we share.
And I have a question: Who is the message for?
I have always loved the movie “On Golden Pond” …
and I have particularly loved one scene in it.
Many of you know the story … and may remember this moment.
A woman, who had a strained relationship with her father,
visited her aging parents at their summer home on the lake - Golden Pond.
She took with her her boyfriend, a dentist,
and his teenaged son, Billy.
After a few days of uncomfortable and awkward visiting
the daughter and her boyfriend asked her parents
if they could leave Billy with them for a few weeks while they went away.
Her parents agreed, and Billy stayed behind – reluctantly.
Norman, the young woman’s father, had just celebrated his 80th birthday.
He was a cross, ill-tempered, yet loveable man.
And he was afraid:
afraid of being old … afraid of dying.
Ethel, his wife, was a warm, loving, patient woman
who loved them all.
This is the scene I remember so vividly.
Norman and Billy were finally getting along.
They had returned home from a successful day of fishing.
A bucket filled with lake trout had been set by the fireplace when they came in.
Ethel had started a fire and left it unattended
and as it started up, sparks flew,
and ignited a stack of newspapers that were piled near the fireplace.
The newspapers flamed up … Ethel screamed …
Billy came running … saw the problem … and reacted quickly
by throwing the bucket of water on the fire - fish and all.
He put the fire out.
When Norman heard the commotion, he came running out.
He asked what had happened, and was told as Ethel praised Billy.
And he saw the results: not the extinguished fire, but the ruined fish.
He swore at Billy … and walked away.
Billy, the rescuer, who had been enlarged by Ethel’s praise
was diminished by Norman’s hot anger.
Hurt, angry, embarrassed, confused,
the young boy stormed out of the cottage into the darkness.
Ethel went after him and found him leaning against the porch,
arms folded across his chest.
She spoke kindly to him and then said …
“Billy, don’t be so hard on Norman. He’s just like you.”
Just like me? he thought. Yah. Right.
He grumbled.
Disagreed.
Then Ethel went on …
“Billy, Norman is just like you.
You’re thirteen years old.
Norman is eighty.
And do you know what?
You’re both just trying to find your way.”
Who is the message for?
It is for those who are trying to find their way.
Aren’t we all just trying to find our way? Aren’t we?
For all of us the message of the church is that
“Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.”
The way to the truest kind of living we can know
is found in our relationship with him.
This is the message we share.
A woman who had not worshipped with us for some time
came back to church this winter.
And I asked her why.
What had happened? What had changed?
And the answer she gave reminded me
that whatever else we do in this place ,,,
whatever else our high and holy purpose might be …
in word and in deed the call is to proclaim God’s love in Christ.
In answer to my questions, she said … and these are her words exactly:
“I want to get the music back.”
She had music in her … but could not sing it.
She was surviving … but with no melody.
She was existing … but with no song.
She longed for the music again.
For those who are trying to find their way,
the message of the church is that
“Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.”
The way to the truest kind of living we can know
is found in our relationship with him.
This is the message we share.
And here’s a second question: Who is welcome here?
In the scripture lesson read earlier,
Jesus told a parable about a great banquet.
It is a story that, at its heart, reveals the intentions
even as it reveals the welcoming heart of God.
A great banquet was held.
The invitation to ”Come, for everything is now ready,”was given.
But a million excuses were given by those who were invited:
too busy … too preoccupied … too whatever.
The guests of honour would not come.
So the man giving the banquet sent his servant everywhere
to invite any who would accept, to come;
even those without honour.
And they did.
And the man was told by his servant, “There is still room.”
So more were invited …
with the result that his great house was full.
Who is welcome here?
Anyone who will accept the invitation to come …
there is room for them all.
Yesterday afternoon and last night,
members of Alcoholics Anonymous held their Spring Round-Up at Collier.
Their presence here reminded me of a man I knew years ago
who was an addictions counselor working at a half-way house,
himself a man who had achieved contented sobriety through A. A.
He spoke with me of his journey:
a journey from drunkenness to sobriety …
from being a nobody to becoming a somebody …
a journey from emptiness to fullness …
from death to life.
You see, somewhere along the way,
while still a relatively young man,
with a wife, and a family, and a future,
he lost it all to alcohol.
And what was he left with?
Nothing. No wife. No kids. No job. No future. No self-respect.
Then, somehow, he became involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.
He had no job to go to …
no family to care for or to care for him …
time on his hands …
endless day after endless day.
He started attending A. A. meetings.
And he started going to a club,
a social club for members of A. A.
He would spend the day playing cards
and socializing with his new-found friends.
The message of A. A. spoke to his heart.
There was life after alcohol.
There was the possibility of contented sobriety.
There was the chance that he could get his life back.
There was a Higher Power who cared for him,
who could make the difference,
if he would let him.
So every day, he would get up, get dressed, and go to the club.
He would spend the day there.
And every night he would attend an A. A. meeting.
Then he would go home.
And at home?
He would drink his night away until he fell asleep.
Next day?
Same routine.
The day at the club.
The evening at an A. A. meeting.
Then home where he drank himself to sleep.
Day after day. Week after week.
Until a day came when the program finally began to click.
And the day came when he went to the club for the day …
and attended an A. A. meeting at night …
and went home …
and didn’t have a drink.
He has not had a drink since.
And it was after he said this to me that he added the punch line
that speaks to what the church should be all about …
about who the message is for …
about who is welcome here …
about who is invited to the banquet.
He said he was certain that many, if not all,
who were involved with the program knew he was drinking.
But they didn’t judge him.
They didn’t say, “You don’t belong here.”
If anyone needed to belong it was a man like him.
They didn’t say, “Come when you’ve sobered up.”
If anyone needed sobriety, he did.
They didn’t rush him.
They waited for him.
They gave him time.
And in time, by the grace of God,
he found contented sobriety.
The church at its best
is not a place of judgment
but a place of welcome.
And it that welcome
the possibility that life can be transformed.
Who is welcome here?
Anyone who seeks to know God …
anyone who hungers for God’s presence …
anyone who is reaching for faith
and the touch of God in their lives …
anyone who longs for something deeper than the shallows they’ve known …
anyone who is trying to find their way …
anyone who longs to get the music back …
that is who is welcome.
For it is not our banquet.
It is God’s.
It is at God’s invitation that any of us are here.
And it is my hope that, as we are faithful to the message,
many will come to know the love of God in Christ
and that His love will transform their lives.
Who is welcome here?
The bad? Yes … that they might become good.
The good? Yes … that they might become better.
The sinners? Yes … that they might find the way to God.
The saints? Yes … that they might praise God more fully.
The lost? Yes … for all of us long for home.
The found? Yes … that they might become more of what God would have them be.
The young? Yes … that they might have the chance to grow, as Jesus did,
“in wisdom, and stature, and in favour with God and man.”
The old? Yes … that they might know His nearness.
For this is God’s house …
it is a house of prayer and praise …
a place of refuge and salvation …
for any and all who will come.
And what difference can it make? What difference does it make?
Many who long to find their way, who long for a song to sing, find it.
Years ago, a beloved member of the church,
who had given so much in faith to the church she loved, died.
She had given her life, in trusting faith, to her Saviour.
She had reverenced him in her life.
She had honoured him in her worship.
She had served him in her labour.
She had praised him as a member of the choir
long before I became her minister.
And now, old age and failing health had taken her.
Before her death, while I was in hospital,
I mentioned to a dear and old friend of hers,
a former soloist at the church,
what a difficult time she was having
and that I didn’t think she was long for this world.
I suggested what a visit from him might mean to her. He took it to heart.
One afternoon he went up to the hospital to visit with her.
When he entered the room she was alone.
He sat at her bedside and spoke with her for a moment.
But she was quite low, as he told me later,
and her responses were limited.
Then, taking the hand of this 85 year-old woman,
this man, himself in his 80’s,
began to sing softly the hymns and songs of faith
they had both sung and loved as members of the choir.
The music they had both found in God’s love for them
gave him a song to sing, for her.
There, in that hospital room,
were two people for whom God’s love in Christ had made the difference.
In those tender moments, rich in love and abundant in grace,
they feasted at God’s banquet and were filled.
Let it be said of this church
that such a faith is proclaimed here - always.
Let it be said of this church
that such a welcome is given in Christ’s name
for any and all who seek God’s grace.
Let it be said
for all who enter here,
for all who are guests at the banquet,
that they have been given a song to sing …
that their lives have been filled with the fullness of God.
Let this church be such a place.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
