Sermons

Children of the Dream

John Wilkinson                               Third Presbyterian Church
July 17, 2005                                 Genesis 28:10-22

Allow me several extended invitations as we begin our conversation this morning. Our annual Vacation Bible School held at New Life Presbyterian Church begins tomorrow evening. Details are located in the bulletin. Attend if you are able. Volunteer if you are able. This is an important way to help give witness to our commitment to the Upper Monroe community, where we have invested considerable energy and financial resources. It is also a wonderful opportunity for us to nurture our relationship with New Life Presbyterian Church, which is so important in many ways. Stewart and M.J. Pattison, whose pastoral leadership has been so valuable, are moving to the Albany area, and Vacation Bible School, along with things like the Upper Monroe charette, tutoring and the Corner Place and Interfaith Hospitality Network, present ways to solidify and grow our mutual outreach.

Also, as you’ve no doubt noticed, on August 6 and 7, we will hold our second annual book sale concurrent with the Park Avenue Festival, as well as offer our parking lot to festival goers. Volunteers are needed for both these efforts, which not only seek to raise needed funds for our building fund, but certainly raise our profile in the community. Also, we will again have a booth at the festival, where we will share information about the church’s programs and invite people to join us for worship and other activities. If you can work at the sale, please contact Jan or Jim Chisholm. If you can sit at the booth, please contact Janet Jones-Brower.

And finally, please do remember the group of travelers heading to Britain this coming Saturday. We are looking forward to a wonderful experience. We are also very mindful of the situation in London. We offer an extra measure of prayer for safety in Europe. Not merely for our own traveling safety, but for the sake of all who live in that part of the world and in that great city. We pray also for the choir’s musical witness as it sings God’s praise in St. Paul’s Cathedral and elsewhere, and for a wonderful and powerful experience for all, singers and non-singers. The choir has expressed its gratitude to the congregation for its support in so many ways, financially and beyond. The continued support of your prayers is very, very welcome.

Let us pray. Eternal and gracious God, vouchsafe the group traveling to the United Kingdom with your traveling mercies. Keep them safe and richly bless their experience, and keep us connected as a church community even across many miles. And now, O God, open your word unto us, and transform us again with your vision. For we pray in Christ’s name, who makes all things new. Amen.

***

Consider a world that seems intent on spinning apart. In our city, 12-year-old Fred Lewis was buried on Friday, the victim of senseless, tragic gun violence. Even as our outrage grows, so does, it seems, our inability to stop senseless and tragic acts of violence that threaten the very fabric of our community.

Our nation continues along its red state – blue state ways. And now battle lines are seemingly being drawn, and huge amounts of money are being raised, for what may be a very contentious Supreme Court nomination.

We have mentioned London already. What more can be said, except the deeply nagging and troubling feeling that this is the way it’s going to be for a very long time, an era of suicide bombers, and the seeming resignation of the “not if, but when” inevitability of such an act happening on U.S. soil.

Every one of these situations suggesting deeper and deeper rifts in the human family, rifts based on religious creed, on skin color, on access to money.

And when we turn to the church for some sort of vision, we see an institution at odds with itself on matters large and small. Beginning tomorrow morning, the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church will meet in Dallas, where the weather, I am sure, will be cool and dry. It is an important meeting for us, in that we will consider fully and publicly drafts of our report. The pressure is intensifying. Many are hopeful, including myself. But many are cynical and pessimistic about our ability, or the ability of any group, to help hold such a divided and diverse body together.

And yet to all of this, to a conflicted community and world, to a contentious church, there is an alternate way, a better way. We remember the story of Jacob’s ladder from our childhood. Genesis itself it an odyssey of covenant – God establishing relationship with a people, and the people again and again demonstrating the fullness of their human shortcomings by breaking it.

In the proximity of this morning’s text, Jacob cheats his brother Esau out of the paternal blessing of Isaac and there is great consternation about marriage and progeny and the continuation of the people.

Jacob travels to Haran, ostensibly to find a wife. On the way, he stops to rest, and he finds a rock, and he goes to sleep, and he has a dream. And what a dream! A ladder to heaven. And God’s voice booms out – a promise of land and offspring. But it is more than that -- more than a dream about real estate and a labor pool. More than that.

It is this vision, to which we must cling today: “…your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

That is the vision to which we must cling today, a vision of people-hood and blessing, a covenantal promise between God and the people. (Parenthetically, this theme has been important as we Presbyterians have sought to be in relationship with our Jewish sisters and brothers, longer than the last few months but including this most recent time of tension. The issue is the continuity of God’s covenant relationship with the Jewish people, and how that continuity continues to matter in light of the coming of Christ and the establishment of Christianity. Our understanding has been that the relationship continues, and is simply not subsumed by the coming of Christ, but it is a very complex and at times delicate discussion.)

Or, perhaps it is not so parenthetical. The vision is for a people to bless all the world. Genesis seems not to have an understanding of the exclusivity or inclusivity of such a blessing. Simply this – all the families of the earth shall be blessed. All the families. All.

· In Rochester, that would seem to include poor black families as well as white families with resources, so that things like education and freedom from fear are realities for every child.

· In the Presbyterian church, that would seem to include conservative communities and progressive communities and all who would seek much more faithful ways to live together in blessing.

· In the world, that would seem to include a return to this very fundamental text, shared in many ways by the three Abrahamic faith traditions.

How we live this vision in a seeming age of terror will be both a test of our faith and a testimony to it.

This past week, a group of British religious leaders, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, stood on the steps of Lambeth Palace and made a statement. Included in that group were a Roman Catholic cardinal, a Protestant minister, a rabbi and an Islamic sheikh. They said in part: “We want to signal the common ground on which we stand as faith leaders, and to reaffirm the values we uphold at this time of sorrow and pain. It is vital, when many will be feeling anger, bewilderment and loss, to strengthen those things we hold in common and to resist all that seeks to drive us apart. Central to what we share as people of faith is a belief in God's compassionate love for us. It is a love that compels us to cherish not to disfigure our common humanity.”

They continued: “We commend and embrace the continuing efforts to build a Britain in which different communities—including faith communities—can flourish side by side on the basis of mutual respect and understanding. We pledge ourselves to remain true to this goal in word and deed and to work together to make of it an enduring reality. As we do so, we draw hope and comfort from the certainty that in seeking to overcome our own brokenness we will be working with the pattern of God's design for all his children and for the whole human family.”

The trajectories and connections to every instance of human brokenness could not be more clear. And all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Blessed by overcoming our brokenness and working with the pattern of God’s design for the whole human family.

William Sloan Coffin wrote that “The new survival unit is no longer the individual nation; it's the entire human race and its environment. This newfound oneness is only a rediscovery of an ancient religious truth. Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize."

I believe that, and I believe we are called to believe it together. That God will not leave us. That God keeps God’s promises, and that when God makes a covenant, God is faithful and sure.

That every rung goes higher, higher, and higher and higher yet, until we reach that place where fighting will be no more, and all will have enough, more than enough from God’s abundance, and we will sit at table, and live in God’s love, children of that dream, children of God. Amen.