Horses on Parade VI
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
September 10, 2006
James 2:1-17, Mark 7:24-37
Sunday school for our children is perhaps the most important
thing we do in this place. As you might imagine, our program
is growing and thriving, and, for the moment, we are in need
of several more teachers as we begin this program year. Ponder
this assignment, and if you sense the call to help nurture our
children in this way, contact me, or visit Sue Spaulding at
the Sunday school table during Rally Day following worship.
Over the next several weeks, you will hear quite a bit about
the 50th anniversary of women’s ordination in the Presbyterian
Church. We will be hosting a wonderful conference on Saturday,
September 23 and worship that next day will focus on the anniversary.
I hope many of you will consider attending the conference –
again, you may receive more information during Rally Day. A
part of the conference will be a wonderful photographic exhibit.
It is open this morning, and I would encourage you to view the
photos and read the words. Special thanks to Peg Rachfal for
her wonderful work.
And as has been mentioned, today is Rally Day, timed providentially
to coincide with Ohio State’s convincing defeat of Texas
last night. It is a festive day. We are back, programs are starting
up. A special word of thanks to the Congregational Fellowship
Committee, the Board of Deacons, the Evangelism and Membership
Committee, the Meigs Street Ramblers, for your commitments to
make this day a great one, as well as to the sexton staff.
Information tables and good food await you, and more so, a
chance to connect and re-connect. Connect with people and with
the vision of this place. Perhaps this is the season for you
to invite someone to join us, for worship, a concert, a volunteer
opportunity, a children’s or youth program. More than
ever, the role of religion and the Christian faith in individual
lives and public life matters. We are not the only place, but
we are a place, in an era of big issues and challenges, where
questions can be brought and connection can be sought.
So welcome, and happy Rally Day, welcome old and new, all of
us, fellow travelers. Be sure to wear a nametag, and let the
games begin.
***
If our own memories were prone to forget, the media would not
allow it. That is, we are in the midst of two anniversaries
of two awful things: the one-year anniversary of the arrival
of Hurricane Katrina and the five-year anniversary of the terrible
events of September 11. In some ways, anniversaries are artificial
markers, but they are markers nonetheless.
Like those of you who remember Pearl Harbor or the assassination
of President Kennedy, these events are fresh enough in our collective
memories so that we may remember where we were when we heard,
and our response. The response is important, but also the context
in which that response, or our ongoing response, is made.
I remember five years ago on this day – it was actually
September 9. It was the day when, for a while at least, I discovered
that I wouldn’t need to come up with a new Rally Day sermon
title year after year. You will remember that Horses on Parade
was the Rochester-wide event whereby huge, HUGE, fiberglass
horses were adorned and displayed in public spaces throughout
the city. We had one – Horse Chess-nut. I loved Horses
on Parade for its whimsy and public profile, and I loved even
more so that we had a horse. It announced to all of us, and
to all who passed by, that this church lived beyond its walls
as well as within them, and that this church sought, and seeks,
to be connected to this community.
The whimsical nature of a brightly painted horse underlies
a more profound reality, setting the context. That reality establishes
why we are here, and what we are called to do. So that when
difficult things happen, or wonderful things, for that matter,
we have a place to go, where the nametags of our souls may be
recognized, where our deepest anguish and highest hopes may
be nurtured, where we find a place to turn to be transformed
and a place from which we may depart to go into all the world
as transformed people.
The textbooks of our grandchildren and their grandchildren
will debate the meanings, the political and cultural and economic
meanings of planes flying into buildings and levees breaking,
and we will as well, and rightly so. Every time I get on an
airplane, I do feel different. That may never change.
But what I remember most about September 11 is that people
found their way to houses of worship, to churches. People found
their way to this church. We prayed every night for a week,
and kept on praying, as they did in New York and Washington
and many places.
The reporters always asked about numbers and I always responded
that that was the wrong question. What mattered was that there
was a place for people to go, a place for you and me to go,
a place for regular church goers and a place for people who
stumbled in and were not exactly sure why.
And what I remembered about Katrina was people departing. I’ve
mentioned that for the past year I visited a lot of presbyteries
in our denomination, attended a lot of presbytery meetings.
It is not as fun as it sounds, by the way. And nearly to a one,
east and west, north and south, conservative and liberal, rural
and urban, a presbytery had sent a team to Mississippi or Louisiana
to help out, and were grateful for the opportunity. It is simply
what we do.
We come to church for a while, and then we depart to serve.
We’ve had two trips out of this congregation, with at
least another in the works. It is what we do. We gather to worship
in order that we may depart to serve.
The rhythm of the church is just that. It draws us in in order
to send us out. Heal the sick and be healed, Frederick Buechner
says. Raise the dead and be raised. Gather and depart. Heal
and raise.
* Heal and raise individual bodies and spirits, yours and
mine, to be sure.
* Heal and raise the church itself (which certainly needs both!).
* Heal and raise the city, the world, this post-September 11,
post-Katrina, pre-whatever is coming next world.
On so on this Rally Day, this horse on parade day, I envision
many things for the church, for Third Presbyterian Church, now
approaching 200 years of age but with a calling and vision as
fresh as this morning’s headlines.
I envision a church that digs deeper.
The letter of James reminds us that faith is about the neighbor,
and in this case, the neighbor is the poor one. The poor are
the chosen ones in God’s eye, James asserts, and we have
ignored the poor. And then those well-known lines – what
good is faith if you do not have works? I am not interested
in considering how salvation happens this morning, but I am
deeply interested in this call to active, lively faith. The
church is called to comfort the afflicted, to be sure, but perhaps
also to afflict the comfortable, and James’s reminder
about the poor is a reminder about every difficult issue we
face: poverty, violence, human sexuality, warfare, and the call
to dig deeper in our probing, in our challenging, in our response.
At times our response will be hands-on – feeding and
sheltering. At times our response will be to advocate, advocate
for a position or a decision. But at all times, our response
will be to engage. We dig deeper not to bury ourselves from
the world, but to engage the world more deeply, on behalf of
the faith to which we have been entrusted. If God takes up the
cause of the victims, the poor and the outsiders, then we are
called to do likewise.
And if we are called to dig deeper, are we not also called
to reach wider?
I am always amazed that the gospel writers left this morning’s
accounts from Mark 7 in the Bible. A woman makes a request of
Jesus, and he declines, rejects with hard language. And rather
than walk demurely away, she confronts him with the force of
his own words and he is transformed and she is transformed and
her daughter is transformed.
This community we talk about, and seek, is broader and wider
than we could ever imagine. It is broad and wide enough to include
all of those who the world would leave out: a foreign woman
with a very ill daughter, a deaf man. It is broad and wide enough
to include you and me, which is really quite extraordinary.
Whatever our maladies may be – on the outside and on the
inside – Jesus calls us in, welcomes us in. And we must
do the same.
That means seeking connection with all of those nearby, we
fellow nametag wearers. And it means seeking connection with
all those whose nametags are waiting.
And as we dig deeper and reach wider, we will climb higher.
Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan wrote that: “Of this
I am certain: of our calling to holiness, our vocation to persist,
in season and out in the work of healing others, even as we
seek healing for ourselves…The woman refuses and persists.
And so prevails. And so must we. And so shall we. We must forgive,
deepen our love, persist in our conviction that even the church
can be redeemed from sin. In so fulfilling our vocation, we
ourselves are healed.”
Gather and depart. Heal and raise. Rise and shine. Will all
who are able please stand, and let us pray. God of grace and
God of glory, grant us wisdom and courage for the living of
these days. Amen.
