Mark 9:30-37
I have a confession to make. I got hopelessly lost the first time I tried to find this church despite careful directions. I also got lost on my way home as I tried to remember John’s suggested route back to the Casco Bay Bridge. Then a third time I got turned around even with the guidance of my husband who is an excellent navigator! “Was this some kind of message from God,” I wondered – perhaps a metaphor for what lay ahead?
No sooner had I posed that question to myself, I started to laugh realizing that the message – the metaphor was very clear. It was all about change.
Change in my own life as I learned a new interim situation, a new direction to head up 95, a new schedule, new responsibilities, new faces and stories, new traditions and unfamiliar church rhythms.
And change in your lives as you have bid farewell to Elsa who ministered among you for the last five years, and the coming huge change when John will retire after almost 24 years of walking with you in faithful, powerful ministry.
Now, I know there are some in our midst this morning who thrive on change. Some of you are energized by it; the constant transformation fuels your creativity. And most of us know, whether we like to admit it or not that change is a fundamental part of the fabric of life, whether it is the movement of a day from dawn to dusk and back to dawn, or the cycle of the seasons, or all the changes that come to us as we move from cradle to grave. Yet for all the prevalence of change, for all its inevitability, many in our midst find change difficult, myself included even though I believe I’m called to work with transitions. Change unsettles us because we’re more comfortable with what’s known and familiar. Change makes us feel lost because we no longer have the same sense of security and stability. Change can also be disorienting as we realize we are not in control!
However, regardless of how we feel about change, transitions are an integral part of the DNA of people of faith! If we look back to the earliest sacred stories of our faith history, they are all about change and transition. From leaving the beauty and security of the Garden to being enslaved in Egypt to wandering in the wilderness in search of a home to trying to be faithful but turning away time and again distracted by promises of an easier life or a less demanding faith, – as people seeking to follow God, we have been on a journey of one change after another. Generation after generation, loss after loss, from one prophet to another king, from Jerusalem to exile and back again, God’s people kept living into change until the greatest change of all – when Jesus lived among us and we experienced divine love and grace in an intimate embodiment as never before. Jesus who changed so many understandings about God, about life, about mercy and peace and justice.
Yet those changes instituted by Jesus, especially in terms of what it meant to live and to follow God were and are often hard to understand and accept! Bless the disciples for showing us so clearly that even they who knew Jesus better than anyone, who spent their time learning from him, serving with him, didn’t always “get” what Jesus was trying to teach! Nor did they always like the changes he preached. As we heard from the gospel lesson, when Jesus told the disciples a second time about his upcoming death, about his embracing his call to suffer in love but that it would not be the end, the disciples wanted nothing to do with this change in their understanding of a Messiah!
Nor were the disciples willing to change their deeply cherished feelings about their own power and influence. They had no intention of giving up the notion that Jesus as Messiah would secure greatness for them.
Jesus, however, knowing their reluctance to change, quietly and very simply put a small child in their midst, offering the disciples a new direction – one that embodied the wisdom that greatness isn’t found in power and status is not conferred by position, but through service.
And remember, while in our experience children are precious and valued; not so in Jesus’ time. Children had no worth or rights besides being a pair of hands to work and earn money for the family. For Jesus to have chosen such a radical change from popular practice was shocking.
In the disciples’ quest for security and for greatness, in their comfort with the familiar and their unwillingness to change, they stopped listening to Jesus and were unable to understand that what he was teaching was far better than they could imagine.
In our own seeking of comfort in the familiar, in our fear of the unknown or anxiety about the future, where have we, too, stopped listening for God’s new direction? Where have we stopped trusting the Spirit?
Because the good news is that for all the ways walking with Jesus leads us to stretch and grow and change and even let go, the one thing that never changes is Jesus’ assurance that we always shall have all the direction we need! Whether it is the transitions in our personal lives we may be undergoing, or the transitions in the life of this congregation, as we continue to discern the Spirit’s calling, the way will become clear! Even if at times it feels like we are lost, or have taken a wrong turn, or need to try a different direction. Even when we set out not knowing where we will eventually wind up, the Spirit is our constant travel companion inviting us to trust the journey, to be patient, and to be open to surprise, joy and delight along the way!
I hope we can consider the year ahead like this. Back when GPSs were brand new and travelers were using them for the first time, author Barbara Brown Taylor tells of renting a car with one and setting off to a retreat center in the middle of nowhere. Things were going along fine as the voice offered direction until it said, “Approaching left turn .5 miles,” and the exit was clearly on the right side of the road. “There’s your exit!” Barbara’s passenger cried. “But the GPS says it’s on the left!” Barbara replied, caught in the grip of an existential crisis. Should she trust the voice that spoke to her from the eye in the sky, or should she believe her own eyes? The solid concrete wall on her left finally convinced Barbara to risk autonomy. She swerved across two empty lanes and squeaked onto the exit ramp.
They braced themselves for the GPS to tell them they had turned the wrong way. Instead, there was silence. And, as they completed the 360 degree cloverleaf, they realized that the eye in the sky could see what they couldn’t, and had given them exactly the direction they needed.
Dear friends, may you and I trust in this Holy GPS whose direction is sure, and who can see what we cannot always view from our often limited perspective. Let us use wisely this eye in the sky who has lovingly entrusted us to the earth, and called us to set out on the journey. And, may we trust that with the Spirit giving us guidance, our travel with each other will teach us everything we need to know.
Amen.