The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for May 4, 2008

Texts: Psalm 29/1 John 1

Title: “Getting to Bedrock”

              I exist, a mass of encoded genes dictating the color of my skin, my height  and body type, my susceptibility to certain diseases or developmental defects, my ability to reason and solve problems, a mass of encoded genes dictating how fast I can run, or how accomplished I might become in singing or playing a musical instrument.

                I exist. I occupy space.  I am a member of a particular family. I have activities I enjoy.  I have memories, though some I find are fading at a rate that alarms me.  I have hopes and aspirations.  I have disappointments.  I am the product of experiences and events that have shaped me. 

              I exist.  One of a kind, the likes of me has never existed before I took up residence on this earth.  One of a kind, the likes of me will never exist again after I leave this earth. 

              I exist, and that I am aware I exist is about as basic as it gets. A bedrock belief is what you might call it.

If you engage me in conversation you will find that I harbor certain beliefs and values I count as bedrock.  Those beliefs and values might emerge in a conversation involving any number of subjects, politics, economics, music, sports, or any of a number of additional subjects. 

              Inasmuch as electoral politics is so much in the news, I can say that the beliefs and values I uphold as bedrock in the domain of politics originated at home as I listened to my parents express their political views and their reasons for holding them. Acquaintance with our nation’s political culture gained in high school civics and in courses in college, helped to further establish my beliefs.  News magazines and other media, books treating our nation’s history, the biographies of past presidents and conversations in which I have engaged, or conversations I have overheard, have further solidified by political beliefs and values into bedrock.

                I am aware that some of you may not have cultivated bedrock beliefs in the area of electoral politics, or for that matter have formed beliefs or convictions concerning any of the topics where I am intellectually and emotionally invested.  But you may well have developed some strong bedrock beliefs in other areas, childrearing, higher education, HIV/AIDS, international relations, health care or the nation’s infrastructure.

              There are formative events and experiences to which each of us can point when discussing our bedrock beliefs.  The beliefs of a friend of mine concerning our nation’s infrastructure emerged in his home.  He was the son of a civil engineer who was responsible for maintaining our town’s waste treatment plant. 

One day his dad arranged for our middle school class to visit that facility.  I still remember how animated the man became when he talked about waste treatment.  I’m glad that someone can be enthused about such a topic, aren’t you?  To make a long story short, my friend followed his dad into the civil engineering, ecology and our nation’s growing green movement are subjects on which he can expound for hours.

                Bedrock beliefs are often born out of formative experiences in the home, in this case experience with a father who maintained strong convictions about waste treatment, experience that ultimately led my friend to follow his father’s vocational path.

              Bedrock beliefs, of course, may arise in opposition to what was learned or what was modeled in the home. Laurie Granieri, a newspaper columnist in New Jersey, says that her father, “tried to teach [her] about the importance of hard work, long hours and dedication to a career… [she remembers what he unintentionally taught] when he arrived home from work for the last time and crawled up the stairs.”

              Granieri’s father was suffering with liver cancer and a diabetic ulcer when he arrived home from work that last time, but he had insisted on traveling to meet a business commitment he had earlier made.  She writes, “He probably earned a lot of money that day, and he paid the price; He returned to the hospital soon after and was dead within three months, at age 58.           

              The life her father lived, and his death at that relatively young age, made a deep imprint on Laurie Granieri’s life. Her value system as it relates to career was fundamentally shaped in opposition to the example her father left her.  She writes, “I believe in leaving work at five o’clock and enjoying sunsets.” For Laurie Granieri that’s bedrock.

              Beliefs become bedrock through life experience, through engagement with events and circumstances that challenge us to respond and make decisions. Staying with politics, my earlier example, I would say my consciousness as a political person, and from there my bedrock beliefs, developed through a series of experiences that brought my political beliefs into focus.  Through those experiences I was challenged to decide what policies or values I could affirm or reject. One does not assume a neutral position insofar as our bedrock beliefs are concerned, for our bedrock beliefs fundamentally shape our identities.

              In these weeks after Easter leading up to Pentecost Sunday, which is next Sunday incidentally, many of our Scripture lessons focus on the identity crisis Jesus’ disciples faced as they attempted to establish themselves absent the inspiration and example of the Lord. Always fearing arrest, and uncertain how the gospel of Jesus would sound coming from their mouths, the disciples believed in the vision Jesus had placed before them, but their role in sustaining the vision was not established on bedrock, at least not in the beginning. That would come, but only as they learned to present Jesus to the world in their own words.

              Do not think for a minute that Peter or the other disciples had those words, or the necessary courage to speak them, in the immediate aftermath of the Lord’s death and resurrection.  Peter and the others would find their own voices as they were challenged to reconstruct their faith after Jesus was gone.  They found their voices as they attempted to communicate their new born faith to the various audiences they addressed, and by no means were their audiences always receptive. The enemies of Jesus were their enemies.  Furthermore the enemies of Jesus held the power, using their power to undermine, discredit, and jail the disciples whenever and wherever they could.

              The first letter of John from which I earlier read was written in a time when the enemies of Jesus were on the prowl. Persecution would not have been foreign to the person who wrote the letter, nor to the community of which he was a part.  Like Jesus’ disciples, these first Christians were attempting to find their bearings in a world that at many times was more hostile to the message they brought than receptive.

Bedrock beliefs are the byproduct of engagement.  They emerge as we test and refine our beliefs and attitudes in the circumstances in which we happen to find ourselves.

           The bedrock beliefs to which the Christians surrounding the author of that first letter of John subscribed emerged as they attempted to communicate their beliefs regarding the gospel in opposition to former members of their community who had broken away. They were bold to declare as I earlier read, “We [being the members of the faith community who took Jesus’ gospel to the world] [we] declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…” Note, please, the verbs being used, “we have heard,” “we have seen,” “we have looked at,” and “we have touched.”  No equivocating at all concerning how their bedrock beliefs had been acquired.

           We find ourselves at a time in our church when we are being challenged to name the bedrock beliefs that support our personal faith. It is a challenge your session embraced on behalf of the congregation when we entered our consultation on church transformation several weeks ago.

           Two weeks ago we used a period of time after worship to focus on bedrock beliefs we, the members of this congregation, individually hold. Bedrock belief was defined as follows: “A bedrock belief is a deep faith conviction that gives us hope.” Some of those bedrock beliefs are posted on the “rock wall” outside our library. Some have been reproduced for our bulletin cover this morning.    

             Take a look at that cover and you will find a list of bedrock beliefs that include the following: perhaps, the most basic of all, “God is Love.”  “If God is for us who can be against us?”  “Do good, love justice, and walk humbly with the Lord.”  “God is with me always.  His strength sustains me.”  “I can do all things through God who strengthens me.”  “God is my rock and my foundation.” That is a sampling.  We are asking each of you to submit a statement of what you would regard to be your bedrock belief or beliefs.  We will add it to our rock wall.   

            Many of us who shared our bedrock belief two weeks ago did so quite readily.  “God is love, that’s bedrock for me.”  “His strength sustains me, that’s bedrock for me.”  “I am a child of God, that’s bedrock for me.” We make those declarations with great confidence, but upon what personal experiences are those declarations based?

               The bedrock beliefs of the disciples of Jesus and the author of that first letter of John, were established on what “they had heard,” “what they had seen,” “what they had looked at,” and “what they had touched.” So, what about us?  What have we heard, seen, looked at, touched that figures into those personal declarations of ours that God is love, that God is a rock and foundation?  Can we name personal experiences where God represented himself to us as love, a rock, or a foundation? 

              We have a vocabulary for taking about God and Jesus but is it our own, or is it borrowed? How much time in any given day do we actually think about God, or talk about God?  When was the last time you shared a bedrock belief about God with another person? It is my sense that a great many of us have seldom given much thought to our bedrock beliefs except in times of extremity, a death in the family, a personal crisis or illness when our need has been greatest.

             Here’s a question.  Are we really comfortable about talking about our bedrock beliefs at all?  Do we really want to make the effort to go deeper?  These questions are, in my judgment, becoming more pertinent and pressing around here as we move forward in transforming this church into the vital and visionary church many of us pray it can become.

              Getting to bedrock is a journey, is a process of cutting away, or hammering through obstacles, to get to a deeper level of personal faith. If you deem it worth your while to do that, I challenge you to do this.  Identify a belief that you believe is bedrock for you, and find a time in the coming week to share that with someone.  Risk exploring where such a conversation might take you, it might well take you to a place you have never been before.  It may take the person with whom you relate to a place they have never been before. Know this, God will be present.

               Getting to bedrock as a spiritual activity is similar in many respects to what the miner does in mining for coal or minerals in the earth. It is digging and clearing away, followed by more digging and clearing away.  It is not armchair activity by any means, it is rigorous and demanding activity.  But consider the rewards, friends.  Consider the rewards.  For starters a deeper awareness of God, and new opportunities to convert that awareness into a life rich in new possibilities and hope.

           PRAYER

           In this moment of quiet at peace, O God, we are aware of things that escape us most of the time.  We are aware of our breathing, and the steady movement of our lungs to receive the oxygen upon which we rely.  We are aware of our posture, the pews and chairs requiring our bodies to adapt to their contours. We are aware of the proximity of others seated near us, their coughs, their movement as they settle themselves. We are aware of random thoughts moving through our minds as we attempt to focus our concentration. We are aware of the passage of time, its movement more deliberate than we are accustomed to.

            In this moment of quiet at peace, O God, we are self-aware to an elevated degree, perhaps even open to you to an elevated degree. Use this moment of quiet at peace, O God, to confirm your presence among us.  Bless us, for we have come here to be blessed. And having blessed us reveal how we can be a blessing to the world, being with the neighbor nearest at hand.

               O God, there is much we do not know about you, much that requires a patient and committed quest. There is much we do not know, and we confess that we lack the patience, lack the commitment to make the quest.  We proclaim our faith, but too often it is unexamined, unexplored.  We fail to allocate time to get to bedrock, confessing our faith in words unsupported by effort to investigate what the words really mean.  Deep calls to deep, but we decline invitations to go deep, for the affairs of life demand all the energy we can spare. Lord, in your mercy forgive us for refusing your banquet, for allowing our worldly affairs to consume us.    

                Lord, counselor, abide with those who manage our nation’s affairs.  Grant wisdom to our president and his advisors.  Grant wisdom to those who are conducting the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grant wisdom to the members of Congress and the judiciary in their capacity to provide checks and balances on executive power. 

             Grant wisdom to those who attempting to find ways to stabilize our economy, on those attempting to find solutions to our crisis in health care.  Grant wisdom to those who are attempting to reform our public school system, particularly the dysfunctional school systems that serve racial minorities and the poor. Grant wisdom to those who are attempting to find ways and means to prevent ecological disaster.

             Grant wisdom to those who are seeking new ways to proclaim and sing the faith.  Grant wisdom to those who are called to lead the Presbyterian Church USA.  Grant wisdom to pastors and sessions as they lead the congregations of the Presbyterian Church USA.

           God in your mercy, grant wisdom, even as you forgive our foolish ways. Grant wisdom, but also the depth of compassion to reach those who are challenged by the crisis of poverty, disease, injustice, or prejudice.

               Hear our prayers for wisdom, but also hear our prayers for these special needs and concerns we bring.  We pray for this church as we face the challenges of getting to bedrock.  We pray for the churches of this city struggling to make a difference in lives even as their membership numbers and resources erode.  We pray for those engaged in battles with illness, praying for those we love, for Rudy, Pam, Mary Ann, Joyce, Shane, Amelie