The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for April 13, 2008

Texts: Psalm 23/Acts 2:42-47

Title: “Just Looking Around”

              There is a category of shopper who seldom go to the department store, the grocery store, or the hardware store unless they have a specific item, or list of items to purchase. I fit in that category some of the time. 

              There is a second category of shoppers who seldom carry a list, or go to the department store, the hardware, or the grocery with a specific item in mind. I fit in that category most of the time. When I go into the sporting goods store or the department store and am approached by the sales person on those occasions, I will respond to him, or her, “I am just looking around.”  “No, I have nothing special in mind, thank you, I am just looking around.”

              Do you ever walk into a garden shop, a gift shop, a shoe store, “just to look around”? Sure you do.  If all our hours of shopping were ever tallied, the hours the vast majority have spent looking around, would far exceed the hours spent in shopping for and purchasing that specific item we set out to buy. 

              “Nothing special in mind, thank you, I’m just looking around.” Frankly, many of the hours we spend looking around aren’t very fruitful.  In my lifetime I have logged countless hours walking up and down the halls of shopping centers looking around, most of that time in the two weeks prior to Christmas, most of the time overly stressed, looking for that allusive something that will give pleasure, or at least not disappoint, some person on my Christmas list.

              Our “looking around,” of course, is not confined to malls or department stores.  We do a lot of looking around in general. Looking around is in our nature.  It is in looking around, sometimes exhaustively, that we find that perfect gift.  Looking around is the way in which we make discoveries, expand our horizons, and make connections with other persons.

              We look around. Research shows that the average person entering the workplace today will work in five or six varied fields before discovering his or her vocational niche, and may be expected to work for a succession of employers in that field before retirement.  The marketplace is filled with people who are looking around.

              Before we chose our partner for life, or the person we have chosen to spend this portion of our life with, we did a lot of looking around. Looking for that mate was an adventure that may well have taken us to many places. With the arrival of all those computer matching services, looking around has given the candidate for a mate almost unlimited possibilities.   

              The internet has, in general, of course, given us almost unlimited ability to expand our looking around search area.  The young person beginning a career search has resources at his or her fingertips offering nearly unlimited potential.  The same holds for relocation opportunities, housing, or medical care. Vast possibilities are only a couple of computer key strokes away.    

              Our capacity to look around is expanding everyday.  Yet all that looking around does not always satisfy, in fact, it can be downright frustrating, unless at some point we can connect with the object of our looking around.

              My mother owned a small restaurant in Wisconsin for over twenty-five years.  Open twenty-four hours, six days a week, staffing that 10pm-6am shift was the big challenge she faced in keeping the doors of the restaurant open.  She ran ads, made regular calls to the state employment agency, networked far and wide, to find help. One of her biggest triumphs occurred when Alice Banes showed up.  Newly divorced, Alice needed work, and it happened that the hours my mother offered fit her to a tee. For fifteen years my other was spared the frustration of finding a reliable cook who would work a shift no one else wanted. After years of looking around, my mother connected.

              Matching a job opening to a person equipped to fill the job is quite a straightforward transaction.  But what about the case when things get more complicated.  Perhaps it is not a job opening you are hoping to fill.  Perhaps it is not the ideal mate that motivates your search. Perhaps you are looking around for something you cannot identify, and I am not talking about that “special gift for that special someone,” instead I am talking about something much more basic.

              It was Christmas Eve in 1968, and Steve Banko, recovering in Yokota, Japan from wounds suffered in Viet Nam, body full of shrapnel and hands badly burned, wasn’t looking for anything accept a release from pain and the haunting memories of the trauma to which he had so recently been exposed. “Somewhere it was Christmas [Banko writes] but it didn’t feel like it to me—at least not until I heard the music piped through the PA system.

              He continues, “a chorus sang of ‘peace on earth and mercy mild’ and promised ‘God and sinners reconciled.’ Another voice called to ‘let us all with one accord sing praises to our heavenly Lord’ and another, to ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ but heaven and peace seemed so distant to me.” 

              His thoughts were interrupted, Banko states, when he heard a moan from the adjoining bed.  The occupant of the bed was covered from head to foot in a white cast, cutouts for the eyes, nose, and mouth, the only real tip off that the encasement concealed another human being.

              “The soft strains of ‘Silent Night’ were filling the air of the ward when the nurses made final rounds with our medications [Bando writes].  When my nurse approached, I asked her to push my bed closer to the man in the cast.  I reached out and took my friend’s hand as the carol told us ‘all is calm, all is bright.’

              We spoke no words to each other.  None were needed. The carol revived the message of hope and the triumph of love for me.  I felt a slight tightening on my hand and for the first time that Christmas I felt I would survive my ordeal, and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to.”

              What, if anything, was Steve Banko looking for as he lay in that hospital bed? We would have to ask him. He did, however, provide us a clue, didn’t he?  He was looking for a reason to survive, and it was the slight tightening of his hand by the wounded soldier in the adjoining bed that gave it to him. He made a connection that helped him transcend his sense of isolation, and helplessness.

              My dad spent a lot of time looking around, reconsidering options, after ending treatment for alcoholism.  He could always count on his family for support.  He were very proud that he had overcome his addiction, only his disease had taken him to places the rest of us had never been. We could connect with him on a certain level after he got out of treatment, but he needed more than we, his family, could provide. That connection came from another source.

              For the last years of us his life my dad made at least two and often more trips to the local drop in center, a place where recovering alcoholics and drug addicts gathered.  It was a place where he could smoke his pipe, something my mother wouldn’t allow in the house, but more important it was a place he could connect with people who had shared his experience with addiction.  Frankly, he could relate to the people there better than he could relate to me, even though many of them were much younger than he was, my age or even younger. 

              Groups like the one my dad belonged to can be found in many places.  Jesus’ followers formed such a group, only they came together, not to support each other through addiction, but to preserve the memory of the resurrected Lord. That community of Christ’s followers, they were not to become known as Christians until sometime later, was about as tight as they could be, and frankly they needed to be.  Fearing any kind of outbreak of trouble that Jesus’ execution might prompt among his followers, the Roman authorities, with the full support of the Jewish Chief Priest and his cohorts, kept their eyes and ears open for any disturbance Jesus’ followers might hope to create.

              Did the early followers of Christ screen those who sought access to their community?  Did they enforce a set of requirements for entrance? Scripture doesn’t tell us.  We do know, however, that they maintained a level of togetherness common among persons who live in monasteries or convents today.  Upon entering the community newcomers left all claim to personal effects or prerogatives at the door.  It was “all for one and one for all.” 

              “All for one and one for all,” is not the kind of lifestyle to which most of us would easily adapt. Ownership is too deeply engrained. These folks, however, were willing to sell what they had so that they could distribute the proceeds to anyone who had need. Behavior like that is not something we would expect to catch on. How, then, do we account for the fact that people signed up to join, that the number of people who found their way into that community of believers increased “day to day”? This is my theory. I believe there happened to be a lot of people, whether they knew it or not, who happened to be looking around for what those first believers had. You see, inbred as their lifestyle would appear to be from the outside, sharing their meals, their possessions, and their deep commitment to Jesus, those first believers forged a connection with people in the surrounding community, this, I would remind you once again, [this] despite the fact that the name of anyone associated with that community might show up on a blacklist.

            Those first believers were able to forge a connection for one very good reason.  They themselves were connected, sharing possessions, eating together, and praising God in a strong bond of fellowship. Fellowship in the Greek is “koinonia,” which in turn means participation. This fellowship, or koinonia, the first Christians established was based on the mutual participation of the members who were committed to Jesus and seeking any possible means to perpetuate his name. “All for one and one for all.” 

             Our nation, our city, our community is filled with people who are looking around.  They are looking to connect with something beyond themselves that is not being addressed. What they are looking for, friends, is fellowship, though that churchy word would probably never find its way into their vocabulary.  They want to participate; they want to engage, in something that will give their lives meaning, something they haven’t discovered in their work, hobbies, and relationships.

             Christ designed the church with the specific goal of creating fellowship, where people could come together to participate in the grandest adventure of living to which any of us can ever aspire.  He created the church as a means of establishing God’s reign on earth. He was so committed to that aim, that he pledged that wherever two or three were gathered in his name, there his Spirit would be.

              People are looking around for meaning and purpose, and some of those people look in here. They want to connect with something, and very often that something doesn’t have a name, it is undefined. A question and a challenge: how ready are we to allow Christ to do that defining through us? Then, again, do we as a church have another purpose for being? AMEN

PRAYER

             Lord of our lives, in awe and reverence Moses and the children of Israel worshiped you on the holy mount.  You revealed yourself to them with a great display of power and majesty, power and majesty so beyond the bounds of their experience, that the people, fearing for their lives, dared not approach you.

             To stand in the midst of events of such breathtaking proportion is foreign to our experience. But what else, O God, of your nature and works has failed to register on our senses?  What else are we not seeing?  Be thou our vision, O God.  Expand, we pray, the limits of our understanding, that we may know what you have given us to be known about your ways and your providence. From adolescent and unformed belief and trust, O God, nurture us to new levels of maturity.

               O Christ, who gave the church its mission, who shared the gift of koinonia, fellowship with your disciples, grant us clarity in identifying the mission we are to undertake, even as you shape our identity as a fellowship. You have taught us, O Lord, that lip service and good intentions are not what you desire, but rather deeds consistent with your teachings. Given gifts and aptitudes for service, you have charged us to use them.  Even as you chastened and corrected your disciples when they failed to serve, we look to your word and Spirit to chasten and correct us.

             Abide with our nation as we face major challenges. Be with those who are managing the war effort in Iraq, that the people they lead may have confidence that their efforts count for something.  Be with those who are managing our economy that the unprecedented challenges they face may not overwhelm them. Lord, grant courage and strength to those whom the recent economic down has victimized, those who have lost jobs, those who are in danger of losing their homes, and those who have seen their savings erode.

              Be with the flying public whose confidence in the airline industry, and those who monitor its practices, has been undermined. May the safety concerns that have been so recently addressed open a new era of transparency, that travelers may know that the aircraft in which they are flying are safe.

            Lord, we continue to pray for the recovery of our neighborhood and city, grateful for all those who have taken a lead in managing the recovery. We pray that the confidence of those who have chosen to make this city their home may be strengthened as the region’s infrastructure is rebuilt, homes are rebuilt, and new businesses opened. May the city’s elected officials govern wisely, their actions well grounded and decisive.

                Abide, O God, with those whom tragedy has struck.  We pray for Naomi and her family as they attempt to cope. We pray for all those who have seen their lives upended by violence. We pray for those who know little else than violence.

Hear our prayers for those who have brought special needs and concerns to this worship service.  We pray for Mary Ann, Pam, Rudy, Joyce, Shane.  We pray for Amelie.

               We pray for the elders who will be ordained and installed today.  Grant them courage, wisdom and faith as they lead us.  We give thanks for our friends from Davis, CA. and the special offering they have brought us today.

               Holy Spirit, who is ever present to guide and instruct us, form our hearts to love you more perfectly.  Sanctify our prayers and make them holy, even as we seek to be holy after the example of Jesus who taught us…