The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 12, 2006

Texts: Isaiah 49:5-7/Philippians 3:7-16

Title: “Restoration?”

              Last Sunday before church I walked a block from our apartment to Prytania Street to watch the runners pass at mile sixteen of the Mardi Gras Marathon.  I have run in many races, but only rarely have taken a place at the side of the road to watch one.  I was immediately struck by the great variety of people I saw on the course. 

              It was quite a sight to see, women and men, some very young, some quite old, some by appearance obviously people who were seasoned runners, others, quite frankly, looked a lot less seasoned, their appearances suggesting that they spend more time on the couch than on the track. As I watched the group pass, the faces of some frozen in a grimace of determination and concentration, the faces of others betraying the pain they were encountering with each stride.  Most surprising to me, however, were the large numbers of runners who traded smiles and light hearted banner with the race spectators as they ran.  Being a person who fits more into the grimace of determination and concentration class of runner, this latter group was a definite curiosity.

              As a runner it was a very different experience to stand and watch others run, particularly a challenging distance like twenty-six miles.  While I am pretty much in touch with my own motivation for running, I couldn’t help but wonder what motivated all the others to run, particularly those who looked most out of place on the course.

              After all, you don’t get much for your seventy-five dollar marathon entry fee; a tee shirt and a medallion, free water, Gatorade, and a banana.  Most, it is safe to say, don’t run marathons for a free banana or a tee shirt. Yet something motivated those runners to be out there, even though they knew they stood no chance of winning the race, even though they knew much of the four and one half, five, or six hours they spent on the course would be physically painful and emotionally depleting.

              Considering the return on investment the runner might expect from subjecting his or her body to twenty-six miles of abuse, the observer would have to conclude that the marathon entrant was cheated. But was that entrant cheated?  We might easily conclude that, yet it is unlikely that all of the thousands who ran the race were duped.  Each person who ran did so expecting something in return, the personal satisfaction of knowing he or she had accomplished the feat, bragging rights at the office, or to win a bet with a doubter just to name three.

              While there may have been a few masochists bent on punishing themselves in the crowd, most of the good people who lined up to run last Sunday did so anticipating some pay back, some kind of reward. Rewards, of course, motive.  They are goals to aim at, aspirations to fulfill. The runner’s real and substantial goal is the finish line, and trust me, that finish line is more beautiful than San Francisco bay at sunup to one whose body has been drained by exertion.  Your goal may well be a finish line of a different sort, a sum of money to buy a new house, or money sufficient to send a child or grandchild to a good university.  The striving after rewards is coded in our genes.     

              You and I, baffled, may shake our heads at how people choose to spend their time and their money, but be assured the vast majority know what they are doing. They expect their efforts to repay them in some sort of return, tangible or otherwise.

              There are any number of things that motivate, and you and I could sit down and compose a lengthy list at the drop of the hat. Basic wants and desires do not diverge much from one human being to the next. There is much data to suggest that the same pertains in the realm of religious commitments.  Though religious commitments get acted out in many and various ways the helps people seek through their religious faith is quite consistent from one religion to another.

              We Christians stand in a tradition of belief where religious commitments are focused on essentially one reward.  We Christians aspire to a life beyond the grave, for that hope in which we stand as brothers and sisters of Jesus who surrendered his life on the cross, but was triumphantly resurrected defeating the powers of sin and death in which creation was bound.

              Paul dismissed all other aspirations in his life that he join Jesus in the life beyond the grave. “Yet whatever gains I had [Paul writes to the church at Philippi], these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”  Paul lived his life astride two worlds, bound by two separate commitments.  In a very real sense Paul wrote from the standpoint of one who had already been resurrected, who had crossed from death to life. Yet in solidarity with the people of Philippi and the other churches he founded and nurtured into life, he felt obligated to meet his fellow believers on their turf, so as to share the treasure Christ had shared with him.

              “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  Paul was bold to declare that nothing he could achieve in his life, no reward to which he could hope to aspire, would sufficiently compensate him for the loss of Christ. Yet though his commitment was firmly set, Paul could not rest so long as others were deprived of the knowledge he had attained. 

               In eloquence seldom matched in his writings, Paul writes, “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own [the resurrected life]; but this one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  We might paraphrase Paul this way, “you may be at different places in the marathon, friends, but be assured I am right there with you, running at your side.”  He goes on in that same reassuring tone with his fellow runners, “Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.”  Again, permit another paraphrase, “you may well be at that point in the race when your legs are feeling strain and your breath is coming hard, but rejoice, you have more miles behind you than lie ahead of you.”

                “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ.”  And press on Paul did, against great obstacles Paul did.  The members of Holly Wilson’s class who are studying Paul’s letter to the Philippians can tell you that the letter was very likely composed while he was serving out a sentence in a Roman jail cell. To be united with Christ, however, was a prize of sufficient worth to negate any and all obstacles his adversaries might place in his way. 

                 It has been proven time and time again that people will endure great hardship if the reward to which they aspire offers the compensation they are seeking.  The Apostle Paul is the case in point. Each of us has endured stress and strain, perhaps in some cases substantial hardship, to obtain a prize or goal to which we aspired. 

               Before August 29 the stress and strain that may have attached to our walk with God was something we bore individually. There was no one single preoccupying issue that tested us as a faith community. Last year, as in the years preceding it, congregational life at Lakeview settled into the well worn groove that the liturgical calendar provides, Advent, followed by Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. The storm, of course, changed all that. 

              The storm has given us a goal, a prize of a special sort, to which to aspire.  The goal, the prize to which I refer, is normalcy. Before the storm who would have thought that normalcy would become the source of our most dedicated strivings?  There isn’t a day when I am in Lakeview or in the devastated neighborhoods surrounding this church when I don’t fantasize about the wound being closed, and life restored to normalcy. 

            The word restore has several synonyms, among them reinstate, re-establish, bring back, and return.  The word restore, of course, has an ancient pedigree in the history of the people of God. God, through his prophets, was always in the act of restoring things.  After the flood, God restored things, repopulating the earth.  After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, God restored things, bringing the exiles home to rebuild the temple.  When Israel failed to heed God, God restored things.  God would not forsake Israel, not so long as he could restore things.

              Almost immediately after it was safe to re-enter Lakeview we put together a committee and we charged it to restore things.  The restoration committee, under strong leadership from Roy Perrin, went to work. At the very outset of its work, however, some began to challenge the wisdom of using the term “restoration” to describe the work the storm gave us, basing their argument on the fact that we could not restore our church to what it was. I heard that critique, but, frankly dismissed it, as an argument over semantics.  I believed that “restoration” was as serviceable a term as any to attach to our efforts. I have since had second thoughts on two grounds.

             First, even as our physical plant is cleaned out, mold killed, and electricity, very long in coming, is now once again available, many practical questions have arisen concerning how the space we once used can best be configured to accommodate our present and future needs.  If the term “restoration” implies that we can, or should, put things back the way they were, that in the minds of most of us, will just not happen.

               Though we may prize normalcy, and establish normalcy as our goal, your church staff and session have become increasingly aware that normalcy cannot be achieved on the cheap, by simply using the resources at hand to build back as soon as possible. If a return to normalcy, however we may wish to define it, is our goal, it will not be the normalcy we once enjoyed.  That normalcy was flooded out and is gone.  No, insofar as our buildings are concerned, and our ministry as a whole is concerned, we won’t be restoring, but rather redefining.  Your ministers and session are committed to using all available resources, and we include every member of the congregation as an available resource, to research how our physical plant might best be configured to meet needs of the congregation we have become in the community we have become.  Lakeview, if you haven’t already done so, I would ask you to complete the questionnaire we placed in the bulletin the last two weeks.

                   I have hand second thoughts about the aptness of the term “restoration” to describe efforts we are committing to our physical plant, but it I believe the term “restoration” is even less valuable for describing our aims in ministry.  The past, insofar as existed before August 29, is obviously finished and gone. Many of our members are gone, not to return to New Orleans, among our losses four, and perhaps five, of the sixteen elders who were serving on the session before the storm.  The budget and finance committee has prepared a prepared a budget for 2006 that reflects our new realities. 

                Though we are providing Christian Education, our population of children and youth has been dramatically reduced, as has the adult population who participated in adult education.  We have consolidated our church committees, our worship and fellowship committees working cooperatively, mission and service and church growth also working in tandem. On choir has been decimated, our organist and music director furloughed.   Bottom line, we will reoccupy our facility on Canal Boulevard a congregation approximately one half to two thirds the size we were prior to August 29.   

                 Though we may prize normalcy, we are challenged in our current environment, this applies to our Carrollton friends as well, we are challenged to forgo restoring anything, and instead to preserve an openness to the new ways we may be God’s servant community in the new Lakeview and the new New Orleans that will emerge from the current chaos the storm made of our lives.

The other day I had a call from one of the more recent members of our congregation to inform me that he and his wife will be moving to Tampa where she has taken a new job.  Citing his age and the prevailing uncertainty that is so pervasive in New Orleans, he and his wife decided to put their gutted house up for sale and move on.  People by the hundreds have made that decision.

                 While there are many people who say they are committed to rebuilding New Orleans, the losses our community has sustained have been enormous.  Life as we knew is gone, the normalcy we so prize unobtainable.  But this is the context in which we find ourselves, this is the context in which God calls us to minister.  We can pine away for what was, or we can recommit ourselves to the prize Paul so eloquently, so passionately, talked about. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, [we] press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

                  You and I didn’t sign on for a marathon, but that is exactly what lies ahead of us.  You and I have and will continue to entertain doubts about our ability to finish this race. We have and we will continue to disagree about our race strategy.  Our stamina has already been tested, and will continue to be tested.

                 No, we didn’t sign on for a marathon, the terrain is unfamiliar, indeed, threatening, but we are here, and the prize is out there.  We can stand and wait for normalcy to return, an unlikely prospect, or we get on the course and run.

PRAYER

                Most gracious and eternal God, whose eternal plan embraces all things living, giving order to life through a plan we humans are powerless to contradict, we stand in awe before you, but at the same time are baffled and frustrated by mysteries we are unable to penetrate.  While you, O God, are the source of light, events in this world cast a shadow on your light leaving us to doubt that you are present when terrorists prey on the innocent, when the vulnerable are duped and cheated, when the life of a young child is ended through the carelessness of a drunk at the wheel.  We stand in awe before you, but like those who have gone before us, awe does not equate to obedience, awe does equate to love.  In your mercy forgive our repeated failures to obey and love as you require.  Forgive us for insisting on our personal prerogatives while ignoring the more legitimate grievances of those marginalized as a result of poverty, race, or education.

                    Lord, there is much fault to find in the way our city, state, and national leaders have responded to this city’s catastrophe. Each day brings some new revelation, exposes some new failure, documents some new travesty with which are citizens are forced to content.  We impatiently look for some positive sign that this living nightmare will one day end.  Yet even as we list our justified grievances, we are aware that no amount of complaining or finger pointing will change anything.  Grant us wisdom sufficient to cope with uncertainty, O God, and courage to use the gifts you have given us affect positive change.    

                   Lord, even as revulsion spreads throughout the world’s Moslem community over the publication of inflammatory cartoons, we acknowledge the justified grievance of a religious community, but we also acknowledge the counterclaim made by members of the press that their freedom of expression must not be abridged. The competing interests of groups and factions proliferate, often provoking bloodshed and violence.  In your mercy help those who work for world peace discovery new ways to resolve conflict.  Protect and preserve those who have courageously spoken out against tyrants and their lackies.  Even as the voice of moderation is often drowned out by the radical and zealot, we know that the moderate position has many advocates.  Strengthen the ranks of those who seek moderation, who reject violence as an answer.

                     Living God, the church in New Orleans faces imposing, unprecedented, challenges.  Though we yearn for normalcy, we confront realities that cannot be ignored. Skills that once proved so useful, do not suit in our new circumstances. As we become more accustomed to the realities with which we currently contend, help us discover new resources of intellect and imagination to bring to these realities.  Inasmuch as restoration is not really an option, help us to identify strategies for ministry that do in fact exist.

                   Present in our gathering today, O God, we pray that our worship may be pleasing in your sight. You know the thoughts we entertain, the guilt we harbor, the hopes we cherish.  You do not reject us, though by our words and deeds we so often reject you.  In your mercy heal us, restore our broken parts, that with body, mind and spirit may bring honor and glory to your name. We have entered an unprecedented time of trial and testing, empower us to run this race in the strength you provide.  

                 In confidence born of faith and experience we lift these prayers in your blessed name, O Christ, praying the prayer you taught us…