SERMON
at
Christ Church, Watertown, Connecticut
Pentecost III
June 21, 2009
By
The Rev. Stanley C. Kemmerer, AHC

June takes me back almost 50 years to the Field House at Middlebury College. It was there I would sit at the long table in the metal folding chair, a pen and a blue composition book in front of me, a box of tissues at my side because, for me, it was hayfever season as well. And I and my instructors would learn what I’d learned. It was final exam time. And across our land in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Nine this late May and June it isn’t all that much different: Students are taking final exams.

How oddly appropriate that at this season of the year we, the people of God in this place, should be taking something of an exam of our own. We probably didn’t pay all that much attention over these months that have gone before. We thought, I dare say, that we were just coming to church. We were singing hymns and saying psalms. We were listening to the Word of God. We were eating and drinking the Body and Blood of His only begotten Son. We were drinking coffee and eating cake and exchanging the news of our respective weeks.

We were doing all those things to be sure. While we were doing those things, as part of doing those things, we either were or were not creating a phenomenon that goes by the name “community.” Or something somewhere in between. And now we are handed a blue book in the form of an announcement by our bishop suffragan that our use of this space must come to an end. A line is drawn in the sand. A date is uttered.

How oddly appropriate that the Scripture appointed for our first public worship after being handed this blue book is that appointed for this day:

A lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures about an adolescent and a bully:
The Philistines mustered their troops for war…One of their
shock-troopers stepped out from the Philistine ranks; his name
was Goliath from Gath; he was six cubits and one span tall.
On his head was a bronze helmet and he wore a breastplate
of scale armor; the breastplate weighed five thousand shekels
of bronze. He had bronze greaves on his legs and a bronze
javelin across his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like
a weaver’s beam, and the head of his spear weighed six
hundred shekels of iron. A shield bearer walked in front
of him. Pretty impressive, hunh?

He took his stand in front of the ranks of Israel and shouted,
‘Why come out and range yourselves for battle? Am I not a
Philistine and are you not the slaves of Saul? Choose a man
And let him come down to me. If he wins in a fight with me
And kills me, we will be your slaves; but if I beat him and
kill him you shall be our slaves and be servants to us.’ No
need for armies to fight---just me and him! When Saul
and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine they were
dismayed…and…terrified!’

So this boy of, maybe, thirteen, sent to the battle zone to take food to his older brothers as they are preparing to fight army to army, hears the bully making his now-daily challenge. As soon as the Israelites saw this man they all ran away from him and were terrifed.

The kid isn’t. He volunteers. The King isn’t so sure. He says “Are you kidding me? You have no experience. This guy has been a warrior since he was your age.” (Now remember---The stakes are sky high: David loses and all Israel become slaves of the Philistines! The kid is as willing to take on the King as he is the bully. He says, “Lookit. I tend my Dad’s sheep. I do it alone. When a lion or bear took sheep from the flock I offed them. So how’s this bully any different? He’s convincing. The King lets him do it, changing the rules of engagement to one on one. The kid tries on the armor, finds it too cumbersome and goes up against the armored bully unarmed, with his slingshot, kills him with the first shot and the rest is history!

The kid has faith. The kid has self confidence. And the kid prevails. Against impossible odds!

The disciples in the boat in this morning’s Gospel lesson don’t. And they get chewed out for it. Not because they feared the storm. The storm is the storm. It’s worth fearing. Because as much time as they’d spent with Jesus, they apparently still hadn’t “gotten it.” That the Lord of history is more powerful than the demonic forces of the sea!

These are scriptures of faith. The message is clear. Faith is expected to change us. The experience of association is expected to change us. That we face challenges is normal. The test of faith, the test of whether the vaccination of faith has “taken” is how we respond when confronted with these inevitable challenges.

Whatever we are, we as a congregation today are a far cry from the congregation of January 2008. How far a cry is what we are writing in the blue books passed out to us, metaphorically, by last Sunday’s announcement.

Are we just a collection of people who have come to a pleasant space when our schedules have permitted, to have a pleasant experience and go home, or have “bonds of affection” been quietly formed between and among us such that we have developed an intangible “something” that leaves us unwilling to forsake those bonds?

Have the experiences we bring with us to this fellowship included those that tell us challenges, even seemingly impossible ones, can and will be overcome, if we pull together? Have they given us tools we can use to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and change the question from “Why us?” “Why now?” to “What, Lord, are you calling us to do through this experience?” “What signal, Coach, are you giving?” “What play have you diagrammed?”

We are writing the answers in our blue books as we speak. Some of those answers, for some of us, we’ve begun to show to others. For those of you who weren’t present last Sunday afternoon, I can report my pleased surprise how rapid the change in mood of that group was. It was much more rapid than that of most of those I’ve met who have just been told their jobs are over! Several of you have appeared on television or in print. Conversations are already being held with sources of alternate space. And in less than a week from the announcement!

It’s far from time to turn our blue books in. More will be written in them. Significant writing will come from our next congregational meeting, we hope soon to be held.

Will we be David’s. Or terrified disciples in the storm tossed boat crossing the Sea of Galilee. Or something in between or totally other. The choice, truly, is ours, individually, and as a group, and we have the power to make it!