SERMON
at
Christ Church, Watertown, Connecticut
Pentecost XII
August 23, 2009
by
The Rev. Stanley C. Kemmerer

Some 30 years ago on a sunny fall morning I pulled a metal folding chair over to the top of the chancel steps of the parish I had served for 9 ½ years, sat down and, quoting from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken, quietly told that congregation it would be my last Sunday.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I---
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I offered that congregation that morning a theology of vocation, of a call, that I dare say was a departure from the one most of them held. I knew not what was next. It didn’t really matter to me, I told them, because, looking back, my travels had taken me places I could never have imagined they would (They still do!) but wherever they had taken me, it had always turned out all right!

I suggested we are accustomed to thinking of a call as being to the ministry, to something. Why could it not as well move around? Why could it not evolve? Why could it not be through the ministry to something else? perhaps using the experience of ministry to inform the next life chapter.

You see, for the Christian, all is prologue. Life is pilgrimage. We’re on a journey.
This morning’s Scriptures remind us it’s not about the stuff of life. It’s about what’s “between the ears” of life.

King David’s son, perhaps the even greater King Solomon, given the opportunity, doesn’t ask Yahweh God for stuff. He asks for a quality---wisdom---to lead “this great people” Yahweh God has given into his care.

Solomon has built Yahweh God the great Temple in Jerusalem. The Grand Opening has just been held. And this morning’s Lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures contains Solomon’s prayer for himself, uttered in that great Temple:

Then ( in the presence of the whole assembly of Israel) Solomon
stood before the altar of Yahweh and, stretching out his hands
toward heaven, said, “Yahweh, God of Israel, not in heaven
above nor on earth beneath is there such a God as you, true
to your covenant and your kindness toward your servants when
they walk wholeheartedly in your way. You have kept the
promise you made to your servant David my father. (That he would
put his son on the throne, to follow him.)…Yet will God really live
with men on the earth? (I guess we’ve learned the answer to that one!) Why the heavens and their own heavens cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built!...Day and night let your eyes watch over this place of which you have said, “My name shall be there.” Listen to the prayer that your servant will offer in this place.

In his pilgrimage, Solomon grew up in an environment full of the relationship of his father David to his God and the promises that God had made to his father, now being acted out. His prayer reflects his awe at experiencing that reality.

St. Paul reminds us, in the passage from Ephesians, that our pilgrimage will involve struggle but that struggle is less one against human enemies as one against the “between the ears” stuff.

For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle,
but against the Sovreignties and the Powers who originate
the darkness in this world, the spiritual army of evil in the
heavens. Like doubt, lack of self-confidence, fear. (Remember
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s counsel to a frightened
nation facing similar problems to the ones we face?---“The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself!”)

Pray all the time, asking for what you need…Forget about the
flowery prose of books of prayer. Just talk with God.

In the this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel Jesus responds to the disciples’ challenge his talking about himself as food is “intolerable language. How could anyone accept it” by saying,

It is the Spirit (the “between the ears stuff”) that gives life,
the flesh (material world=things) has nothing to offer.

So, why are you and I here this morning? This hot, humid summer morning. How did the road of our several pilgrimages bring us here. to Walker Hall? What is our answer to the larger question: Why go to church? Why participate in a Christian community? What’s the “deliverable,” the world wants to know. And we, brothers and sisters in Christ, shall surely have to have an answer if we are to engage in convincing conversation with those outside our doors, to be able to give them, to share with them, what we have found here.

And we do have the answer: It is in our journeys. It is in our stories. Of how we got here. And why we stay here. Our next challenge is to gain the skill to pull the story, the experiences from “between our ears” to come out of our mouths…
our own several versions of what, for our society is the “other road…just as fair…
having perhaps the better claim because” (in our society it is) “grassy” and wants “wear.” And why that “road less travelled by” we’ve taken and are taking is, for us, making “all the difference.” Let’s work together, using our several talents and backgrounds, to meet that challenge!