By Jacy Allen Boldebuck
May 30, 2010
Proverbs 8 1-4 and 22-31, Mark 12-28-34

If we have visitors here this morning. know that UCC is a denomination obsessed with punctuation. Our ongoing national campaign "God is still speaking COMMA" - it is our belief that the light, the truth is still unfolding, God is here...now... the story is still happening, and my friends are now a part of that story.

We warmly welcome you to listen, engage and share the wonder of God's love.

My father attended his first UCC meeting last month. One of the observations he shared was that the gospel still offers a powerful compelling and current message.....but where is the passion behind the message, where is the passion about the beauty, power and hope of the lessons of Jesus? 

Today....I will attempt to provide a little passion to the message.

I have heard it said that there are only 3 prayers really worth uttering: Help me, Forgive me and Thank you.

I will tell you that there is only one sermon really worth hearing, worth preaching: You are not alone, You are loved, You are forgiven. 

You see, there is this thread...this strong, yet sometimes invisible thread that keeps me holding on, keeps me tethered to God, to hope. It is sometimes hard to explain but it has been there since I remember being me.

One of my favorite Poets William Stafford writes about this thread....

"There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can top time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread"

Once you know about the thread, it is hard not to talk about it, share the magic, show people how to look for theirs.

In my job as a social worker, I spend a lot of time listening to people with broken souls. They tell me they are alone, unloved, unforgivable...they don't know about the thread, they can't see it, they can't feel it...but sometimes meeting together in a small poorly lit office, I can see it.

One of the things I sometimes do is offer to hold onto it for them---until they are ready. We go through the exercise of putting this unseen hope, unseen healing in a small box-to keep it safe-to assure them that is it possible that is exists someplace real.

Then later - sometimes much, much later - we look again-together and they feel it. They feel it between their fingers and when they hold it out a bit, they can see it .....and then they take it with them back into their life.  Sometimes I hear what happened, sometimes I don't.
 
What does it look like? I can only guess. But I think for some it is getting a call from their child they have not spoken to for 20 years. It is getting sober and wanting to stay that way, it is sitting on a park bench and realizing the world is beautiful and wanting to stay in it, it is finding a friend, finding a job, It is the act of forgiving themselves or others. It is saying I love you.

For my sister Crescent, diagnosed with Breast Cancer last October, that thread looks her husband and soul mate, Jason. It looks like the faces of their close-knit community of friends who have brought meals, cleaned their home, held their hands and offer comfort and companionship on a daily basis throughout her chemotherapy treatment. It looks like the strangers who donated money to help pay for treatment, a wig, groceries.

Crescent's ability to stay strong, stay focused, stay positive have been such a blessing to witness. God is hard at work. Don't misunderstand...she has had some really tough times and there will be more. She knows that better than I do - but she also knows about the thread.

Human beings can live without almost anything, but we can't live without hope - we don't make it.

Isn't that exactly what we here? We build hope? Isn't that our job as Christians?  We sing, pray, laugh, cry, hold hands and look out these windows together every Sunday IN hope?

Hanging on is hard though....mostly because being a human is hard. I admit that I have let go of this thread many times in my life. It happens. I know because it comes with an indescribable feeling of being un-tethered. For me it is an emotional and physical sense of being unwell.

I felt that way a bit after Bonnie left mostly because it happened during a series of losses in my life that year. When I feel this blindness, this groping for the thread, it is my cue to pray (help me) my cue to read, reach out, get involved, feed somebody else, serve somebody else....and then slowly, I realize that I have caught hold again.  I look into the wooden box and I see the thread-I can pick it up.

My prayer: Forgive me and Thank you.

God never fails. God's only job is to love us. Reflect for a moment on this morning's scripture reading from proverbs. Wisdom and God are together-they are there at the very beginning. Mother Wisdom looks down and delights in creation - all the evil, all the chaos and yet she smiles down on us with love-with hope.  Reading this scripture, I could imagine following this thread through time and reaching this bright, warm place in eternity and finding God and Wisdom smiling....waiting...welcoming...

Know that you are loved.

Let me tell you where this thread does NOT lead: It does not lead to the robes of a petty, punishing, patriarch. Such a God would never send us the magnificent a gift of love....such a God would never send us such a powerful and sustaining message of hope ....the gift of Jesus...her only beloved son sent to live among us, to teach, to preach, to save us from ourselves.

God never fails, but we sure do. I share the often quoted words of Gilbert Chesterson  "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried" 

Loose translation: Christianity never fails, it just hasn't been tried yet!

Think about it....think about what Jesus said and taught and modeled for us: Feed my sheep, heal the sick,  if you see a person in need on the side of the road, stop-stop and help.... remember this morning's message from the gospel of Mark  in which Jesus gives us what is called "the greatest commandment of all  "Love God with all your heart and soul and love thy neighbor as yourself....pretty direct and pretty powerful and yet pretty difficult.

Fifty million Americans without access to health care and an aggressive campaign by some to stop efforts towards reform! A new law that require targeted people to "show their papers" to prove they are citizens. Two ongoing wars, drugs, violence, anger, hatred, racism, classism, ugliness.

And what is really evil, sinful is much of this is done in "Jesus name". Think of the so called Christian groups holding up signs at military funerals telling the families of dead soldiers that GOD killed them on purpose to punish our country, or those angry/sadly misguided folks with signs telling our gay/lesbian bros/sisters that god hates them...bombing abortion clinics in the name of "life"....

FORGIVE US.....forgive us. And........ the good news of the gospel - we are indeed forgiven, forgiven for being flawed, for being human...but this does not excuse us, we know better, we have the words of our teacher, we are given the gift of Wisdom-she was there at the beginning..she is a part of the thread.

When we find ourselves feeling smug and certain, when we find ourselves making creating policy or laws  that separate-or shut others out, keep people sick, poor, or powerless, when we feel deserve our gifts and others don't, we are justifying war, allowing hunger, when we are angry, distracted, apathetic....then...........we have lost it-we are no longer holding onto it......

AND the wonder of God, the power of the gospel is this.....
for every hungry mouth there is a person passing a bowl, a group scraping up money to get another soup kitchen or shelter started in the inner city or there is a group delivering rice to a rural  African village, there is this very congregation the first Monday of every month at Luke House, or providing shelter through The Road Home.....
for the sick and suffering there are people like Dr. Cate Ranheim and her family opening up a free clinic, asking for donations of supplies, for the lonely a knock on the door, for every person lying on the side of the road there is a potential Samaritan,
for every war-a peace awaits. 

God knows this.......God knows this......Every great leader, every professed lover of peace has preached the gospel of HOPE...............

 Listen to the prayer of Desmond Tutu:
"Goodness is stronger than evil, Love is stronger than hate, Light is stronger than darkness, Life is stronger than death, Victory is ours through Him who loves us"

God, wisdom, , love, truth, salvation, peace on earth, eternal life.......these are the gifts that await us. God is love, God is hope..........God sends us the thread and waits....... We serve God as we serve each other....we change ourselves, we change each other we change the world.

You are not alone, You are loved, You are forgiven..... Never let go of the thread.
Amen