FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Communion Meditation by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

Epiphany Communion Sunday

January 1, 2006

 

CHRIST AT THE CENTER: OUR JOURNEY OF FAITH

COMING AND GOING

 

INTRODUCTION

 

It was the 26th of December and a young boy couldn’t find his favorite toy – a model race car which had been wrapped up and placed under the tree on Christmas morning.  Throughout the day, the boy had zoomed and varoomed that car all over the house, until he finally fell asleep that night.  When he woke up, the car was lost and after a long search, the boy remembered where he had parked it – right under his bed for safe keeping.

 

As he retrieved it, the little guy noticed a good-sized dust ball rolling around under there.  So he went to his mother and said “Mom, is it true what they told us in Sunday school – that we come from dust and to dust we will return?”  His mother answered “Yes, I think that’s what the Bible says.”  The boy replied “Well then, there’s somebody under my bed upstairs and I don’t know if he’s coming or going!”

 

I

 

On this first day of another new year, my hunch is that some people here might identify with that young boy’s dilemma.  With 2005 behind us like the setting of the sun, and 2006 stretching out before us across the horizon, we may be wondering where we are in Our Journey of Faith which we chose as the theme for this church last summer.

 

Can we look back over the past five months – the fall and the Advent-Christmas season – even going all the way back to last January – and discern moments and events when we have sensed Christ at the Center of our life together and drawn closer to Him and to one another?

 

Are we aware of God’s holy presence and grace with us, right here and right now in this sacred place?  And this side of Christmas, turning the corner into 2006, do we look forward toward the future and to celebrating the love and joy, the hope and peace which has been promised to us through the revelation of God’s Son, our Savior Jesus?

 

It was the visionary African-American pastor and professor Howard Thurman who wrote:

 

“When the song of the angels is stilled

  When the star in the sky is gone

  When the kings and princes are home

  When the shepherds are back with their flock

  The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among the people

To make music in the heart”

 

As we travel together on Our Journey of Faith, do you believe all of that is still possible today?

 

If you are wondering, as those Wise Men did long ago when they followed the star that led them to Bethlehem…if you are wondering where you are coming from and where you might be going to, then these words from the 121st Psalm are meant for me and for you:

 

          I lift up my eyes to the hills – from whence does my help come?  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth…the Lord is your keeper…and He will keep your life.  The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever more.  (Psalm 121:1,5,7-8)

 

Do you know what that ancient promise means?  It means that in the midst of life’s joys and sorrows, in the good times and the hard times, when natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and floods overwhelm us, or when personal troubles, racial divisions, national struggles and international conflicts threaten to destroy our human-made security systems – when the storms strike and our common life is shaken to the core – God has promised to guide us and provide us with all that we need, in our going out and our coming in, as He leads us toward a vision of His kingdom on earth.

II

 

It is sad but true that there are people who just don’t believe that – that God has a vision in store for us.  It was Helen Keller who once said that “the greatest infirmity is to have sight, but no vision.”  Do you know who she was talking about?

 

I think she was talking about people who are so stuck in the past that they can’t embrace the future, about people who are so focused on themselves that they can’t see the needs or share the dreams of anyone else, about people who have been knocked down and kicked around in their journey and have developed a “victim mentality” where they just can’t perceive the possibility of life ever getting any better.

 

Woody Allen, in one of his films, has the main character describe it this way:  “We have two alternatives in this life.  One leads to hopelessness, alienation and despair.  The other leads to total destruction.  Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.”

 

Well, that might bring a smile to our faces but the sad truth is that far too many people look at life through a negative lens, and in their going out and coming in, they just don’t believe that God has a vision in store for them.

 

Ellen Goodman writes about that in her column on New Year’s Day.  She is one of my favorite columnists from The Boston Globe, and this article is entitled “Wary New Year.” 

 

          “I was thinking of a real new year, the sort of year that comes awash in toasts, swaddled in hope.  But this year has arrived middle-aged, rather wary and worried.

          In this transition from one year to the next, perhaps one era to the next, there is a feeling of mid-life closure in the cold air.  I see people putting up the storm windows of their lives, laying down the insulation for the tough weather ahead, battening down for bad times.

          We used to be pretty good at futures, good at looking ahead, optimistic, expansive, even with a touch of idealism.  But this is not a year when excitement seems very appealing because the world is out of control.  Out of our control.

          So it’s no surprise that hard times breed hard lines.  Under pressure we all retreat.  We replace growing with coping.  We react to the troubles outside by defending our own turf with dozens of rules and commandments.

          But there is a desperate age to this transitional winter which comes in, middle-aged and worried, with its spine already stiffened and its posture defensive – a wary new year.

          Its mind is fixed on survival.  It’s method is control.  This is not the bubbly stuff of a happy new year.”

 

She wrote that in 1981.  And I want to tell you we could write that as did she at the beginning of any new year because such is the case year after year as we face all of the hardships that come at us in this world.  You see, Helen Keller was right – “The greatest infirmity is to have sight, but no vision.”

 

III

 

Just the opposite is true for anyone and everyone who is willing to walk this journey of life as a Christian, seeking to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ who said I have come that you might have life in all of its abundance (John 10:10).

 

Which means that in our going out and our coming in, we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we do not walk alone.  That’s what the great 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1902-1971) discovered early on in his life as a pastor.  When he was 21, his father died, and two months later, Niebuhr climbed into the pulpit of the church his father had served for many years and this is what the young preacher said:

 

          “As a child, I once spent a day with my grandmother.  Toward evening, a severe storm broke out and my grandmother wondered ‘How will you get home child?’  But then my father came to fetch me.  He had a big blue coat…and as we left he said ‘Come under here, son.’  I slipped under the coat, grabbed his hand and off we went.

          I couldn’t see anything as we sloshed through the puddles, and as I heard the rain and the thunderclaps, I held my father’s hand all the more tightly…until we finally made it home safely.  As the coat parted, I looked up into my mother’s cheerful face…and everything was cozy as only home can be.

          Of course my father had brought me home.  Where else would he have taken me?  So it is with our Heavenly Father.  If only we will trust Him, He will take hold of our hand…and lead us safely through the storm.”

 

That is the vision God holds in store for us, my friends!  He has come in person, in the person of Jesus Christ, to save us from sin and to guide us in this journey we call life.  And when the storms strike, we need not be afraid, for He has promised to walk beside us every step of the way.

 

How does that happen?  It happens in our going out and our coming in, as we get down on our knees and lift up our voices to the Lord in prayer, asking for and receiving His peace and presence in our hour of need.  It happens when Christian sisters and brothers in the faith reach out to help one another make it through the hard times and then rejoice together when the light comes shining through.  It happens when the Holy Spirit heals our broken hearts, relieves our grief and pain, and then restores our hope so that we can go on instead of giving up.

 

I happened yesterday as baby Noor al-Zahra arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport from Baghdad, sent here by the Georgia National Guard – a little child they found in trouble with spina bifida.  There at the airport to meet them were a legion of reporters from CNN and right alongside them was Rose Emily Bermudez from our mission staff and Executive Director of Childspring International.  She was there and so we were there, because as Christians we believe that what Jesus said is true: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

 

And it can happen right here in this sacred place, as we worship God and receive the power that He alone offers to us through His Word and the sacraments of grace.  In a few moments, when we get up and come forward to the communion table to eat this bread and drink from this cup, I hope and pray that we will be filled to overflowing with the Spirit of the Lord, just as He said it would be: This is my body, broken for you.  This is my blood, shed for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

In all of those ways and through so many other moments in our journey of faith, that is how Jesus Christ has promised to come alongside us each and every day of our lives.  In our going out and our coming in, here and now and forevermore, we do not walk alone.

 

If you believe that, or if you want to, then listen to these closing words which were spoken in 1939 by King George VI of England.  The world was on the brink of war, and giving his New Year’s Day address which was carried on the radio across the United Kingdom and to other parts of the world, knowing that there was fear in the air, King George said this on the first day of that new year:

 

          “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown,’ and he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.  That shall be to you better than a light and safer than a known way!”

 

So it was then – so it still is today.  In our going out and out coming in the Lord will keep us – you and me and this war-torn, weary world – from this time forth and forevermore.  And that is a promise which God will keep!

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

 

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