“The Liberal Church: Where Our Questions and Experiences Are Valued”

Mark 12:28-34 Refers to Luke 10:1-24 and 10:29-37

Third Sunday in Lent + March 15, 2009

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Rev. David Brown

Some of you here this morning will remember Ricky Nelson’s hit song from years ago: “I’m a Traveling Man.” That could be the theme song of my life, for I, too, have been a traveling man all my life. My travels began as a child when my parents took my sister and me on annual two week vacations to various places in the United States and Canada. Because of their interest in history, we visited countless historical buildings, battlefields, sites, and museums. On one of those trips to Quebec City, in the Ursiline convent, I was shown the skull of the great general Montcalm who lost his life at the battle of the Plains of Abraham. That battle determined that you and I would be speaking English this morning rather than French. I was told by the Abbess that Montcalm’s skull was to buried that afternoon and that I would someday be the last person to have seen it. Heady stuff (Forgive the bad joke!) for a boy of ten.

1Those early family vacations sent me on my own personal and professional journeys. Along the way I have taken trips to many parts of the United States, to Canada, to Mexico, to South America, to most of the countries of Europe, to North Africa, to Israel, to Turkey, to Russia, to Finland and Denmark, to Latvia, to Hong Kong and mainland China, and along the way to most of the islands of the Caribbean.

Add to that that I have also moved from place to place on my professional journey. I have served churches in upstate and downstate New York, in New Jersey, in Michigan, in California, in Florida, in Pennsylvania, and now here in Tennessee.

So what is the point of sharing the peregrinations of my life? Simply this: to remind you that all of us in a great or small way are traveling men and women, too. That is part of our human nature since thousands of years ago when our primitive ancestors left their caves and went hunting and gathering across the face of the earth. On their journeys they were searching for food, mostly. But as time passed their journeys took on a greater purpose: not just for wealth and conquest, but even more so for meaning.

Look at the record of our human search for meaning as we have gone on our traveling ways. Beowulf, Ulysses, Dante, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim, Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi, Dorothy visiting Oz, and Jack Kerouac going “On The Road” – all of them and countless others have made journeys to discover who they were and what life is all about. And, along the way, some of them discovered a little of what God is all about.

The Bible tells of those who encountered God in their journeys. Think of Abraham hearing the call of God to go from Ur of the Chaldees to a place that God would show him. When he got to Canaan he began to discover more of who he was and what God wanted from him. We also remember the story of Moses and the People of Israel on their forty year pilgrimage from slavery to freedom and what they learned about themselves and God along the way. Even today, Jews remind themselves that they are still people on a journey for when they pray, they davin, rocking back and forth as if they are walking.

As Christians, we remember most of all that young man from Nazareth who took his own journey of self-discovery and service and called others to join him. Do you remember? Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to “Believe in me” but rather “Follow me” though there are still thousands of Christians who don’t seem to understand the difference. In the journey will come the discoveries that will lead to meaning. If we don’t answer the call to rise up and follow we probably will never discover what life is all about, what we are all about, what God is all about, what we are on earth here to do, for God’s sake.

I knew a man once who was proud of the fact that he had never traveled more than a hundred miles from the place where he was born. That man was in the root meaning of the word “stupid.” The word “stupid” comes from a word whose root meaning is to be “stunned.” To be “stupid” is to be “stunned,” to be fixed in a place, dazed and uncertain of where you are and even who you are. Now lest some erudite person reminds me that one of the wisest Americans who ever lived – Henry David Thoreau – spent most of his life in the little village of Concord, Massachusetts and also spent one year of his life in a little cabin on the banks of Walden Pond, let me remind you that he didn’t stay for the rest of his life at Walden but went home and never went back there again. He also took extensive journeys to several parts of New England and wrote wonderful journals of what he saw and learned along the way.

That is the purpose of travel: to experience, to learn, to grow, to become more than we were before. The destination is almost beside the point; the discovery is everything. When we are in a new place meeting new people we are challenged to see with the third eye of insight and to hear with the third ear of understanding.

Our scripture lesson for this morning is found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. Mark and Matthew say this encounter between Jesus and the lawyer took place in the last days of Jesus’ life, that time we call Holy Week. But Luke believes this incident happened sometime during the three year journey of Jesus and his followers. It is fascinating to notice that just before Luke describes this incident, he recalls that Jesus sent his disciples out on a journey of their own. It was as if he were telling them, “Look, you don’t need me to hold your hand and guide your steps every foot of the way. To be my disciple, my follower, is to discover your own path, have your own experiences, find your own questions.” Then when they came back to Jesus with their discoveries they believed that they had had their own experience of the reign of God on earth. And Jesus was pleased to hear it. As Paul would put it later, God wants mature women and men to be Christ’s followers, not naïve and foolish children.

Then we come to today’s scripture story, the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer. Luke says the lawyer was trying to test Jesus. He was asking him a question to see if Jesus knew the right answer. “Rabbi, teacher, which of the commandments is the most important? What do I have to do to be sure that I am in good standing with God?” Mark and Matthew recall Jesus giving the answer himself. But Luke, I believe, is closer to the truth. He remembers Jesus like the master teacher he was turning the question back on the lawyer. “Well, what do you think the most important commandment is?” I believe the lawyer was a little annoyed at this point and so he responded: “Everyone knows that. It’s the Shema. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You’re right, my friend,” responds Jesus. “Live that way and you won’t have to worry about the afterlife.” But the lawyer couldn’t allow himself to be dismissed so quickly by this country bumpkin, and so Luke remembers him asking another question: “That’s all very well and good, Jesus, but just who is my neighbor? Who is it that I’m supposed to love as much as I love myself?” At this point, I imagine Jesus slowly turning back toward him with a gentle smile on his face, and then saying: “I’ll answer your question.” Then he began a story that the world has never forgotten: “A man was travelling down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he was attacked by robbers, who stripped him of everything he had, beat him badly, and left him for dead in the ditch beside the road. Then came two other traveling men, a priest and a Levite, but they were too busy with their own concerns to notice the man or to help him. Then came another traveling man, a Samaritan. And . . .” Well you know the rest of the story. And what’s the point? Well, you know that, too. Everyone we meet is our neighbor if we have eyes to see and hearts to care.

Friends, this is what the Liberal Church is all about. We are here on this earth as travelers. Along the way we will have countless encounters and experiences. All of them are valuable – at least, potentially – to teach us something about ourselves. These encounters and experiences also teach us that we are not alone. We are members of the entire human family. All women are our sisters. All men are our brothers. And our task, our calling, is to recognize the moments when we can serve them. Along the way we will ask many questions and that’s what God wants us to do. In this church, in all true churches, there are no improper questions. No question is out of bounds or not to be spoken. In the Liberal Church all our experiences are valued and all our questions are welcomed. That’s what it means to be Liberal and that is what I believe it means to be Christian.

Years ago I wrote a hymn entitled “There Is No Clear Road.” I decided not to ask you to sing it this morning because no one should expect two of his own hymns to be sung in the same service! But let me share some words from that hymn as my own testimony to what I believe faith and life are all about:

“There is no clear road that our history will take;

it turns, twists, and darts with surprise unforeseen.

Each life is a mountain with valleys between

and spiraling paths through uncertain ravines.

Yet we’ll sing the Lord’s Song in an ever strange land,

and walk toward a truth that is always before.

Decision is not merely once and for all,

but faith is a journey of growth more and more.”

I believe that and I hope you do, too, because that is the point and purpose of a Liberal Church where our questions and experiences are valued. Now, Pilgrims, go on your way and continue your journey.