Jack McKinney
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
August 12, 2007 – Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-13a
Looking for Prospects
I had the pleasure of being on retreat yesterday at Cedar Cross, the retreat center John and Margaret Hilpert operate in Franklin County. It’s truly a delightful space with multiple trails going through the woods and many interesting places to sit and meditate. And, if you ever go out to Cedar Cross, don’t be surprised if you are joined on the trail by RJ, who is the Hilpert’s black lab. RJ enjoys company on his walks in the woods.
One of the nicest features of Cedar Cross is the outdoor labyrinth. The basic idea of walking a labyrinth is to follow the path that leads you to the center of a circle, and then you reverse course to move from the center of the circle back to place you started. As you move through the labyrinth it helps to meditate on a question or idea. Describing this process to you now makes it sound rather mundane, but those of you who have walked the labyrinth at Pullen know that this simple spiritual tool can provide a powerful experience.
So there I was yesterday morning, walking the labyrinth at Cedar Cross, and feeling the spiritual exhilaration that comes when you know you are pondering something meaningful. And just then out of the woods bounds RJ, the big black lab. Ignoring the rules of the labyrinth that say you should enter and exit from a single point, RJ ran across the labyrinth and parked the length of his body right across my path. So, thinking he wanted a little attention, I reached over and petted him for a moment before stepping around him to continue through the labyrinth. Only RJ came back around me and placed himself across my path again. And when I moved around him he did it again. And then again. And again.
Friends, the definition of a spiritual conundrum is to be walking a labyrinth and have a big black dog continually blocking your way. You start to wonder--Does this mean something? Should I stop pondering what I am pondering? Is God sending me a message through the dog? These were the questions that jumped to mind the fourth time RJ put himself in front of me and wouldn’t move. So, I was stuck. I wasn’t sure if I should keep going around RJ or stop and let him make the next move (which I hoped would not include him talking to me in an audible voice, because while I’m all for talking dogs in the movies I’m not sure I could handle one talking to me in the middle of the woods). Finally, RJ decided his work with me was done and he bounded off into the trees to take up another mission from God or to chase a squirrel.
The feeling of being stuck or suspended between two realities is common in life. Sometimes it is a big decision we are facing that causes us to feel caught between the world we are in and the world that might be. At other times we may feel unsure about what we believe about a person in our life, or an institution that is important to us, and suddenly we are paralyzed with doubts. In our spiritual lives it is easy to feel stuck when we start to move away from some long-held convictions only to find we are not sure where we are going next in our faith life. Over and over again we experience the conundrum of being caught between two choices or two realities and not knowing for sure what to do or what to believe. That in-between place is a hard place to be.
And, yet, it is in that very place, that in-between or stuck place, that faith takes up residence. Faith hovers in-between the world that is, and the world that might be, calling us to keep looking for the truths God is trying to reveal to us. And our scripture reading this morning is one of the finest examples of what I’m talking about in all the Bible.
Hebrews 11 begins with that famous definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” And from that point on this text continually suggests that faith resides in that in-between place; in-between the world that is seen and the world that is unseen; in-between the world that we know and the world that we hope for. Abraham and Sarah are only one example of many given in Hebrews 11. By faith they set out “not knowing where they were going” as they left home for an unseen promised land. But if we were to read all of Hebrews 11 we would be reminded that many of our spiritual ancestors in the Bible followed this same pattern. Verse 13 summarizes the fate of our spiritual ancestors when it says “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” What a beautiful statement. Sometimes by faith we do something heroic and reach the Promised Land, but usually what our faith allows us to do is to see the promises from a distance and affirm them even if we will never experience them fully.
And maybe that’s the important thing for us to remember when we feel stuck in life. As we try to figure what to do or what to believe or how we feel about someone who has suddenly disappointed us, it would be nice if our faith gave us the answer that moved us out of that in-between place. But that’s not how it usually works. Faith hunkers down with us in our “stuckness” encouraging us to look for the promise in people or situations, to see with hopeful eyes, and act out of that vision. It’s hard to do; really hard to do. But the important things usually are.
Several of you have asked me this week about my time away this summer and what I did while I was on vacation. My reply has been that I spent a lot time sitting in bleachers. Stephen played on two baseball teams this summer, one made up of guys his age and one made up of players older than he is. And now that Stephen is playing with high school kids who are 16 and 17 we had our first encounters with scouts. These men who examine the skills of teenage ballplayers trying to deduce if they will make good college or professional prospects have an interesting job. They can’t look at the player as he is today because few high school kids are ready to succeed immediately at the next level. No, a scout has to look for the potential or promise in the player. Is there something about the players’ physique or swing or arm that suggests 3 or 5 years from now he could excel in the college or pro ranks? This doesn’t mean the scout ignores the flaws or weaknesses the player demonstrates, but to find the prospects he mustn’t let those flaws distract him from seeing the promise in the player. Standing between the reality of the player as he is today and the player as he might be in the future, the good scout looks for the best in the player not the worst. Faith is like that. It helps us to see the best in others, and in ourselves, even when we are stuck and tempted to see nothing but flaws.
Something else struck me as I spent all those hours sitting in bleachers this summer. I thought a lot about our church and it helped to have a little distance as I did that. Because it hasn’t been an easy year as we have wrestled with decisions related to our future. And because I am privileged to be one of your pastors I get to see the wrestling from a front-row seat: the joy and excitement of many as we move toward our new building; the pain and sorrow of some who wish we weren’t moving in that direction. And when you are in the middle of so many different feelings and opinions it can be hard to have any sense of the bigger picture. But sitting in the bleachers one thought kept coming to me. This church is a miracle. It really is. Throughout Pullen’s history we have made many hard and controversial decisions based on the principle of looking for the best in people, not the worst. Whether the issue was race, or gender, or sexual identity when the world shouted “see the flaws in those people,” this church said “see the promise in these people.” And when we make decisions that cause disagreement amongst ourselves I rarely see people here projecting false motives on those who disagree with them. We trust one another even if we don’t see eye-to-eye all of the time. We respect one another even in our differences. We love one another and extend grace abundantly. This is not a perfect church. And Lord knows this is not an easy church sometimes. But this church is a miracle. And the miracle is rooted in our faith that keeps calling us to look for the promise and potential in others, not just their flaws and failings.
For 2,000 years the message of the church has been “Believe in Jesus.” That’s okay, I guess, but I kind of wish the message was “Believe like Jesus.” Because it was Jesus’ faith that allowed him to see the dignity and worth of the prostitute, the leper, the despised Samaritan. Jesus was always looking for prospects. He was looking for the promise and potential in people. Is it any wonder that his band of disciples was such an unimpressive collection of men and women? At least unimpressive by the world’s standards. But when someone believes in you, like Jesus believed in the people he sought out, it makes sense that they wanted to follow him and learn from him. Yes, I want to believe like Jesus did. I want to see others with hopeful eyes like he did. I want that kind of faith.
If our spiritual life is a journey, as we often say around here, we need to be careful about the assumptions we attach to that metaphor. We might assume that the journey is always moving onward and upward, even if in a zigzag fashion. But the truth is there are a lot of places along the journey where we get stuck. Sometimes it’s a decision that never seems to get clear; sometimes it’s a relationship that never gets easy; and sometimes it’s just a big black dog refusing to get out of the way. Our faith may not deliver us from those situations, but it can help us to see the promise and potential all around us, and in us. And that’s a faith worth clinging to.