For sermon videos these days, CLICK HERE
In the name of God who surprises, and God who supports. Amen.
Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally went to Tanzania?
That’s one of my favorite stories – and it’s such a good starting point… An accidental trip to Tanzania. Something we can all relate to, right?! It’s up there with another fun thing I like to throw into random conversations – about the lovely weekend I had in Ethiopia that one time… It was the same trip – but it came with a lot of good stories.
The main purpose of the trip was a conference that I helped plan and lead in Kenya at an Anglican university. I was working with a group of Episcopalians on an ongoing project about building relationships between progressive Episcopalians in the United States and members of various Anglican churches in Africa. It was in the height of the days of potential schism in our churches after the first openly gay Episcopal bishop was elected and consecrated. We had this wild idea that if those of us with opposing viewpoints actually sat down together and worshiped together and studied the bible together and got to know each other, we might actually start to understand each other a little better. And we might actually find out that our relationships were more important than our ideological positions and theoretical assumptions about each other.
This particular conference was the second of three conferences like it that we held around the continent. For this one, a group of us decided to stay after the conference was over and do a little fun side trip – we had a six-day safari in the Masai Mara game preserve in southern Kenya. Three days in a vehicle and three days walking through the savannah. Throughout the time we stayed in a little mud hut village, getting to know the community. We were there at the height of the annual wildebeest migration, so it was just too good to pass up.
On the day we were supposed to leave, however, we started hearing rumors of some sort of event at the airport in Nairobi. We were out in the wilderness, so it’s not like we could just turn on CNN and figure out what was going on, and information was sketchy, but we decided to head back to Nairobi as planned and figure it out when we got there.
Well – when we got there, it was a mess. There had been a terrorist attack at the airport and it was still actively burning many hours later when we got there. Flights were canceled and there was no insight about when they might resume – it could be hours, it could be weeks. Our little group made our way to a Presbyterian guesthouse in the city where we regrouped and tried to come up with a plan. We spent the night there and consulted with the folks at Ethiopian Air who gave us a few options. We could find our own overland transportation back to Addis Ababa – at best a 24 hour drive, and from there they would get us home. Or they would get us a ticket on a public bus which would take us to the coastal city of Mombasa – where we could wait at the airport and fly standby back to Addis Ababa when a seat became available. And the final option – a chartered bus that would drive us and other stranded travelers down to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania – we were told it would be about a three hour drive – and there, a plane would be waiting for us.
There weren’t any great options, but that last one sounded the most reasonable, so that’s what we did. The problem is, there were some stumbles in the plan along the way. The three-hour bus ride took over six hours – some of that time was a holdup on the border because none of us had visas. And the bus was stopped periodically by roadblocks set up by local “security” troupes who would board the bus with guns and question the driver – probably taking some kind of bribe – before letting us through. When we finally did make it to the airport in Kilimanjaro, there was no plane waiting and the airline attendants there had been given no warning we were coming. So, we spent the night sleeping on benches in the open-air airport. I woke up covered in flea bites.
But by morning, there was a plane, and thankfully we made it on, and made our way back to the Ethiopian hub so we could finally head back home – about four days later than planned.
It’s a crazy story – the kind of thing any of us might read about but never expect to actually experience.
For me, though, there came a point early on in this process when I basically just had to let go and trust that it would all work itself out. That can be tough for me. I like to plan. I like to know what to expect. I like to make sure the world around me works the way I want it to work in whatever ways that I can find to influence it. But when you’re being shuffled around an unfamiliar continent, you have to learn to just let go. Trust the people who do know what’s happening. Trust that God is with me in the midst of it.
There were plenty of points in this story when fear might have been a reasonable response. But the thing is, I never really was afraid. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. I guess I was so irrevocably out of control that there was nothing to do except just embrace it and be out of control.
But even as wild as that adventure was for me, it’s nothing when compared with Paul’s willingness to answer the calling he discerned from a vision, and to drop everything and travel for days across both sea and land to spread the good news of Jesus. He couldn’t have known what he might encounter. To say nothing of the perils of the journey, he had no way of knowing whether or not he might be walking into a realm of resistant, or maybe even hostile people. And yet, he let go. He let the Spirit lead him. And he trusted that it was where he needed to be.
That is a lot to ask of a follower of Jesus. And still, that is exactly what is asked of each of us. It doesn’t always involve a physical journey, but when following Jesus we are asked to consider letting go of the controls for a bit and following the spirit into the unknown. And let’s be real, we don’t have to go far to find the unknown.
The opportunities that we have – just here at Trinity – put us in the path of unknown spiritual spaces all the time. Serving breakfast. Leading the Kids Club. Walking into the room for the first time to sing with the choir. Teaching a formation class. Serving on the Vestry. Leading a committee.
Even sitting here, daring to pray. Daring to open your mouth, but more importantly your mind and your heart to being in relationship with all that is holy. That is an unknown spiritual space – and, to borrow from the wisdom of drag queens – it do take nerve.
We work, as a congregation, to make these unknown spiritual spaces safe spaces for finding whatever the Spirit leads us toward. But even so, they are still unknown to us. Even so they require a bit of vulnerability to step into them – a bit of trusting and letting go.
And we should remember that each time we see someone walk in here for the first time. It is an incredibly vulnerable thing to walk into a church for the very first time. It is an incredibly vulnerable thing – especially if you’ve been hurt by churches or by the people that sometimes abuse them – to step inside the door and say to a room full of strangers, “I want to see what it’s like to be one of you.”
It’s important to remember that the welcome – the home – that we share with everyone who finds their way to us here – we don’t share that invitation just because we’re nice people. We share it because God is calling us into that vulnerable space, too. It is a vulnerable thing that requires a lot of trust to say, “Come into my house. Because now that you’re here, it’s not mine anymore, it’s ours. Let’s find God together. Let’s trust this journey together.”
For that to be real – or for any of our spiritual journeying together to be real – we’ve got to be willing to release the controls for a minute. We’ve got to be willing to risk going off the rails. We’ve got to be willing to trust that the Holy Spirit is our guide and has got our back.
That’s what Jesus was trying to describe to the disciples. This passage that we read today comes as he was approaching the end of his earthly ministry. And in this Easter moment, we’re approaching another, similar end. The end of Christ’s resurrected time on Earth before entrusting us to a new spiritual journey.
Preparing us for that journey, Jesus says that while the road that we’re about to travel is unfamiliar; while it may leave us feeling vulnerable and alone; we are, in fact, not alone. We are blessed and upheld by the creative love of God, and the way of love we have learned through Christ, and the power of love as it’s shared through the Holy Spirit.
The thing is, when we’re willing to let go of the control; when we’re willing to journey into unknown spiritual corners and submit ourselves to being vulnerable; one of the things we’re admitting in those moments is that we understand that things might not go our way. They might now go the way we intend. And when they don’t go our way, sometimes it’s frightening. Sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes it hurts.
But almost always, it makes space for the Holy Spirit to deliver us into visions of the future we couldn’t have come up with on our own. Almost always there are blessings we couldn’t have planned.
And always. Every time without fail. Always. God, in all of God’s many and holy forms, is with us. We may not know where we’re going, but we never go there alone. We can take wrong turns or run into dead ends or spend way too much time walking in the wrong direction – but whatever the path, we’re not walking it alone.
That’s what Jesus is promising here. You may feel lost, but you aren’t. You are not lost. Not now. Not ever. For I am with you. You may not see me, but I can see you, and I am holding you. I am holding you and guiding you and protecting you. Trust and believe.
There’s this beautiful line in today’s reading from Revelation that kept holding my imagination all week. It says, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is God… And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the Glory of God is its light…”
As followers of Christ, that’s who we’re being called to be: to be walking instances of the Glory of God; to be walking instances of that light that can warm the cold places and bring sight – bring vision to the vulnerable places where vision seems scarce. Standing here, in this magnificent temple, we are called to remember that the true light doesn’t come from this place, but from the love of God that shines through the people that make it a home. In this city, we are being called to be that light. We are being called to trust that this light is showing the way to God, even if we don’t know what that way is, ourselves. We are being called to let our faith – our trust – inspire trust in others.
Trust and believe. God’s
light is shining within us. Christ is
the light of the city of God. Shine in
our hearts, O Jesus. Amen.
Comments