July 2, 2023
I just want to give you fair warning. It’s been three weeks since I last preached so I might be a little rusty! But it’s been good to get back into that weekly holy rhythm of preparing sermons. You know, pastors don’t really retire, we’re just sent out to “pastor.”
Sorry, bad joke.
Over the past several years, I’ve worked on my sermons every Monday. I refer to Mondays as my “Mondays with Jesus.” It’s a day for me to listen to what God is calling me to say to share with the people I’m serving.
Over these years, I’ve noticed that there are some Mondays when Jesus has a lot to say to me and I can’t type fast enough. BUT there are other Mondays where Jesus seems more silent. But even on those Mondays, I have discovered that if I listen carefully enough, if I listen carefully enough, Jesus will give me the words to speak for not only my congregation on Sunday mornings but for me, the preacher.
So, thank you for giving me this opportunity to be in pastoral ministry with you. I love pastoral ministry, even in retirement!
In my last sermon which was back on June 11th, and which seems like forever ago for me, I focused on the appointed Old Testament reading that Sunday from the Book of Genesis where God calls upon Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and follow God to a place that God would show them.
The title I gave for that sermon was “All that You Can’t Leave Behind” in which I invited my congregation to think about the transitions we go through in life. There are some things that God calls us to leave behind when we start a new chapter in our lives. And that can be a very healthy thing even though it can also be challenging as well.
Penny and I have been in the process of moving from a large church-owned parsonage in Ohio to a one floor ranch house here in South Carolina. We had learned over the years to not accumulate a lot of things because as a clergy family, we knew that we would be moving to different churches, but for this last move, we were amazed at how much unnecessary stuff we really had!
When we were going through our many belongings in the basement, we found several unpacked boxes of stuff that we had never even opened from our previous move. We didn’t even know these boxes existed until we were going through everything!
So we ended up sorting through all those boxes to only take the things that we couldn’t leave behind. That’s not always easy to do, right?
I have to be in the right mood to part ways with what I think are things I want to keep. So, for example, over the past 37 years and the six times we have moved to new churches, I have always taken my seminary papers with me. Those seminary papers date back to 1985…Carted them from one church to another over all these years. Do you know how many times that I have referred to any of those brilliantly written papers over the course of 37 years of pastoral ministry? [ZERO!] Probably time to part ways and lighten the load.
So I come back to that question; what is it that we just can’t leave behind? That was the focus of my sermon three weeks ago. And as I reflected on that scripture about God calling Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and go to a new place that God would show them, that’s when I discovered the one thing that we should never, ever leave behind when we are going through a time of transition in our lives. And that one very important thing is God’s blessings!
God told Abraham and Sarah that he would bless them and begin a new nation through them even though they were up in years and it seemed like their best years were behind them instead of in front of them. God was telling them, “No, your best years are ahead of you, because I am going to bless you and others through you.”
I went on to share with the congregation the many blessings that Penny and I would take with us from our time in serving with them; blessings in which the people of that church reminded me again and again of God’s presence and faithfulness during the good times and the more challenging times.
But it’s not just the blessings from the past that would be good to take with us. It’s also, and maybe more importantly, the blessings yet to come. Blessings like this new opportunity today where we can begin this new journey together in what it means to be the church, what it means to keep our focus on Jesus, what it means to pray for and with each other, blessings of encouraging each other, blessings of worshipping together, blessings of laughing together and crying together, blessings of God’s unexpected surprises that will lead us to offer thanksgiving and praise to God. So many blessings that await us, together!
That’s what we can’t leave behind. God’s blessings; past, present, and future!
I like to refer to God’s blessings as “Thin Place Moments.” This is a phrase that comes to us from Celtic Christianity which emphasizes how heaven and earth often overlap in our everyday lives creating these “thin places” that remind us of God’s presence in a very real way.
I love this phrase because it reminds us to be alert and on the lookout for these “thin places” that happen more often than we can even imagine.
Our New Testament reading for today from Romans, chapter 6 talks about how God sets us free from our old way of living to a new way of living in which we receive abundant and eternal life. On this Independence Day weekend, we celebrate our nation’s freedom, so how appropriate that this New Testament reading also refers to the freedom that we have through Jesus Christ.
And the Apostle Paul says that this freedom is God’s gift to us, something we can’t earn; we can only receive it. I like to think of “thin place moments” as ways that God is reminding us that we have been set free and that we are not alone. God is with us, offering us life and life abundantly.
And so, as we begin our journey together, I invite us to be on the lookout for these “thin place moments” in our lives and to share these moments with each other and with the people we encounter in our daily lives. I love to hear how God is at work and being made present in our day-to-day living.
And these “thin place moments” don’t need to be overly dramatic. They often turn out to be those more subtle holy moments where deep in our souls, we know that God is sending us a sign of God’s presence.
So, here’s a “thin place moment” that happened to me several years ago. I was reminded of this as I was preparing this sermon for today, because this “thin place moment” was during a transition that Penny and I were experiencing when we were being asked to move from a church we loved dearly to serve at a new church appointment.
The District Superintendent set up a Staff/Parish Relations Committee for us to go and be introduced as the new pastor of a church that was about an hour and a half from where I was currently serving. During those couple of days leading up to that meeting, I was praying for God to send us some reassurance, some sign that God had indeed called us to serve in this new appointment. I was praying for God to send a “thin place moment.”
So Penny and I left in plenty of time in case traffic was bad. We didn’t want to feel rushed to arrive at this new church. And it turned out that we ended up arriving over an hour before the meeting was to begin, so we had some time on our hands.
We decided to check out the shopping mall that was on the outskirts of that city and we noticed it had a food court. And so, we’re all dressed up and we’re sitting there, nervous as anything, thinking about that meeting. We each bought a soda, found a table and just sat there for a while.
After we wasted some time there, we decided we should probably head out and go to the church. And as we were nearing the main exit of that mall, there was this yellow caution sign there on the floor, one of those caution signs that lets you know the floor had been recently wet mopped.
And believe it or not, this caution sign had the initials of my full name. I was like, “what??” My full name is Robert Vincent McDowell. And this sign had the letters, “RVM.”
And I turn to Penny as we were walking by that sign, and I said, “Look, those are my initials on this sign! This is literally a sign from God for us to go to this church!”
And I’ll never forget this. Penny looked at me, just shook her head, and she said, “Uh,dear… Those are actually the initials of this mall. This is the River Valley Mall. That’s why it says, “RVM.”
And I said, “Oh.”
You know, I don’t totally understand how God works. But I do know that God definitely has a sense of humor, and I also believe that God gives us these little reminders along the way that we’re not alone especially as we face transitions in life. And for the record, I still believe those initials, at least in that moment stood for Robert Vincent McDowell. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
I am so looking forward to this new holy transition, not just for us, but for all of us together. Thank you for your warm welcome; your off the chart southern hospitality; and for already helping us to feel at home here.
So, a little about us. Penny and I recently celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary. We are both from Pennsylvania. We met as college students at Temple University in Philadelphia. We got to know each other through a couple of different campus ministries, plus we were in the same dorm building. Let me explain.
My dorm room was on the 1st floor right next to the stairwell. Penny’s room was on the 2nd floor. And one day, thinking that she was entering the stairwell to go up the stairs, she walked into my room by mistake.
So, we laughed about that and introduced ourselves. And she noticed… And I’m super embarrassed to share this with you. But one of the posters on one of my dorm walls had the United Methodist cross and flame. When I went to college, my Methodist faith was very important to me and that’s why I had the Methodist logo on my wall.
But guess what? She noticed that Methodist cross and flame and she said to me, “I’m a United Methodist, too!”
And the rest as they say is history! We have a son and a daughter and son-in-law who live in Ohio and we have two west highland terriers who are incredibly spoiled!
As we begin our journey together here at Upper Richland Charge, I invite us to think about all that we can’t leave behind. Think about God’s many “thin place moments” in our lives and the blessings that are yet to come. And let’s celebrate the freedom that we have in Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment