Comments for Shirley

Sunday,August 22, 1999
The Rev. Shirley B. Coll

"Rocks and Quarries"
Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8Matthew 16:13-20

I'd like to begin by re-reading two verses from the Isaiah text:

When you get to be my age, one of the major goals in life is to keep the body moving. The point of keeping it moving is so that it retains its ability to move at all. or at least with a minimum amount of pain. Because of this elder-years phenomena, my husband and I have become regular walkers. As walkers, we have discovered that if we vary our routine and try new places to walk we can kid ourselves into thinking that this activity is fun.

Last week, when it was in the upper nineties, spurred on by an item in the newspaper that stated that the C & O Canal was at its lowest peak since l929, we headed in the direction of the falls. In the fall and spring, we are regulars at the canal - both at Swains Lock and at Great Falls and so have experienced the canal in all its various moods. We have seen it at flood stage and we have plodded through the mud that persists after the flooding. It is actually a beautiful place to walk, to watch for birds and turtles and deer, to see the ducks and the geese, and even to pick up paw paws - but last week we went to the Great Falls area so that we could walk out to where you can actually get a good view of the river and the major portion of the falls. It was quite a sight. There was very little river to see, but lots of rocks, and we were able to get a view of the canal that was totally different from anything I had seen before..

What stretched out before the eye was an almost dry river bed of considerable size filled with large boulders. The walkway out to the falls, usually a scenic route over rushing water, now exposed man-made sluiceways probably dating back to the work of the Civil Conservation Corp in the late thirties and the early forties. . In some places you could see concrete and wood constructions where wooden beams were bolted into the rock to hold them in place. The rushing water over the years had taken its toll, but basically the construction was still in tact. All of this construction is, of course, completely covered by the river except in times of draught like the current one we are experiencing.

With these rock images fresh in my mind, you can see why I got excited when I read the words from Isaiah that made up the Old Testament lectionary reading for this morning. It helped the week feel like a unit - like things were beginning to fit together in my thinking.

Rocks were plentiful in Israel and were used symbolically to illustrate strength of character and purpose. In Isaiah, Abraham is called the rock from whom the Hebrew faith was launched. Peter's confessed faith from our New Testament reading was a rock, and if you recall your Bible stories, it was a rock that brought forth life-giving water to the Israelites in the wilderness. And there I was - standing in a old place - seeing a familiar scene in a new way - and looking out onto a sea of rocks. It was like having a glimpse of faith history or even having a glimpse of the history of our own community here at CCC.

Finding our way in this maze we call life is a process of decision making and priority setting. It always takes some experience before we are able to decide what in life will define us. It takes time but eventually we own our choices and we discover our centering principles. I think that those of us here today need to stop and say a word of thanks for whatever it was that brought us to this community of rocks where we are given the kinds of experiences - - the kinds of help that enable us on this journey of faith to begin to define our goals and gain a sense of direction. You might even say that the faith community is the place that provides us with the constructed sluiceways that channel our centering. The church has certainly helped me over the years to make decisions - to choose directions - and to set priorities - and this church in particular has been a life saving community for me. It has provided me with many defining moments.

It think that Peter in our New Testament reading from the gospel of Matthew had a powerful defining moment of importance. When Peter confessed his faith, Jesus said to him that on this rock (on the strength of his confession) he would build a church.

As far as I am concerned the Bible is about the development of a concept of God. It is about defining and discovering our centering principle. The Bible is the history of a people - it is our history filled with stories of those who have come before us - but it is a select history, select in the sense that it centers on the faith history of a people rather than on their political or sociological history., although the Bible contains both of those. The Bible isn't always historically accurate but it is all we have to show how the concepts of God which are familiar to us today developed over time. Those concepts continue to develop. Karen Armstrong, in her book A HISTORY OF GOD, says, "the very word 'God' is only a symbol of a reality that ineffably transcends it."

But it's difficult for us humans to content ourselves with a mere symbol. We are always seeking a concrete way to conceptualize God. This has been so since the beginning of time

and by the time we get to what we call the ancient world we find that the folks who stand out as the religious geniuses are the jews. The Greeks excelled at math, science, and the visual arts, but when it came to religion the Greeks failed badly. The Greek gods were superficial and silly, and their antics read like the soap operas of today with many of the same plots and complicated sensual entanglements that fuel our current daytime shows. What the Hebrews understood was that the one true God is something "other" than what is normative for human beings. So their first commandment is "you shall have no other Gods" and the second is, "you shall make no graven image".

Martin Buber, the great Jewish scholar said: " The Hebrew is more the ear-man, while the Greek is more the eye-man. The Hebrew lives in time, with a sense of history, the Greek lives more in space. The Hebrew is more motor-being, while the Greek is visual-being. The Hebrew did not so much see God - he said no man can see God, but he did hear God's voice. So the fundamental prayer of the Jew is HEAR, O Israel."

When Jesus asked Peter, "who do men say that I am?" I think he was trying to get Peter to center his thinking.. Remember this is the same Peter who minutes after his confession challenged what Jesus said and was told he was not on the side of God. This is the same Peter who later denied Jesus. It appears at first to be rather baffling that Jesus should name this very human, wavering and often weak Peter a rock, but it is precisely Peter's discovery of the power of faith, in all of his vulnerability, which in the long run transformed him into a teacher and leader worthy of the name rock. Blessed are you, Jesus said, it is with faith like yours that I will build. Peter made his confession in - a Greek area closely connected with the worship of the ancient God Bael. In that area there was also a giant temple to Caesar who claimed to be God. Peter's answer - you are the promised one - the son of the living God is an answer out of his Hebrew tradition. God is not something of the eye but of the ear. God is in the words - that is - in the commandments of God. GOD IS LOVE. God is not an image or even an imaginable being. But God is love.

When we try to image God what happens is that we tend to image God as someone who is just bigger, better, and greater than ourselves. And the problem is that adjectives are easily misunderstood and serve to create more problems. God cannot be understood. God must be experienced. God must be experience in life. I don't think that Jesus was saying to Peter , in essence, that if you can sense God in my life - if you can sense love in my life, then you will have had a glimpse of God. For God is love, and perfect love casts out fear, even the fear of having no image of God to reassure you. I had one glimpse last week of all of those rocks underneath the Potomac River, but I will probably never see them again. I will have to have faith in my memory of the experience just as my faith today is based on the memories of all of those experiences - all of those rocks - that blessedly have filled my life and brought me to this point.

It is highly unlikely that Peter understood what all that those words that he uttered that day meant anymore than each of us understands all that they entail when we utter them, but at the bottom line, the words meant that Peter confessed that he would try to live by the values Jesus preached and lived.

God lives to the extent that we love - for in every act of kindness, of nurture, of forgiveness, of sacrifice there is God. God is Spirit, insists Jesus, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth. The same spirit of God that caused Abraham to be called a rock and gave rise to the rock-like quality of Peter's confessed faith is always underground in our lives encased in the rock of our exterior functions waiting only to be tapped.

I think we all know from personal experience that we and all others are certainly meant for more than we are. I believe that there is in all of us the possibility of greatness of spirit.. Words like these were continually on the lips of Jesus - words like, 'according to your faith, be it done unto you.," or, 'great is your faith - be it done unto you even as you will." Our faith is often the limit of our blessings. We seldom obtain more than we believe in. In any great movement for good, the ultimate and deciding question always is, how many people can be found who have faith enough to believe in the cause? If we have enough people with faith, a project can usually be accomplished.

. I don't think this means that we can always over-ride all obstacles to a chosen goal, but it does state an awareness of resources in reserve, of a power around us and in us that diminishes our fear. If you look closely at the gospels you can see that every time Jesus had an opportunity to exert to the full his influence on a person, the possibilities for that person were enlarged. That which moves us into new possibilities, new powers and increasing liberty is what salvation is all about. It is new life; it is liberation from old habits, anxieties and fears. It lifts our horizons, and at the center of life sets the stirring conviction that what ought to be done, can be done.

This experience of the spirit is the very essence of our life together - and we are always in danger of drifting from this vital center. Linda, last week, used well a wonderful image of new life and possibilities in presenting the image of the table - the table at the center of our life together - and the need to expand that table, to put in another plank, to include other people, new ideas, new ways of thinking and acting, new life - for we are all children of the LIVING God. Life is what lives before us. .

I had an interesting experience last week. I was invited to a buffet brunch at one of the local large hotels to celebrate an important birthday of a childhood friend of mine. There was a magnificent spread of food there - dishes that covered the whole gambit between breakfast and dinner. They had at least six tables filled to capacity with beautifully prepared items to eat. It was overwhelming. A woman that I didn't know standing next to me in the middle of the tables looking at all of this said, "You know I hate to come to these. This makes me too anxious. She said, "I find myself torn between two of my biggest fears - the fear of not wanting to miss anything and the fear of getting fat, and so, she went on, "I take a little here and a little there, and then when I get home my stomach is not right because I have eaten too many different things." My laughter at what she said was a laughter of recognition. I thought later that perhaps she had just come up with the perfect metaphor for the life of plenty that surrounds us without a centering rock.

All of the weather experts are now saying that the tropical storms that typically come to this area in the next couple of months will more than likely end the draught. It is very possible that the next time I go walking on the canal that the river will be back to near normal and it will no longer be possible to see the river bed. Rivers and canals can change very suddenly. But having experienced that area uncovered by water, I will never be able to look at it in the same way. I will know how solid is the foundation. I will know that I do not need to fear or be anxious because I have been hewn from the rock.

There are many paths to God. Our God is not exclusive. Rocks of faith come from many different quarries, but like Peter, I know the quarry from which I was dug. I know the faith history that I claim as my history, imperfect as it may be, and in discovering the certainty of that centering principle for my life, I can look to the future with the assurance that faith brings.

It is an experience of salvation to know in the words of Isaiah - the rock from which we are hewn and the quarry from which we are dug. Let us individually and as a church live into the future with confidence. Amen.

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