Comments for Jim Other sermons.           

What do you need right now in your life to be truly happy? Think about that a moment. Turn the question upside down. What do you have in life right now that, if you lost it, you would lose your happiness as well? Possessions? Health? Relationships? Self-concept? Harder question, I think. What do you need? Now, look at our world, and ask yourself, "What does the world need, this broken and bleeding world of which we are so aware?" Start with your own family and widen the circle to embrace all humanity. What do you need? What does the world need? The first question is about the search for personal happiness. The second is about the search for a better world. A spiritual answer to the first question would be that you need God to be truly happy. A spiritual answer to the second is that the world needs people willing to help others. The scriptures say that we must trust God, and work for justice and peace. But what does it mean to truly trust God and how do we do that? And what is the best way to help others in such a complicated world?

These are questions about spiritual discernment. How do we discern God’s will for us – personally and corporately? You’ve heard it said that this is a time of spiritual discernment at CCC. How do we do that? How do I discern God’s will for me and God’s will for my neighbor? The famous African-American preacher Howard Thurman once said, "Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." I like that very much. The Old Testament scriptures this morning are about coming alive and staying alive. The two scriptures from the Old Testament say this beautifully with the image of the tree planted by a stream of flowing water. To be alive and truly happy means that one is rooted in God. Root your trust in God. If you are so rooted, your life will prosper and will bear fruit. On the other hand, if you trust in other human beings for your happiness, or anything outside of God in the world, you might as well be chaff blown in the wind, or a shrub in a desert place. On the one hand, a luxurious, leafy green tree, laden down with ripe fruit, and on the other, tumbleweed blowing across Death Valley.

There is no way to figure out how to come alive. The only way to come alive is to wake up and come alive. Many people for most of the time aren’t awake. A man comes to a famous spiritual teacher and says, "I’m very troubled. I’ve just been talking to some people who claim there is no life after death." "Do they?" the teacher replied. "Wouldn’t it be awful to die and never again see or hear or love or move?" "You find that awful?" said the teacher. "That’s how most people are even before they die."

The same teacher applied this message that most of the time we are asleep and don’t know it to personal relationships. He told of a recently married woman who complained about her husband’s drinking habits. "If you knew he drank so much why did you marry him?" she was asked. "I had no idea he drank," said the woman, "till one night he came home sober."

What you and I need and what the world needs is for all of us to be awake and alive. Then everyone is bearing fruit and changing the world. The theme of the Couples’ Communication Retreat last weekend was "Marriage (or committed partnership) as a Spiritual Journey." What we explored was the idea that we find God and true happiness, not ultimately through our connection with our partner, but by connecting with ourselves. We do not find true wholeness by linking up with another person, but by discovering our wholeness as an inner reality, an already existing birthright. Connecting with the sacred within brings us to life. A loving relationship between partners is spiritual in that each is on his or her own journey, and at the same time, each is committed that the beloved also make that spiritual connection within. And, of course, each partner’s concept of God (or of no God) may be very different.

We frequently hear people talk about their marriage, or their relationship, as something that is going well or going poorly. But, when you think about it, a marriage is simply an abstraction. It exists only as a concept. All that exists is you and your partner. Your happiness. Your partner’s happiness. Your awareness of and connection to the divine in your heart. And your partner’s. Isn’t a real marriage, any deep relationship, about two people who are really awake and alive and committed that each stay that way? Aren’t such people truly lights shining for the world to see?

Jesus said, "Let your light shine." You see, that is the real answer to my first question. What you need, what each of us needs, is to let our light shine. And how do you do that? Come alive. Wake up by becoming aware of what makes you alive. Now maybe processes help, or tests enable us to discern something about ourselves we didn’t know. But the answer is not in the test, or the process, or the even the person with very good advice. The answer is in you. The answer is in you because that’s where God is. The answer is there when you suddenly say, "I am alive. I am really alive!" I remember when Toko Ackerman first told me she was going to be a volunteer for Hospice of Montgomery. There was just no doubt about how alive that made her feel. Where are you coming alive? Trusting God means trusting that. Trusting God means trusting life. What you need is to come alive and make that connection with God right here in your heart. Once that happens it will be very clear what you then do. I was talking with a CCC member awhile back who was not quite sure he should take a new job offered him. On the one hand he was really excited about it. On the other he wondered if he were up to the challenge. I was tempted to just say, "Follow your bliss and all will be well." Instead, I said something even more radical. I said, "Pray about this. Take it to God, and trust that it will become clear." He did and quickly it became very clear. And now the world is changing for the better.

Howard Thurman says that what the world needs is people who are alive. Why is that? Because people who are alive see the world with two things: wisdom and compassion. You need both. Wisdom without compassion is aloof and detached. Compassion without wisdom may be misguided and foolish. People who are alive look at the world with wisdom and compassion. And what do they see? They see suffering, and they see the causes of that suffering. And they go to work to ease the suffering and root out the causes. The United Church of Christ unofficial motto is: to love is to care, to care is to do. Christian love is about caring and doing.

There is nothing more important for Christ Congregational Church than to strive to be a people who are awake and alive; a people who bring wisdom and compassion to every effort we undertake. And our prime motive - dare I use the "E" word? – our evangelical task, is affirm the good news that each person can come alive.

In a moment we will together commission a group of women and men who will be calling in the homes of our members in this final phase of our Recommitment Campaign. What is this campaign about and why did they agree to do this? Yes, of course, it is about money. It is about paying down our mortgage so that we can devote more resources to program and mission. But that is not what it is really about and that is not why these folks have volunteered. It is about being a living church of living people. The real message of these visitors is "We are awake. We have come alive. And we want nothing more than a church of people who are so alive with love, compassion, wisdom, and energy, that the world will be changed." AMEN.

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