:: EVERGREEN CHRISTIAN CHURCH ::

It is appropriate at this juncture of our history in our life together in Christ at Evergreen Christian Church, when we are celebrating our 20 years of ministry together, that I gather up the fragments of a theological and pastoral life and place them in a basket called "Life Sentences." I use the term "Life Sentences" to describe this basket full of theological and pastoral fragments in two senses.

The first is that I believe I have (and as a confessing Christian, you have) been sentenced to life by the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are all serving life sentences within the freeing confines of the gospel of Jesus. The second sense in which I use the phrase has to do with boiling down a life time of struggle, learning, preaching, serving, failing, forgiving and being forgiven, loving, confessing, professing, teaching, worshiping, community-building and justice seeking into a few cogent sentences of "the reason for the hope that is within me," to use the words of Saint Peter. Or, to use the words of Martin Luther, "Here I stand. I cannot recant." Or to use the words of the historic faith, "Here is my Credo, my 'I believe." I feel I owe this to you, my beloved community, because you called me 20 years ago to be your teacher in the faith. And I hope these next weeks are especially real for all of us in our spiritual journey as we reflect together, remember together, hope together, weep and laugh together. And I hope we can end up by saying together of our life, our faith, our congregation, our witness to the world and our hope for the future in the saving grace of God: "Amen, Amen, and Amen. So be it."

I believe I can say to you what I really want to say, what is really important to us in the life of faith, in about ten affirmations. But first, for the next few Sundays, we need to weave the basket that will hold these essential fragments of our faith. After Jesus had fed the multitude, he wanted the disciples to gather up the remainders and the reminders of their feast together. He didn't want anything to be left, anything to be forgotten, anything to be wasted, anything to be lost. He wants all of who we are and what we have done and not done, believed and not believed, to be brought to him. When he calls us to love God with our whole hearts, he is not calling for some heroic act but for humble presentation of the "all of us"-the good and the bad, the faithful and the faithless, the light and the dark to be brought to him for sanctification. For my heart, like yours I am sure, contains the whole mixture. And it is the whole heart which needs to be, longs to be, saved within the love of our life-giving God. Let's begin to weave the basket that will hold these sacred fragments.

The congregation, parish ministry, is where life happens. It is in parish ministry, our life together, that life's mess and life's mystery meet, where religion and life mingle, and the word of daily bread and the hunger of daily need encounter each other in the tenuous, ambiguous and exhilarating work of meaning making. Is not the purpose of our gatherings, conversations, throat clearing, questions, preachments, songs, stories, worships, meals, and study to find meaning to our human tears, insights in our hearty laughter, humility in our sacred silences, and hope for our hearts deepest longings before the profound mystery of life itself? We start weaving our basket with the threads of head and heart, intellect and emotions. It has been my purpose from the beginning to keep head and heart together in the experience of life and religion.

A Polish philosopher has said there are two intellectuals in society: the priest and the jester. The role of the priest is to sacralize everything, for our world has been touched by grace. The role of the clown is to provoke laughter with his thought and thought with his laughter. To the one who thinks, life may be a comedy. To the one who feels, life may be a tragedy. My purpose in these sermons on Life Sentences is to share with you, out of the experience of my life as a pastor and a theologian, some reflections on life and religion, theology and faith, agape (love) and eros (desire)... in other words, the shape of our human experience in the divine comedy and the divine tragedy, for I believe that human beings experience both, and do so as "beings of desire."

When I say "beings of desire," I mean as religious beings. Desire is a symptom of an absence, a privation. Our hearts are homesick. This desire for the absent, this homesickness for God, is what religion is really all about. As Rubem Alves says, "Neither in the Paradise of Genesis nor in the Holy City of the Apocalypse are there any temples. In Paradise religion is not yet necessary and in the Holy City, heaven, it is no longer necessary. Religion is the memory of a lost unity and the nostalgia for a future reconciliation. Under the surface layers of happiness and peace which it proclaims, religion always presupposes an "I" unreconciled with itself." Therefore, religion and desire belong together.

Life really is the subject of religion. When we make anything else its subject, or turn religion into a mere object of our study, we have lost our way. In Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, Emily, who has died, is allowed to visit her life on her 17th birthday. She is astounded at everyone's inattention to their lives, to what is happening. She asks her escort: "Does anyone ever see life when they are living it?" He answers, "Not many. Saints, and a few poets."

In my seventh decade of life, there is only one theological question which really interests me-for me and for you. WHAT IS THE WORD THAT GIVES LIFE? What is the word that brings abundant life, lived life, worthy life, eternal life? What is the word that raises the dead?

Religion is about life. Jesus' ministry was about life. The holy ru'ach (the holy breath or the holy spirit) is about life. God is the God of life.

Now let me tell you something silly. In most of our churches, lacking the creative imagination and courage to attend to the big problem-HOW CAN WE HAVE LIFE AND HAVE IT ABUNDANTLY-we allow ourselves to become preoccupied with a bunch of little problems. Attending to minutia relieves us from the risky business of melting into the mystery and awe of God and life, of being itself. When this happens, the search for certitude replaces the adventure of faith, fearful craving for security displaces the courage to be and to become, doctrine replaces discernment, facts replace wisdom, proof replaces freedom, beating our breast replaces sticking out our neck, scratching our head replaces rolling up our sleeves, being right replaces being in love, busyness replaces meaningfulness, and finally where one stands replaces the religious and spiritual journey itself!

The road of faith only opens up before those who take it. I am interested in what people become in the journey of faith. What do we make of life and what does life make of us? They had it right in the patristic period: "The glory of God is a human being fully alive!" We have been given life to enjoy all things and we have been bewitched into thinking we have to have all things to enjoy life. Thus overburdened with things and our attachments, we have become underpowered for loving and its opportunities.

So...we will be looking in these coming weeks for "the word that brings life." What are you becoming in the journey of faith?

Victor L. Hunter
Pastor, Evergreen Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Extra biblical sources used in preparation of this sermon:

Rubem Alves, What is Religion?

Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life

William Sloan Coffin, Credo.

Thornton Wilder, Our Town