Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

What if you were given the chance to take 3 months off this spring and summer, and you could afford to travel to—say,  Ireland , or the Caribbean , or Alaska or Australia .  Imagine yourself spending 3 months in a place where you would love to go, knowing that everyone you are responsible for back here is well cared for.  You have 3 months to relax and enjoy.  Now imagine that the primary goal of these 3 months is to connect with God and figure out where your life will go from here on. 

Wow, 3 months space to get in touch with your spirit— your God connection I call it—and discover, or rediscover, your purpose in life!  That sounds sooo good, and yet it sounds a little scary, because I often come home from just a weekend away with all sorts of new ideas and resolutions about what to do with my life.  After 3 months of perspective, a person could decide to make drastic changes!  Yet I am quite certain that many of you would welcome this chance, even if it is a little scary.  Americans today are looking for meaning in their lives, beyond the busy-ness of every day. Most of us are on a quest for something more.

If we could go on this imaginary journey, I would call it a sacramental journey, because it is a quest to find one’s soul, I think, one’s God connection.  I say sacramental journey because a sacrament is "an outward sign of an inward encounter with God."  So, for example, the water we use in a baptism is an outward sign—we see this wet, plain, ordinary water—but it’s a sign of something that happens inwardly, a sign that God in the hugeness of God’s love and mercy, accepts us and will cleanse us of guilt for the hurt we cause.  In communion, our other sacrament, we take ordinary bread and grape juice from HyVee, and these foods become symbols of God entering us and touching us and becoming as much a part of our being as the air we breathe.

I know that many people are starved for signs of our God connection.  You can hardly pick up a magazine that doesn’t mention the spirituality that Americans are looking for today. One reason Buddhism is growing in popularity is because it teaches people to be mindful of life, to stop and be fully aware that the present moment is full of  gifts to one’s spirit.  The world is full of signs of God’s presence but it’s easy not to notice. 

ow most of us can’t go on a 3 month journey, but what if each of us saw our daily lives, right here in Sioux Falls, as a sacramental journey and watched for signs of God’s presence all around us?  I would notice the friend who calls just to check on me; he has nothing to gain by it, his caring is a gift borne out of goodness and love.  I would notice the ordinary member of my congregation who donated bone marrow to a stranger across the country.  What she got for it was discomfort, time apart from here family and missed work, but what she did was give a gift we humans can give one another—a gift of caring.  I would  notice the beautifully painted fingernails of an elderly woman in the nursing last week, and think of the volunteer did her nails, and left this visible sign of her caring for the old woman to see (here) and feel (here) all week.

I asked my husband if he saw any signs of God’s presence this week.  He saw it in the bent up eyeglasses of a recently widowed, elderly woman.  She said they were bent because she’d gotten so many comforting hugs after her husband died.  He saw a sign of God’s goodness in a recently divorced mother whose well-to-do stock broker husband walked out on her.  She cleans houses now, so she can afford to keep her kids in the house they are used to, not wanting to add the stress of moving to their young lives.  He saw it in another of his patients who took a 3 month leave from her job at Citibank to care for her dying mother.

What if we expanded the definition of sacrament to include all the outward signs of God’s goodness and love that we encounter, believing as we do, that God is the highest good and greatest love?  Could it be that God intends for us to be on a sacramental journey, every day of our lives, giving our attention to watching for signs of God—blessings—instead of filling every moment with work and activity?

The song, Sentimental Journey, has been playing in my mind this week.  The words to this old song go like this: Gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my heart at ease—gonna make a sentimental journey to renew old memories.  The verse says: Got my bag, I got my reservation, spent each dime I could afford. Like a child in wild anticipation, long to hear that "All aboard."  Never thought my heart could be so yearny, why did I decide to roam.  Gotta take this sentimental journey, sentimental journey home.

To be truly content in life, I think we need to be on a journey home to God.  Our spirits need that God-connection.  An ancient theologian put it  this way: "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God."  I’ve replaced the words to the song, and now in my head it goes like this: Gonna take a sacramental journey, gonna take the time I need; gonna make a sacramental journey, look for God in all I see.

To be a blessing to others, one first needs to feel blessed.  The funny thing is, when we start paying attention to the signs of God’s presence in life, we start being God’s presence for others!  Sometimes without our even realizing it, we become a blessing to others simply by caring. 

I read a great story awhile back in Rachel Remen’s book My Grandfather’s Blessings (I love that book).  An educator that Dr. Remen counseled told her about an incident that freed her to change her life.  She had been married for several years to a charming, highly educated man who was physically and psychologically abusive.  He was respected in the community, and to the outer world theirs was a perfect marriage.  But their private life was far different.  Over and over he told her that she had provoked him and had brought the abuse on herself by her stupidity and her other faults.  She would try even harder, but no matter how hard she tried she was never good enough.  Over the years she had become so diminished and uncertain of what was real that she had come to believe him. -

All this changed one day on a street corner in NY City.  As Elaine and her husband were standing at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change, she had looked across the street and noticed a building with exceptionally beautiful prewar architecture.  She said, "Look, dear, isn’t that building beautiful?"  Thinking they were alone, he had responded to her in the tone of utter contempt that he usually reserved for their private conversations.  "You mean the one over there that looks exactly like every other building on the street?" he sneered.

She had flushed with shame and fallen silent.  And then a woman standing next to them, a complete stranger who was also waiting for the light to change, turned and glared at him.  With a strong NY accent, she said, "She’s absolutely right, you know. That building is beautiful.  And you, sir, are a horse’s rear end."  The light turned and the woman walked away, but It was an epiphany moment for this wife.  Suddenly she knew she wasn’t  the problem, and in that instant, she knew that she would find the strength to leave him. Who would expect such a blessing would come from a mouthy New Yorker, who just happened to care enough to defend a person who she didn’t even know.  A sign of goodness.

One last story: An older priest told this story.  Many years before when had just been hired as a hospital chaplain, and he was determined to do a good job,  the young priest had gone to visit a woman who was facing major surgery the following morning.  She was lying in her bed, tense with anxiety.  He had no sooner pulled up a chair when she told him, "Father, I feel certain that I am going to die tomorrow."

Nothing in his training had prepared him for this, and he had no idea of how to respond.  To cover his confusion, he had reached out and taken her hand.  She had begun to talk then.  Still holding her hand and barely listening, he had tried frantically to recall some great words of comfort from his classes, the words of Merton or Mother Theresa, or Jesus.  But the words he knew when he entered the room were gone.

The woman continued to talk, and to cry some, and eventually closed her eyes and fell sleep.  He used this occasion to pray to ask God for help, for the words that he needed.  But he found no words at all, and eventually he had left, crushed, convinced that he was not cut out to be a priest.  He had spent the rest of the day and most of the night in an agonized assessment of his shortcomings and his calling.  He had been too ashamed to visit her again.  But a few weeks later he had received a note from her, thanking him for all he had done for her during his visit, and most especially for all the wonderful things he had told her, the words of comfort and wisdom.  She would never forget them.  And then she quoted some of the words he had used when he prayed to God for help, when he thought she was asleep. 

The spirit works through us, sometimes in ways beyond our knowing.  Each of you can be a sign of God’s presence in the world, sometimes simply by offering a listening ear, or a well-chosen comment.  Sometimes you’re a priest and sometimes you’re a prophet!  The choice to be a sign of the Spirit in the world is yours.  No matter how much others bless you, like the fig tree fertilized by the gardener in our text, it is, in the end, up to you to bear fruit and be what you were made for—to spread God’s love and goodness around, to be a sacrament to others, a visible sign of God’s presence in the world.   And the beauty of this, is that in so doing, you will begin to notice God’s presence all over the place.  You will find yourself on a sacramental journey.  Amen.