Where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope ...

Readings:
April 22, 2007
Acts 9: 1-6, 17-20
Revelation 5: 11-14
John 21: 1-19

April 29, 2007
Acts 9: 36-43
Revelation 7: 9-17
John 10: 22-30

As Pastor Johnson reminded us this week, witnessing is often best done by example. We say what we believe in the Nicene Creed, but “what will bring someone to God is sitting and having a soda with them and telling them your story. So sit down, open a soda, here’s a story …

Two blogs for one. I couldn’t figure out why I was having a hard time blogging last week. Then, this Sunday morning, I felt I might have been told why. The two sermons and the entire early service intertwined in a “God’s threading the tapestry” sort of way. I will ask the pastors to forgive me if the scriptural texts do not bear this out, but, upon climbing the stairs once back in my home, the witness from the pulpits appeared to. The Prayer of St. Francis, which my mother cross-stitched and gave me in college, sits atop that staircase.

In the testimonial this week and in both sermons, last week and this, I heard the threaded messages. And, as I walked to my room, it caught my eye. And there they were, in burnt orange and green stitched yarn, staring at me:

Where there is doubt, faith …. it is in giving that we receive

Where there is despair, hope … it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Donna Zarek gave an emotional and moving testimonial about having faith to do what your heart tells you is right, but your mind tells you to be cautious of “just in case”. In what made the testimonial especially moving to me, the message was about a sheep who felt they might have been lost, but was then found; a message had been revisited and therein learned. It was true growth of the spiritual variety. Why it was absolutely moving was that it is a very hard thing to showcase one’s growth for everyone to see. But therein lay the root of my feeling fortunate to have experienced her witness firsthand. THIS Mt. Zion is a special place where disciples can walk up and witness to their doubts and witness to how the spirit helped them move beyond their doubts, their worries, their roadblocks to faith. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julie Cameron fondly says that to unblock our connection with the spirit we must …

Jump … and the net will appear

Where there was doubt and worry and caution “just in case”, there became faith … that the net would appear. Somewhere, somehow. The testimonial we were privileged to hear this week took a withdrawal from the bank of “just in case” and made a deposit in the bank of “the net will appear”.

Then it was Pastor Kendra Mohn’s turn. And in an amazing segue, she continued the service in a way that struck me in two significant ways.

After Donna’s testimonial, she was so wise in knowing to say “After an experience such as this, I know not what words to add. Thank goodness, at times like these, God does the speaking”. In a hallway at Cardinal Stritch University lies a plaque that says

“Preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words.”

It is just as wise to know when not to use words and allow the proclamation to speak for itself in the action of, in this case, a heartfelt testimonial.

Secondly, and just as thoughtfully, she asked all the children at the service if they would like to come to the altar to witness the miracle of the Baptism of Clare Grant Kasdorf. The children do not know from worry, they’ve yet to learn doubt. And we were invited to witness the miracle through their eyes. The children’s book The Polar Express reminds us that adults can lose their ability to “see magic” and “to believe”. They can, at some point, no longer hear the first bell of Christmas. Children still can. Not only did the children witness, as Pastor Johnson reminded us, that something happened at the altar that transcended ritual, but we were welcomed by these two wise pastors to talk to our children in the way home … as a way of cementing their experience, but, perhaps just as much, to have our own children witness to us .. the sound of the bell, the magic, the belief.

Wow, I’m psyched just to be a disciple-in-training at a camp such as this.

And then, with awareness still tingling, I watched Pastor Johnson rise slowly but steadily into the pulpit with the aid of his crutch. He may feel uncomfortable for my saying this, but then that man tied it all together like some master craftsman. Why all the threads seemed to fit together to “tell a story”. And it went something like this:

There was a faithful minister named Dorcas. She quietly made the tunics, she knitted the prayer shawls, she tended to the altar linens, she collected the bulletins and cleaned the church pews. Quietly. Much like those who tended to the roads that needed fixing this Lent, the humble and quiet work, small things done with great love, as Mother Theresa is want to remind us. Dorcas is the one most often not noticed, who doesn’t get credit and doesn’t seek credit.

But in her quiet doing is a powerful message. PRAXIS – action as opposed to theory; it matters more what we do than what we say. For in that doing, faith lives!

Pastor Johnson knowingly gets excited when he gets to the part where he reminds us that it’s not a coincidence that kids crowd around a Baptismal font and they “get it”, Peter “gets” Dorcas and why she does what she does, in faith disciples “get” the 6 quarters a day. You don’t have to say it, you just have to show it, to live it. A static status quo is death; faith is alive and is evidenced in growth! The growth that occurs in a faith that is lived breaks all the rules! The Gospel breaks the laws of physics, chemistry, science, reality.

Forget Reality TV, give me Unreality Church!

As Pastor Mohn commiserated “We are, all of us, a continual mix of tragedy and joy, challenges and rejuvenation, despair and hope”. One day, the utter despair at Virginia Tech, the next day a Baptism and a vigil, a splash of water on our faces and candles lit by the thousands to awaken and rekindle hope. To shed the despair, a daily death and resurrection”.

As Pastor Johnson eerily resounded “We have found life in what was once the stench of death. The unreality Church breaks all the rules. It believes we can see the magic in Baptism, can see 6 quarters a day, can turn topsy into turvy. You won’t see it on TV or on the news and that’s … just …. fine. Sheep are practically blind, they smell and they get lost a lot. It’s OK that we’re sheep. And it’s OK if we’re all different kinds of sheep. Sure, we have despair but we are the people of hope”. All spoken by a man who used a crutch to get himself into the pulpit … who didn’t have to be there, but was. It matters what we do more than what we say. And because he did, what he said made all the difference.

Where there is doubt, faith …. it is in giving that we receive

Where there is despair, hope … it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

You don’t have to say it; you just have to live it.

Now that’s a story I can sit down to a soda with and pass on one more time.


Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.