It's Not About Me

It’s About Those NOT Here

This week’s sermon resonated once again the recurring theme that

“It’s NOT about me”!

Pastor Mohn reminded us that Jesus “always comes for those who are not here”. Perhaps like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, He is always on the lookout for the return of His lost sheep, those “who are not here today”. I returned home for Christmas break once while I was in college. There was a little Episcopalian Church with a sign out front that said “CH_ _CH: What’s missing? U R”.

Pastor reminded us to perform a brain scan for WHO it was that first introduced us to The Way and introduced us to “going to Church”. They brought us to the fold. Who were they? We all come at different times and in different ways, the U_R’s that “fill the middle of Church”. Pastor reminded us that our spiritual journeys were meant to intersect.

When she asked us to think “WHO”, I was reminded of a student and fellow colleague whom I would meet occasionally at a student tutoring center. The student was a serious thinker with many interesting questions where science and God “intersect”. He sparred with his rabbi at Temple, but has been back and forth on the issue of “going to Temple” regularly. My teaching colleague has been on their own journey, one that until this year has been one that involved Church only on the periphery of their journey. Recently they met with their pastor about the opportunities to be more involved in Church. Many of these “meanderings” I believe have been born of these relatively non-confrontational talks and “What if” conversations. Each of us has interfaced with our religious questioning a bit differently after having gotten together. We challenged each other’s notion of “Why go to Church?”

Paths crossed. Stories were shared. And maybe, just maybe, two Churches and a Temple will see faces not so strange, but newly “more present”. I believe these separate journeys intersected briefly “for a reason”. And I’m reminded that “nudges along the path” come from all sources. God works in mysterious and oh so beautiful ways.

Recently I’ve been re-reading Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. He starts his 40 day journey with the FIRST sentence of Chapter One: It’s NOT About Me! He reminds us that true humility must be re-learned again and again, and comes not from “thinking less of ourselves, but, rather, thinking of ourselves less”. He suggests that true servants are “self-forgetful”.

Those of us who were so fortunate to have had someone invite us to Church or remind us why going there is good and necessary for us have been blessed by God with this message. One other time in college, I ran into the Catholic Chaplain who asked if I was coming to service that Saturday evening. I said “I didn’t have the time”. I had 4 hours of work yet to do. He leaned over, smiled, and touched my shoulder. He said, “Come to Mass. Take that hour. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. The four hours work will get done in 2 and a ½ and you’ll have 30 minutes left over.” I don’t know or recall if the numbers worked out exactly that way, but he was RIGHT in the broader sense. I “got centered”, I was reminded of “what was important”, my time spent with God and community helped “put things in that broader perspective”. I felt less alone, but being self-forgetful was a refreshing feeling. I “emptied the well”, as it were, and that place I was taken to renewed me.

That Chaplain’s name was Father Michael Mahler. Something inside me felt he lived his words because every Saturday night, with a sermon to give bright and early Sunday, he was in his wooden bench seat K-8-12 at the college hockey rink, part of the Hockey Faithful. And the sermon “got done” … and there were loaves and fishes left over enough to fill many baskets ……

God FINDS a way to bring us back, as the Prodigal Sons to the Father. As the OTHER son, we must remember “It’s NOT about me!”. Jesus came “for those who are NOT here”! If you meet someone, one of the U_R’s who a Church is missing, a Temple is calling …. If you cross spiritual paths with someone looking and searching, let’s invite them to our Church, invite them to “revisit THEIR long lost Church”, invite them to “give Temple a chance” to turn 4 hours of work into 2 and ½ by placing the very FIRST hour in God’s hands.

What’s missing? U R

It’s not about me. It’s about the missing U’s

There are empty seats to our left and to our right ….. waiting to be filled with listening ears, hungry for the music of God’s message. And when every last seat is filled, there’s still always room “for one more” …..