Sermon at St. Thomas, by Lynn E. Cunningham. May 20, 2007, Easter 7. Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26.

1.         When I tell people that I lived in Washington, D.C. for thirty years before moving here, they often comment on how unpleasant and challenging that must have been. As if Washington were merely a place of high anxiety and stress. And in some ways it was. Lots of traffic. Very expensive to live. Sometimes dangerous. Crazy politics. Actually, I really enjoyed living there most of the time.

2.         Just as I enjoy living in Dubois, even though Dubois has its own forms of stress and challenges. I asked the book keeper who is maintaining the financial accounting for the Opportunity Shop whether other businesses in town were having difficulty making ends meet during the winter months. She said that basically every business in town loses money during the winter, with some exceptions like the grocery store. The business owners have to call on every resource they can think of, to get through the lean season. Some business owners simply close up shop during the winter and go find paying work elsewhere, as do many workers. This is not unusual for towns like Dubois with seasonal economies.

3.         But this lean time makes for lots of anxiety and stress on everyone who comes here to enjoy the wilderness and the friendly small town life, but who also tries to make a living here.

4.         On Thursday night I went to the town meeting held to discuss what to do about the closing of the Morning Star day care center, the only commercial day care center in town. Lots of parents are panicking as they face the summer months without knowing how they will get day care for their young children. In fact, lack of day care stops some folks from moving to town, particularly teachers, further hurting the economy.

5.         Dubois is small enough to be really friendly and cooperative, but at the same time our small size makes it very hard to cobble together some vital services, such as day care and health care. The Opp Shop clothing store and furniture store help fill in some of the gaps.

6.         The lack of a good economic base seems to mean that people can only live here if they really want to, or because they are retired. Trying to make a living is tough for lots of people. There seem to be also other more subtle, and non-economic ways in which living in Dubois leaves some people anxious to get away for a few weeks or months.

7.         To make a go of life here, people have to be rooted and grounded in something solid. For me, and I think for many of you, that something is God and our church community. Whenever I start to feel the ground starting to slip out from under me, whenever things start to be going haywire, I reach down deep into the wellspring of hope and faith that seems to lie at the core of my being, and say to myself, ‘steady as she goes’. I have the wind in my sails, the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing me along and forward through whatever comes along. ‘Steady as she goes.’ And you here at St. Thomas help me stay connected to that.

8.         Do you ever feel that way, when things seems to be getting rough? Do you have a wellspring of hope to tide you over the rough times here?

9.         Jesus offers strong support in his words spoken in today’s lessons. These lessons offer hope and faith to residents of Dubois who may be feeling that the ground is slipping out from under them.

10.       Jesus says in the Book of Revelation that “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. There is nothing before the first letter alpha, and nothing after the last letter omega, except Jesus, who is both.

11.       He also says in Revelation that he is “the root and the descendant of David”, the ancient great ruler of Israel. All things are rooted in him, come from him, and all things come back to Jesus, descend to him.

12.       In other words, nothing is going to happen to you in Dubois that did not start with Jesus, and everything happening to you will lead in the end to Jesus. So, ‘steady as she goes’. Whatever happens, you and I are headed for eternal life in Jesus.

13.       The Gospel of Thomas gets at this point of encouragement in another way. Our Wednesday mid-day Bible has been studying the Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian writing which the ancient church chose to suppress. You will not find it in your Bibles. The Gospel of Thomas shares many themes and phrases from the gospels in our Bible, as well as much material that is new and strange.

14.       One sentence caught my attention in Verse 42 of the Gospel of Thomas. It quotes Jesus as saying: “Be wanderers”. “Be wanderers”, an instruction that does not appear in any of the Gospels included in our Bible.

15.       Being a wanderer means to me traveling around without putting down roots, or making commitments. Being free to travel without having a fixed purpose or destination.

16.       Much of what passes for hunting and fishing here in Dubois, I suspect, is actually just wandering around through the wilderness back country, enjoying the beauty of the wilderness. I have taken several extended hikes in the Wind Rivers or in the Absarokas, when I was essentially just wandering around to see what I could see. Most of you surely know what it means to go out wandering.

17.       How can the invitation to being a “wanderer” provide any real comfort to residents of Dubois who are feeling beleaguered?

18.       The gospel instruction to be a wanderer in the world, reminds a person to avoid digging themselves in too deeply emotionally within a single place or way of living on this earth. Instead, Jesus followers are invited to be rooted only in Christ. I could rephrase Thomas’ gospel to say, be wanderers in this world, because your only true home is in Jesus, the world’s alpha and omega.

19.       I read this in religious terms to mean that the Christian should be truly rooted only in God, and not in anything that is of this world. In this world, the Christian should be a wanderer, always in the process of seeking God in everything encountered.

20.       The passage from John’s Gospel teaches this point another way.

21.       Listen to Jesus praying over his disciples in these verses leading up to the passage for today’s Gospel. Jesus prays to God: “I have made your name, [God’s name] known to the men you took from the world to give to me.” Jesus followers are persons who in a spiritual sense have been taken out of the world and given to Jesus. V. 6 These are disciples who have been taken out of the round of anxieties about financial or social success often found in the world and given to Jesus.

22.       A few verses farther on he says, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” V. 16

23.       Jesus and the followers are said to be in the world, but not of the world. They may be described as wanderers in the world because they are seeking God, not the things of this world. For Jesus and his followers, Jesus who is the son of God, knows that the true alpha and omega of things is Jesus himself alone. There is not any other end towards which they are moving than the Holy One. That fact can make a huge difference when a person sits down and starts to wonder, okay, dear Lord, what is going to happen to me in the next few days in this world, in this Dubois. And Jesus’ answer is, you are not going anywhere, but towards what God has in mind for you.

24.       If Jesus is the alpha, the beginning, and the omega, the ending, what happens in the middle, between the beginning and the ending? What happens in the place where you and I are right now, today?

25.       Today’s passage affirms, as I read it, that Jesus’ followers are loved by God right now, just as God the Father loves the Son, Jesus. Jesus prays that all his followers “ all may be one”, even as the Father and the Son are one. Today’s gospel says Jesus abides in his followers right now, just as Jesus and the Father abide in each other at all times.

26.       The experiences that you and I are having today in Dubois, experiences that can sometimes leave a person unnerved, are happening under the force of the love that the Father has for the Son, and the Son has for the followers of the Son. These things are happening under the force of the kind of love that the Son has for all his followers, to use John’s imagery. Nothing you and I are going to be doing today and tomorrow, or in the week to come, will happen outside of the power of God’s love for each one of us.

27.       Let me tell you, it does not get any more secure than that!

28.       If end all and be all for a person lies just in getting a good job, or getting a new car, or a house, or a bigger trophy deer head, that person is in for deep trouble. If worldly success is the end all and be all for a person, the world will certainly feel for that person like a slippery place to live in. There is no true security in any of these things. Go wandering instead, go looking for Jesus, and there find real security.

29.       Well, but what about the need for day care? What about the need for real jobs here in Dubois? What about those elements of daily living that are necessary provide any reasonable person with comfort and a basic sense of practical security?                   

30.       The instruction of being a wanderer is not meant to take us literally out of this world and into a kind of insanity, a place cut off from the reality of this world. These words of guidance are intended to steady us as we go about the work of bringing hope in a practical way into this world.   

31.       The problems will be addressed more effectively and more compassionately whenever folks discover how deeply they are rooted truly only in Jesus, and in Jesus over anything else.

32.       Letting Jesus into our lives as we work together to find solutions to these issues can provide much needed encouragement for our efforts.

33.       In Jesus name, Amen.