"Take Heart"

Sermon Text: Genesis37:1-4, 12-28 and Matthew 14:22-33

August 10, 2014

First Congregational UCC – Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

These past few weeks, I have enjoyed having conversations with our newest members about our church’s covenant statements. According to the constitution of First Congregational UCC, we require our members to accept our covenantal statements. The first is the Church Covenant, which we’ll say together a little later in the service. The second is our Open and Affirming Statement. One of the things I love about our worship together is that we regularly say these statements together on Sunday mornings. They remind us who we are called to be as a church community. And on days like today, when we join together to welcome new members in our congregation, it is especially appropriate to spend some time reflecting on what it means to be church together. What are our commitments to each other? What are the responsibilities and privileges of being a part of this congregation?

Our bylaws tell us that when we become members of First Congregational, we are agreeing to give our support by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. It looks a bit different for each of us, of course, and when I meet with people who are considering membership, we talk about what it might look like for them. On these Covenant Celebration Sundays, when we welcome new members, it’s also an appropriate time for all of us who are members already to recommit ourselves to our responsibilities of supporting First Congregational with our prayers, presence, gifts, and service. And for those of you who aren’t members yet, but think you might like to be, there is no need to wait for a formal invitation. I would love to be in conversation with you anytime about what it means to be a member here.

Throughout the summer, I’ve been blessed by the opportunity to sit down with 50 of you for one-on-one or one-on-two conversations. And I still have a few more yet to go before the end of August. What a gift to be able to sit together with no real agenda except learning about who you are and what is important to you. I have heard stories of childhoods, Christmases, vacations, family dinners, car accidents, deaths and funerals, childbirths, divorces, educations, struggles at work, hobbies. I’ve looked at pictures and videos. I’ve heard stories of your ancestors. I’ve heard stories of your dreams for the future. I’ve listened in the spaces between the words and shared with you a bit about who I am, too. It’s been an amazing summer. I highly recommend it, this spiritual practice of simply listening. We don’t do it enough in our world.

And in the midst of these conversations, the topic of what it means to “be church” has come up again and again. You have told me stories about what church has meant to you. The people who brought you meals after a cancer diagnosis. The people who sat with you in Sunday School classes and listened to your questions. The churches that have welcomed you and your children and been an extended family to you and them. The churches that have held you in love during an awful diagnosis, a struggle with death, the loss, the funeral, the grief after the loss of a loved one. The churches that have allowed you to dream dreams about the future….a future for you, your family, your church, your town, your world. Church has meant so much to so many of you. It has done my soul good to hear these stories.

Because as your pastor, one of my important tasks is to continually ask myself, “what does it mean to be church in this time and place?” And it’s not just my job, of course. It’s also your job.

Earlier this week, I heard these words come out of my mouth during one of these conversations, “I think one of the most important tasks of the Church in our time is to remind people they are safe.”

We were talking about all the fear that is out there in the world today. People carrying guns into Target because, what? They’re scared of the other customers, I guess? People so scared of those who are different than them that they will yell hateful things at a bus of children coming from another country seeking refuge. People who are afraid same-sex marriage will lead to the demise of our society so they spend their time persecuting those who celebrate love in all its forms. People who are so very afraid of women having control over their own bodies that they stand outside women’s clinics and scream horrendous things at the women going in to see their doctors.

Of course, now it sounds like I’m pointing fingers, right? But that’s not fair. Because, of course, I get scared, too. As a parent of young children, I worry about my kids, of course. I try to give them a long leash because I don’t want them to grow up afraid. But then it seems I also have to worry about what other people might think of me if I give them too much freedom. For we live in a time and place where parents are arrested for letting their kids play at the park or walk to school alone.

And we are entering into a dangerous time of the year in our lovely college town, too. I’ve already been thinking about whether or not I need to take a break from bike commuting for a few weeks as the students get used to driving in town. And my heart aches for all the parents out there sending their children off to college, wondering if their child will make it safely through that first month of school when students die of alcohol poisoning at are sexually assaulted at alarming rates.

You can’t read the news without finding all kinds of things that cause fear….air strikes in Iraq, Ebola in West Africa, horrible news continuing out of Israel and Palestine. It seems there will always be plenty of things to fear and we live in a world where many people make lots of money off of capitalizing on our fears.

Of course, fear is nothing new. Our stories from the First and Second Testaments this morning are all about fear. Joseph’s brothers are afraid Jacob doesn’t have enough love to go around, so they hate Joseph. Joseph is left by his big brothers at the bottom of a pit to die, and then brought up from the pit…not to be rescued, but because they decide it would be nice to make a buck and finally be rid of him. So they sell him to a group of travelers and he is taken away from family and home.

And then we have the disciples, out on the boat the morning after a storm. They see a hazy figure coming across the sea. It appears to be walking on the water – but, no, that can’t be. It must be a ghost! And they cried out in fear. But Jesus said, “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

Take heart. Be of good cheer. Have courage. These are healing words. Jesus uses this same phrase throughout the gospels when he approaches people who are a mess. People who are scared, hurt, dying, dead. These are words he uses when he heals.

As a person who has dealt with anxiety throughout my life, these words used to annoy me. I always heard people talking about how the phrase “do not be afraid” was in the Bible over 100 times, but it never made me feel better. It just made me feel guilty for feeling afraid. Any of you who have every had serious anxiety or tried to help someone with anxiety know that telling an anxious person, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” rarely works. It’s just not that easy.

And yet, like Peter. I find myself, in those moments of anxiety, crying out, “Lord, save me!” When I feel like I am drowning in fear, I need something larger than myself to call me back to order. I need someone to remind me to re-center myself – to get away from that jumble of fear in the pit of my stomach and come back to the heart of things.

Take heart. Have courage. You know that courage comes from the Latin for heart, right?

In a world of fear, how do we come back to the heart of things? Where do we find our courage and strength?

Jesus uses these words to heal those who are scared and hurt. I believe the Church is called to be a source of healing in the world. We are called to speak to a world of legitimate fears and fear-mongering and help people find a way to live in the midst of that fear.

During my conversation earlier this week, after I said those words, “I think the Church is to be about the work of reminding people they are safe,” I realized I had to take it back. Because we aren’t safe. Not really. There are any number of things out there in the world that can and may hurt us or the people we love. We like to fool ourselves into a sense of safety, but being human means we are vulnerable.

So maybe the job of the Church is to remind people that they aren’t safe….but that they can still take heart, have courage, be of good cheer in the midst of this very unsafe business of being humans.

I actually think it’s a good thing to remember that we aren’t safe. It helps us remember to pay attention, enjoy life, savor the moment, not take things for granted. It helps us remember to share, live out generosity, help others. We remember that we are all dependent on each other and the Earth. We remember that nothing is forever. That’s not a bad thing.

But in the midst of this awareness of our vulnerability, we have to find a way to ensure it doesn’t turn into an existential crisis. We have to find ways to re-center, find the heart of things, live into the unknown and still get up day after day to live our lives.

Jesus comes to the disciples and says, “Take heart. Do not be afraid.” When Peter notices the strong wind, gets flustered, and starts to slip, he cries out, “Lord, save me!” and Jesus immediately reaches out to him and catches him.

God is like that, don’t you think? Not in a “I can solve all of you problems kind of way,” but in a, “I’ll go the distance with you” kind of way.

God whispers words of comfort to us. God reminds us to breathe deep, find the heart of things. God shows us, again and again, that death never has the final say. We like to talk about Jesus’s resurrection a lot, but the whole Bible is chock full of stories of resurrection, not just the one about Jesus. Just look at Joseph’s story. Notice how today’s passage begins, “Jacob settled in the land he had lived in as an alien, the land of Caanan.” A man who had once been a stranger, looked down upon, found his way to new life and belonging. He settled. That’s a small story of resurrection.

And Joseph – gosh, his story is all about death and resurrection. A child born a woman who had waited and waited for a child. Sold to Midianites by his brothers, he finds himself a slave in Egypt. Falsely accused of a crime, he finds himself in jail. And there, in that jail cell, he begins to dream dreams. Take heart, Joseph, do not be afraid. The story is not over yet.

His dreams take him right up and out of that jail cell. He is eventually resurrected to new life and finds himself in a position to help the people of Egypt avoid famine. He ascends to the top of the civil government and eventually is given the opportunity to help the brothers that had once sold him into slavery. When he is reunited with his father after more than 20 years, the son falls into his father’s arms, weeping tears of joy, and the father says, “I can die now, having seen for myself that you are still alive.” A relationship that had been cut off – killed – is resurrected.

Death and resurrection. Fear and peace. All of these things are at the core of what it means to be human.

Our Still-comforting God comes to us in stories and in the person of Jesus to say, “Take heart. Be not afraid.” Not because everything is okay. Not because the world is safe.

But because we each have to find a way to get through the day as a vulnerable human being, and Jesus knew exactly what that was like. In the midst of our deepest fears – real or imagined – Christ reaches out to us across the water, “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.”