My first real
regular pastoring work was during last two years of seminary as a volunteer
chaplain at the Masonic Home of Virginia in Richmond, VA. This was a retirement community for Masons. As part of their programming they offered a
Sunday evening chapel service at which I lead worship and preached. This service was good for them because many
of the residents were not able to go off premise to attend a church and for
many it was their church.
Well, when I first started there, and
I hate to say it, it was a depressing sight.
There were only about 35 people on the average attending from a home
with just over one hundred able to attend.
There was a very screechy choir of 5 or 6 led by Mr. Helsabeck who was
loud, monotone, and all but stone deaf.
It was always way too warm in the chapel and I was guaranteed there
would be some snoring. That’s the more
humorous side of it. More somberly, they
were exiles of life. Old age had taken
their independence, their homes, their ability to care for themselves. Old age’s good friend Death had taken many of
their life-long friends and their spouses and many had even outlived their
children. They were just there all but
forgotten waiting their turn to die.
I was very much at a loss as to what I
could preach to those folks. I felt like
there was nothing new I could say to them.
I bet there wasn’t a sermon out there that they hadn’t already
heard. And the biggest challenge of all,
I had just turned 30 and nearly all of them were over 80. What did I know about growing old? What could I say that would be meaningful to
these exiles of life without being offensive?
Well, the first Sunday I preached
there was on Easter Sunday and that set the stage for what the theme of nearly
all my sermons there would be, resurrection.
Every opportunity I got I preached the hope of our faith. Whenever I could I highlighted that they had
something to look forward to, that all the loss, pain, discomfort and grief
that they were living with was not the sum total of human existence. I acknowledged the reality that sometimes death
was something to look forward to, a gift to end suffering and what awaited them
beyond was the fullness of life in Christ and a restoration of human life free
of sin and death.
I also took every opportunity to
remind them that on this side of things we have a foretaste of what is to come -
Christ Jesus’ living presence with us through the Holy Spirit. We have the friendship and companionship of
God the Holy Spirit who renews and reinvigorates our lives daily and even
moment to moment. The more we pray, the
more we get that. They still had life to
live, new life to live, a new life in which we are called to live out our
hope.
I visted there regularly and from what
I saw of their life together in that close community they were making a highly
commendable effort at living out the hope.
They visited each other in illness and supported each other when yet
more bad news came to one of them. They
looked out for one another in small daily tasks like helping each other with
meals. They prayed with and for each
other and studied Scripture together.
Played games together. They
understood if so and so was a little grumpy today. They knew how to live together in a way that
loudly said to anyone that would notice that they had hope, that they had life,
the true Life, living in them. I took
every opportunity that I could to commend them on how they loved one another
because I was truly impressed. In fact, I
was blessed to be in their midst. That
little 30 something chapel congregation of exiles from life showed me what
being the church was all about at the heart of the matter…living out your hope
in love.
Something began to happen there at the
Masonic Home. It seemed every month
attendance was growing. In the two years
that I was there I watched the attendance go from an average of thirty-five to over
80. Some of these folks were even the
codgidy old men that you would think would never darken the doors of a
church. It even continued to grow after
I left so it wasn’t a “cult of personality” thing. The choir grew to over 20 members including
several men. There were also folks there
who were just natural pastors. They did
a lot of visiting and seeing that needs were being met. New residents that came to the community promptly
received an invitation to come to the chapel service and the Wednesday night
Bible study which one of them led. They
even petitioned the administration to provide extra staff on Sunday nights to
help get the wheelchair bound folks to the chapel. In fact, the administration was so impressed
with what was going on in the chapel and the impact it was having on the
residents that they remodeled the chapel, put in a new sound system, and made a
lot of space for wheelchairs. This all
just happened naturally. It wasn’t like
they set out to start a church there. It
just happened naturally.
Something was going on there. Those exiles of life where doing naturally
and par excellence what I’ve seen most churches with several hundred members
beat their heads against the wall trying to have. Well, what was happening was that these folks
had found reason to hope and they were living accordingly. They had plenty of reasons to grieve and get
bitter, plenty of reasons to focus on how miserable life can be, plenty of
reasons to just sit and wait and long for death. Many of them were doing exactly that and that’s
exactly where the living presence of Jesus Christ and the good news of
Resurrection met them and gave them reason to hope and to live…to live in and
for Christ Jesus. The something that was
going on in that retirement community was a someone. It was Jesus, Jesus building his church and
proving through them that he had not forgotten his people or left them for
dead. And so, they were living out their
hope.
In our passage from 1 Thessalonians,
Paul is answering a question. The
Thessalonian congregation was wondering if they were living their hope in vain,
believing in vain, living faithfully in vain.
Some of them had died and some of those had even died fighting beasts in
the coliseum for public entertainment, and Jesus hadn’t shown up yet like he
and the Apostles said he would. Had they
believed in vain?
Paul’s answer to them though wrapped
in a bit of apocalyptic code was resurrection. The dead will be raised first
and will be the first to join with Jesus when he returns…and he will
return. The Gospel Paul preached was
pretty straight forward and centered on the resurrection: Just as God the
Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead so will the
Trinity raise all of us from death…If there is no resurrection of the dead (and
there is), we are the biggest fools of all to be pitied the most. Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is with us
so let’s get on with living accordilngly as the people God has called forth to
do so. Paul wants them to know about the
resurrection so that they do not grieve like those who have no hope, that they
don’t live their lives like those who have no hope.
We also can take a bit of Paul’s
Gospel to heart here in this day when churches are dwindling and dying
off. People are spiritual but don’t want
anything to do with religion. In North
America, of all the faiths represented Christianity is the one most readily
maligned. Yet, we who’ve been around
awhile know that we don’t have an empty religion or a pie in the sky
faith. God’s very presence is with us to
comfort us, heal us, and to lead us forward in life. There are and there will be times when it
seems God has left the house. But still we
know our God is really involved in our lives for our good.
That little church at the Masonic Home
proved this to me at the beginning of ministry and it taught me a few lessons
about how to live by faith and hope.
First, don’t be afraid to live because Jesus Christ who is our life is
alive. The course of life does give us
plenty of opportunity to grieve and is sometimes even unreasonably cruel and
what’s more, yes, God allows it to get that way. But the Trinity does not leave us alone in
life. Our Comforter, and Heavenly
Advocate is with us in the worst and the best of everything. I have found the
most dependable comfort in life is just praying and remembering that I am God’s
beloved child and hope and encouragement well forth. That Truth is unshakable for me.
Everything I just said about how God
the Trinity is with us as individuals is true for churches. That chapel service had just maintained as a
matter of residential programming for years and then all of a sudden things
just began to happen. The Triune God of
grace who had always been there began to make himself known. That’s the way God is. We can’t control God. We can’t make God happen. Our part is to draw close and wait in the
hope and the certainty that God will act when God’s time is right.
Finally, the greatest evidence that God’s
people have hope is that they take time to love and care for each other. As a church, as Christians, hope is what
we’re about. The course of life can tear
us up, make us bitter, and debilitate us.
The hope of new and renewed life in Christ that we have been given
enlivens us, changes us, and compels us to live accordingly. When we share the love that Christ has given
us, we help him to awaken hope even in the most hopeless of people and
situations. So, don’t be afraid to live
out your hope, draw close to God and wait, love and support one another as the
Trinity loves you, and in God’s own time the Trinity will prove he’s God in
wonderful ways. I’ve seen it,
experienced it. Take my word. Amen.
