Why Are We Here?

The Congregational Church of Grafton UCC, February 18, 2018

Genesis 9: 8-17  -When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. . .

Mark 1:14-15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

In February 1943, Langdon Gilkey was an English teacher at the Yenching University in Beijing China.  World War 2 had begun fifteen months ago, making it impossible for him, or for many other foreigners, to return to their native countries.  Everyone had scruffed along right where they were, but in February, things changed.  The land was under the control of the Japanese army, and they wanted all the foreigners gathered together in one place, under tight control.  And so began a sobering journey for Gilkey.

Along with around 1500 other missionaries, teachers and business people, husbands, wives, children from teens to infants, they traveled by slow train to a city in Shandong Province where they were confined in a former mission compound.  There was not enough room for everyone, there were barely any facilities – few beds, no extra blankets, not enough water for flush toilets or daily showers, inadequate kitchens to cook, no refrigeration to keep the food safe, and for that matter, not enough food.  If you’re like me and don’t quite know where Shandong Province is – well, it’s just west of Korea, at about the same parallel as PyeongChang, where the Olympics are taking place, and just about as warm and comfortable in the winter.

Langdon Gilkey came to the camp an ordinary cultural Christian, not particularly interested in the details of the faith, pretty much convinced it was largely irrelevant in a world where people now knew to work together for the best for everyone.  He believed we’d grown beyond the foolishness of greed and self-interest, that sin was an old fashioned concept.  And then he was asked to serve on the Housing Committee for the Internment Camp.

Because of the way people had entered the camp, some had much more space than they absolutely needed, while others did not have enough.  In particular, families with teenagers had two rooms, while families with toddlers had only one.  This was enormously challenging for the parents of the littlest ones – one 8×12 room in which to do everything…  The building committee came up with a plan to redistribute space – in fact, they came up with two plans to do so – and each time, to Gilkey’s astonishment, the plans were rejected out of hand by those who would lost space.

He brought the problem of space to four families, of whom he wrote:  “None of them is a troublemaker or uneducated.  …they’re all respectable.. and as moral as they come, just the kind that would support any good cause in their communities at home.”[1]

Not one of them agreed to share their space or make any changes.  One husband and father threatened to sue him, after the war, if he persisted in insisting on this change.  Even the missionary family refused to cooperate.  The Housing Committee had to finally go to their Japanese captors and ask them to force people to agree to the changes.  Only under compulsion were people willing to help each other out.

He wrote:  . . . I began to see that without moral health, a community is as helpless and lost as it is without material supplies and services.[2]

Why are we here?  Because, like Langdon Gilkey, we’ve come to realize that the world doesn’t work on the basis of good will to all people.

We’re here because we’ve come to realize that without the power and leadership of God, without the example of Jesus Christ, without the urging of the Holy Spirit, we’d find it enormously difficult to live in a way which nurtures community, builds up our world, brings justice and mercy to the downtrodden.

We’re here because without God, our lives would be only about me, myself, and my immediate family, and that’s not how we want to live.

God gives us church as a place to try out living by faith.  As Gilkey discovered, living a moral life isn’t so easy when our choices are limited.  In Shantung Compound every time someone got more, someone else got less.  There was no “more” for everyone, and so it seemed as though life was really about “less” for everyone.

Knowing the right answer to the question of how to live isn’t simple, or obvious, or easy.

Yesterday morning I conducted a graveside service for Lois Morris Mann, whom I was told had been active here more than 50 years ago (she was 95 when she died).. and, as I often do, I read First Corinthians 13.  I was struck by this phrase:  “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing”  and it occurred to me that the God whom we follow says that love is more important than faith.

So the first thing I know about God is that for God, love is the most important thing.  It is love which can bind our world together, even when we cannot agree on the details of faith, and from that truth, all else proceeds.

Then I turn to the story from Genesis, the end of the story of the flooding of the land.  Now this story isn’t about the nature of floods, or the likelihood of them, or even whether or not one actually happened exactly as told.  Rather it’s  a story which takes the idea of a flood and uses it to illustrate truths.  It tells us that bad things happen; that some of them are catastrophic, and that God stands with those who have lost the most.

Scientists have spent years trying to prove that there really was a flood, or searching out the remains of Noah’s Ark, but the truth of this story is not in its facticity but in its truthful understanding of God’s care for us.

Our Gospel lesson tells us a third truth about God.  What God is calling us to, this life based on love, focused on justice, is not something that will happen at some unknown time in the future, not something that we should just sit patiently and wait for.  It is something that is right here, right now.  Jesus said, “the time is fulfilled , and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the Good News.”

This is good news.  We are not stuck here, in the midst of a world filled with tears, wracked by terrible news from one day to the next, horrified by yet another large-scale killing at a school.

We serve a God who calls us, now, to action.

We serve a God who calls us to stand up for those who are alone, to stand with those who seek to change our world for the better.

We serve a God who promises that we will never be left alone in disaster, promises that it is love which is the foundational principle of our world.

And that is the Good News for today.

Amen.

© 2018, Virginia H. Child

 

[1]Langdon Gilkey: Shantung Compound, Harper & Row, New York City, 1966, p. 82.

[2] Ibid., p. 76.