5-5-24 Sermon "It’s All in a Lifetime" Southminster Presbyterian Church Beaverton, OR

thank you Stephen dear God we ask that you would look upon us now and shed more love than ever that we might be yours and we might we might begin to heal amen I want to begin with uh the opening stanzas of a poem I wrote years ago uh about my daughter Margaret who's my only child um I don't usually share my poetry I let that be a different part of my life but once in a while on a special Sunday um I dip into it and this is a special Sunday the poem's called the last time there is a book that marks my daughter's first words First Steps first tastes why then can't I remember the last time I carried her upstairs to bed the last time she called me Daddy the last time I read a picture book to her I can't remember because I didn't know it was the last time if I'd known what I have cried marked the moment with an extra kiss held her tight tighter longer you know when many of us in this room uh today went to Dave Pierce and Michael Hawkins riverhouse a month ago there was no way any of us could have known that we were hearing Ken Wilson's last recital Ken of course had no idea either he told me about other recital he looked forward to giving and he also mentioned to rayan our office coordinator who was also his special Church buddy his intention to maybe buy another piano and of course there was no way we could have known last Sunday just last Sunday that Ken's choir accompaniment and gorgeous offeror with Gabby Hernandez would be his last gift to us staggers our imagination no time to say thank you no time to say goodbye or we love you with all our hearts well the writer of this morning's reading from Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every matter under heaven but is there well to be fair whoever wrote that book wasn't saying there'd always be be time to say goodbye in fact the author of that book who looked at life with a cold and Clear Eye also said time and chance happen to us all time happens meaning stuff happens to us all well let me say this nothing Ken offered us from the piano in the last three years move me more than what we heard last Sunday and I'm not just saying this uh on Monday I sent him an email saying quote I've now watched Gabby's solo Give Me Jesus four times on YouTube your accompaniment on that was Sublime just Exquisite thanks for all you do for us triple exclamation marks and he wrote back saying he appreciated that I noticed and he added it's such a joy for me to play for the church Stephen and Gabby he adored you Stephen on Monday morning uh not knowing Ken was sick excuse me Tuesday morning not knowing that Ken was sick I I sat down to you know in the office to write my weekly pastors blurb for our Thursday email newsletter and and I found Gabby's Voice singing you know give me Jesus still echoing in my head and I felt so deeply grateful for the emotional depth of that music the version of that old spiritual you know arranged by Mark Hayes begins with the words and when I come to die and when I come to die Give Me Jesus Remember the the original the closest thing to original doesn't start there and the hymn I chose for what we call responsive hymn that day was abide with me you know I chose that and typed it into the order of worship and then I wondered now why the heck did I pick a funeral Hymn for worship maybe we know and also don't know these things I don't know it's a mystery now let me also make a very important acknowledgement here right now the church has suffered other sudden losses that also brought us all to our knees right Frank Angelo and Jeff telski Rush immediately to mind they are still deeply missed and every day some others of you have lost suddenly your own special beloveds I know that too people die and if you know them well if you know who they are uniquely you know that no one can replace them nobody I mean we can replace our numbers in the church we're a lucky church we could do that but no one can quite bring what they brought to us that's actually you know written into our Presbyterian Essence it's part of what makes this denomination distinct we are encouraged by our Creeds and those who wrote about the faith and handed it down to us we are encouraged by them to believe that everyone who is in this community was meant to be here that the party we are all meant to have isn't a party without you some of you were here to teach us how to dance some of you are here to teach us how to mourn says Ecclesiastes someone's here because your laugh is so Musical that we all love to hear it it's contagious someone is here to teach us when it's okay to cry too some of you are here to teach us how to build the next iteration of southminster While others of you are here to teach teach us how to let go of what we cling to from the past all of this is in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 there's a time for building up and a time for letting go it says we are all together a living breathing embodiment of those words about there being a time for every matter under heaven we make that Wheel of Fortune and Misfortune that Ecclesiastes talks about turn together and we help one another see the beauty of it by stepping back together every Sunday to behold you know who we are and who we are becoming corporately that is after all what church is it's also what Pete Pete Seager remember him had in mind when he turned Ecclesiastes chapter 3 into the song turn turn turn the song The Birds later made into a hit 35 years ago I spent half a day in a hospital sitting with a 70-year-old woman named Marian From Grace Presbyterian Church in the cly neighborhood of Portland I was at the time a very green young Pastor she was waiting for heart bypass surgery that morning literally changed me forever I didn't know that at the time but I eventually got it and many years after it I wrote a poem about that and I'm going to share a bit of it with you now she Maran is like the shy Aunt you never quite got to know we wait in preop preop three hours before the surgeon shows up and I take in the word mercy printed upside down on his head wrap he repeats what she already knows that they cannot determine how many bypasses she'll require until they open her chest and take a look he says this without using the words open or chest and makes clear that he has little idea what surgery might buy her after a silence that stings she lifts her eyes to ask if she might have a heart transplant she is aware that she is asking for something big maybe not the moon but surely one of the moons of Jupiter it has so many he blushes with practiced apologies and in a moment is gone any hope in the room bleeds out and I see abandonment beat up on the glossy white wall behind her she read this reads this in my eyes I will never ever forget her eloquent reflection on what she was going through as I offered her at that moment my Supreme empathy she looked back at me very tenderly and said well you know it's all in a lifetime my friend Maran didn't go to you know Stanford University she didn't even go to college she didn't have much of an education but she understood the wisdom widom of Ecclesiastes in Her Bones that life is a big wheel on which are a thousand different experiences and it just keeps churning those out until every one of us has experienced most if not all of them it's all in a lifetime every single thing but it's often confusing too right it's often not what we expect it's ill-timed it's crazy it's not what we want to wrap your mind around this I'm almost done here think of a labyrinth we have the Labyrinth up there we are a labyrinth is an intera Ive medieval machine meant to put us in touch with life at its core they have one on the stone floor of the thousand-year-old Cathedral at chart but you can find one at The Grotto in northeast Portland too they're now nearly everywhere the LA Labyrinth helps us understand how it feels to locate yourself in every sector of the VAR variety of life's experiences all of them accept happiness it helps us navigate loss suffering hope and despair if you've walked a labyrinth you will know exactly what I mean you have the center which represents happiness or some specific goal in sight as you begin or so you think think and you find yourself so close to it as you begin your walk and then as You Follow The Path it recedes from you and then it keeps on receding from you then suddenly there it is again and uhoh you find yourself being taken miles away from it one more time and then oops there you are finally where you hope to be except you realize the whole thing is not about arriving there at all no it's about every other Square you've occupied on the Labyrinth to get there it's about the crazy roller coaster Journey that you and I are all on but hopefully in one another's company as someone has said everything in life takes eight times longer than you thought it would to come to fruition and that is important because there are a thousand different experiences in a lifetime and they are all of them required to be human what I'm saying is that if you are in touch with your own heart and the Heart of the world even the part at a distance from what you're looking for can be full of peace PE we are right where we are meant to be no matter what side of Happiness we find ourselves occupying at a different at a given moment and you know all those moments every one of them fold us into God as ramas said where we all just walking each other home

Channel: Southminster Presbyterian Church

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Id: TFLpP20g9nI

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024