August 18, 2024 – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
No Link to Service
Genesis 15.1-6
Mark 10.17-24a
No More Fomo
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
For those of you who have not been in worship here at the United Church for the past six weeks, boy, did you ever miss out on a lot! It has been a great summer so far! The beginning of July we heard the Rev. Toni Smith bring us Rev. Eileen Sypher’s sermon on the faithful and creative ways we can fulfil Jesus’ invitation to “feed my sheep.” We heard Deb Calamari offer a sermon she wrote back in 2015, which urged us to get back to some of life’s basic values, and included a poignant story about her Dad when he was in the hospital. Marie Ready spoke to us about Lifelines, and among the traditional ones she named – the presence of God, family and friends in our lives – was the surprising lifeline that saved her Sunday sermon when her computer and printer got wonky so she preached from her iPad! Daphne Stitt gave us some lessons in prayer, one of which apparently is that God speaks with an Irish accent!. (And by the way, I hope you all heard George Easton exclaim after Daphne’s sermon, “Well done… well done!”) And last week Claudia Epright brought her own form of a prophet’s lament when she stood in the pulpit and shouted “I’ve Had Enough!”, something we’ve probably all thought at one time or another.
And the music! The music you missed if you haven’t been here since June! Diane Adams and Pat Holloway offered a soul-stirring rendition of Mozart’s “Alleluia!”, one of my favorite pieces. Claudia and Ed Epright sang us a spirited spiritual, and Bridget, I loved “Hero” that you sang a few weeks ago. Margie Warner brought us Miss Margie’s Travelin’ Salvation Band and I really wish I could have brought my fiddle for “I’ll Fly Away.” We heard Pat Holloway, Cheryl Archer, Ruth Mowrey and Jennifer Gill begin worship with a version of Brahms’ Lullaby, which was a daring choice, although with Toni Smith preaching that morning no one was in danger of falling asleep. And then last week Cheryl and Paul and Pat and Rick brought a couple spirituals of their own. Yes, if you haven’t been in worship here at the United Church for the past six weeks, you sure have missed out on a lot!
Fomo, right? The Fear Of Missing Out. It happens more often than you think, especially in our digital world where people post photos of themselves at sold-out concerts, lazing on wide sandy beaches, feasting on Instagrammable dinners, taking trips to Paris and Alaska and Disney World, and the random sabbatical pic taken in a rain forest ten thousand miles away. But in reality we don’t need to go any further than our Bibles to find folks who feared missing out on something. Our two scripture lessons are memorable cases in point. We’re familiar with both stories we heard this morning, but as Daphne said about the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes you become so familiar with a story that you can overlook what it is actually saying. Peg read from Genesis 15 the story of God’s promise, or covenant with Abram, that his descendants would become as numerous as the stars in the skies. But what is it that prompted God’s promise? Abram was worried that he would never have any children of his own. Abram said to the Lord, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” Abram was afraid that he would miss out on the joys of being a father. And by virtue of God’s promise, Abram became Abraham, which in Hebrew means “Father of all the nations or peoples,” and his descendants are beyond counting. Abraham did not miss out on parenthood.
The young man described Mark’s gospel was nine tenths of the way to redemption. He had kept all the commandments Jesus listed: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” All he needed – all he needed – was one more step: “Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.” And the fear of missing out on all he had envisioned for his life, all the creature comforts and discretionary delights and untold plans that lay ahead of him, was too much for him to bear, and became his stumbling stone. He went away grieving, for he had many possessions. For him, his fear of missing out came at the cost of his soul.
Like those of you who have not been in worship at the United Church for the past six weeks, I too missed out on in-person worship here atop West Main Street, although I was able to catch our services at random times during this second half of my sabbatical. But I did not miss out on in-person worship entirely. One of the most delightful fringe benefits of sabbatical time is the opportunity to sit in the pew on Sunday morning and be ministered to by my colleagues, by so many gifted preachers and worship leaders. I’ll share some of my experiences at greater length in a couple weeks, but in July and August I had the pleasure of worshiping at the Westbrook Congregational Church with my friend and colleague The Rev. Jeanette Cooper-Hicks; I spent one Sunday morning at First Baptist Church in Essex where the Rev. Amy Hollis serves; Amy is also Director of the Shoreline Soup Kitchen and Pantry. And last Sunday, with the final days of sabbatical on the near horizon I managed a twofer: at 8:30 I was at Deep River Congregational Church and got to hear the Rev. Dr. Cheryl Caronna preach – folks, Cheryl is dynamite, I hope you get a chance to hear her some time; and then I made it back to Old Lyme in time for the 10:00 service at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, where I not only heard Rev. Dr. Steve Jungheit, who is a stellar preacher, but I heard Charlie and the Tropicales, a five piece jazz band visiting from New Orleans. It was a toe-tapping treat. When it comes to superlative worship experiences, you had six straight here at the United Church, and I was able to find a few of my own.
But this does not mean I was completely Fomo-free over the past six weeks. For while by my count I attended ten different services over the past six weeks, it remains that I was consigned to the pew, and I missed out on a treasure trove of sermonic softballs that went whizzing past us all earlier in the summer. Two weeks ago Toni Smith spoke about how our need for the bread of life Jesus offers has been particularly pronounced in recent news cycles – she called it a wild ride that we’ve been on since the beginning of the summer, and I thought to myself, “Toni, ain’t that the truth!” Just consider the headlines of those weeks. First came the presidential debate where President Biden looked like a deer in the headlights, and later admitted he dozed off for a few seconds on stage. It was all anyone was talking about for a couple weeks. Then came the mercifully unsuccessful assassination attempt on former President Trump in the days leading up to the Republican Convention. And then, just as things began to settle down President Biden withdrew his candidacy and Vice-President Harris emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee to be affirmed at their convention this week, and the electoral calculus has shifted dramatically, and Toni, it has been one wild ride indeed. Politicians and pundits and armchair historians alike have observed that these have been six weeks for the history books. And because this is the world you and I inhabit, the opportunities have been ripe for sermonic reflection in the light of who you and I are as people of faith, and there I was without a pulpit for all of it! (To which some of you are probably whispering a quiet prayer of gratitude…) But you know how I try to look at the world around us through what Calvin called the spectacles of scripture and the lens of faith, and the sermons of the past six weeks could almost write themselves, and I missed out on all of it!
But then I remember Abram, who was honest with God about his fear of not having any children, and because Abram believed, God responded. Or as Peg read for us in that memorable summation, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Contrast this with the young man in Mark who had salvation at his very fingertips, but could not surrender his fear of missing out on the material wealth he believed was the ultimate prize in life. And so we trust God. Like Abram, we believe that God will be there for us and that there is nothing that is valuable and important and life-giving that God will let us miss out on.
So let those sermons write themselves. I’m reasonably confident there will be more to come.