Sermon

May 1, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 1, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

One of the treats Judy and I look forward to when we visit Key West is breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s. Near the docks and in the heart of the tourist district, Harry’s attracts a diverse clientele. On any given morning you’ll have your morning coffee and juice with the mayor, local fishing boat crews and more than a few people brand new to the island from places like Minnesota and Wisconsin . It’s a great place to watch cultures collide. On a recent visit I overheard the folks at the next table, first time visitors to the South, encounter a breakfast phenomenon I grew up with. As the waitress brought them their bacon and eggs they noticed something odd. Pointing to the white stuff on the edge of the plate, one asked, “What’s that?” “Them’s grits.” “Well, I didn’t order grits.” “Hon,” the waitress said, “You don’t order grits. They just come.”

The message of this sermon is that the presence of God is a lot like grits at Harpoon Harry’s: you don’t order it; it just comes. St. Paul in the middle of downtown Athens says something like this to the people of that city. Finding himself in a place in which there are shrines to every conceivable deity of every known religion, Paul reminds the Athenians that they don’t need to be searching for exotic religious experiences. They already have a shrine to the nameless and unseen presence that they sense among them. God is, as Paul says, “not far from each one of us. For in God we live and move and have our being.”

Like the people of ancient Athens , we tend to believe that God’s presence must be felt in some strange and exotic ways. The back of my favorite magazine is full of offers for spiritual experiences: courses in meditation offered in New Mexico, pilgrimages to the religious sites of the far east and tours of Celtic Ireland, just to name a few. Some of us look for new and entertaining worship experiences, and hunger for God to speak to us in some new and dramatic way. But, as St. Paul told the people of Athens , God is not far from each one of us. The psychologist Karl Jung used to remind the people who came to him seeking insight about their lives: “God comes, whether called or not called.”

Jesus told his followers, “I am the vine, you are the branches…abide in me as I abide in you.” The place to look for the presence of God is the connections around us and within us. God is within us, always ready to surprise us by a holy presence, always directing our lives whether we recognize it or not. In part, I think, our seeking for new experiences of God is a way to avoid God—certainly a way to avoid the God we already know very well. There is a cartoon that shows a seeker pondering, “I wonder if God can really hear me.” The next frame shows him praying, “Hey, God! What should I do with my life?” The next frame has a voice from heaven saying, “FEED THE HUNGRY. RIGHT INJUSTICE. WORK FOR PEACE.” In the last frame the seeker says, “Just testing,” and God replies, “Same here.” God often speaks in a very familiar voice: through the truths we know deep in our hearts, through our family members and through those who live in our neighborhoods.

What God may have to say, may be inescapably familiar, but God often has surprising things to say through those around us. Jesus, himself, seems to have been surprised by the presence of God from time to time. For example, he encountered God to his surprise in a Gentile woman whose faith in the wideness of God’s mercy jolted him to understand that God speaks to Gentiles as well as Jews. Jesus was surprised, by the faithfulness of a Roman centurion, and he was perpetually surprised by Peter’s insight and his ignorance. We, too, may be surprised by what we find when we look for God in those around us. The plight of the homeless or the elderly, which we have trained ourselves not to see, might just become for any of us a call to action. The wisdom of our children might from time to time cause us to see our own lives in a different way.

The important thing to remember is that God is directing our lives, whether we call for that direction or not. A Middle Eastern mystic said of himself: “I was a revolutionary when I was young, and all my prayer to God was: ‘Lord, give me the energy to change the world.’ As I approached middle age and realized that my life was half gone without my changing a single soul, I changed my prayer to: ‘Lord give me the grace to change all those who come into contact with me. Just my family and friends and I shall be satisfied.’ Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered, I have begun to see how foolish I have been. My one prayer now is: ‘Lord, give me the grace to change myself.’ If I had prayed this right from the start, I would not have wasted my life.”

It is, I think, never too late to look for God in those around us. It is never too late to open ourselves to surprises. It is never too late to change our lives. And it is certainly never too late to remember that God may already be changing your life whether you can see it or not. For God is like grits at Harpoon Harry’s. You don’t have to order God to appear. God just comes. AMEN