I wrote this note to my congregation a few years ago . . . hopefully, it speaks to you today.
It’s summertime in Drexel Hill.
Suzanne and I have lived all over this country.
We have lived on the West Coast, in the Deep South, in the South West and the Mid West. And we can tell you that no one treats summer time like the folks here in the Delaware Valley.
It’s like someone long ago decided that summertime was a time to do something different.
Summertime in Philadelphia offers most of us time to work on our awe-fullness.
In the play, A Search for Life in an Intelligent Universe, one of Lily Tomlin’s characters turns to the audience and speaks of a need to have more awe-robic exercises.
I picked up on that right away, because I see that as one of the tasks of the church in our society today.
A popular psychologist writes:
“One of the psychological tragedies of adult American life is the loss of the sense of awe.”
To a young child (three and younger), every experience is new. The toddler is curious and awestruck by almost everything. We can accurately say that when we are children, we viewed the experiences of being alive as "awesome."
All the world's religions recognize the value of viewing life with a "beginners mind."
Buddhist mystics seek to experience every moment of their lives as "new."
Christians call this attitude as viewing all of life as "sacred."
It is called a "sense of wonder."
The kids call it "awesome."
Others call it "joyful living."
When we grow older however, this sense of wonder or sacredness of each moment seems to diminish, doesn’t it?
We begin to think of ourselves as "cool" when we are surprised by nothing.
We take everything for granted – and sometimes go off seeking a new and more stimulating novelty.
If we recaptured our child-like sense of awe at all life experiences, we wouldn’t have to seek stimulation in the huge, the best, the dramatic, the tragic, the ecstatic.
We can remember the sacredness of our being alive and the awesomeness of Life itself.
There is evidence that we can recover our attitude of awe . . . our sense of the sacred.
We can begin by recalling moments that have been truly "awe inspiring" for us:
the birth of our baby, an unexpected healing, an event of nature, a "peak experience."
I do think of our church as an awe-robic experience.
I do think we can work at rediscovering an awe-fullness.
And perhaps the time will come when folks will refer to us as that awe-full church of all those awe-full people with that awe-full preacher.
The psychologist and I have come up with a few awe-robic exercises to help develop and cultivate this awe-fullness in your life.
1. Attend a church like Christ Church on a regular basis. Here we acknowledge the fullness and sacredness of life and work on a thankful and joyful response.
2. Before eating any food, think about how the food got to your table.
How did it get to the store?
How many people were involved in
the making of the food?...farmers, harvesters, manufacturers,
processors, distributors, clerks, deliverers, cooks and servers.
Go further back to the seed, soil and rain.
Consider it all and let your mind say "wow" to all that went into your first mouthful of food.
3. Go outside on some clear night and gaze at the moon and stars. Realize that some of the light from those stars actually left the star--surface millions and millions of years ago. And you are seeing it for the first time now.
4. Observe the beauty of a flower. How did all that color, shape and texture develop from that little seed or bulb? What is the force that resulted in such a beautiful and delicate creation?
5. Consider your body and how it works. It is truly amazing and complex in its anatomy and function.
6. Hold a common object in your hand a tool, dish, pen, and really look at it, thinking about all that went into its design, production, material and original idea in the human mind.
7. Look into the face of another human being and become aware of the marvel that is human life.
Well, you get the idea.
With such an attitude, your experience of every moment of your life can become joyful – truly awesome.
I hope you have an awe-full summer
Clyde Griffith, July 31, 2016
God enjoyed the world and all that was in it.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
Well, I think we can say it is official now:
It’s summertime in Drexel Hill.
Traditionally, around here, summer is seen as “break time” – a break
from the ordinary activities that fill our days during the ordinary
times between September and May.
As with most things, there are historical reasons for our Summer behavior.
As the days of summer crept in on the gathering of men in Philadelphia one year, John Adams wrote home to his wife in Mass:
The heat is unbearable,
the bugs overwhelming,
the humidity overbearing, we are hoping to finish our business soon
so we can get out of town before the sickness season begins.
It seems that from the beginning of things around here, folks saw summertime as break time –
normal activity stopped,
normal routines changed,
folks got out of town if they could –
they may not have gone to the shore or the mountains, but they went to Willow Grove, they went to Germantown,
they went to Montgomery County,
the went to Brandywine,
and they went wherever.
The Well-to-do built summer homes in Radnor and Lower Merion.
Summertime called for change.
Even rugs and window treatments were changed.
So, its always been that way, I suppose.
And today, in addition to the heat and humidity,
a myriad of messages bombard us from all sides that make it so easy for us to exile god from our summer.
The whole world around us seems to exile God from all everyday interests anyway.
More and more we tend to consign God to “church” and the Sabbath.
As often as not, we church-folks feed into this cultural phenomenon
and perpetuate the nearly universal understanding that God is interested
in religion –
and our real lives and our summertime are something other than that.
Most folks seem to treat religious faith as an option – or accessory –
something to take or to leave.
And this makes it easy for us to follow the culture’s summertime dictum of “break time”.
For us, break time trumps church time, doesn’t it?:
The pastor goes on vacation,
we turn on the air-conditioning,
we encourage appropriate casual dress,
and we design the form of our service to be more informal in manner.
Precisely because of all of the messages to the contrary,
it is important for us to be reminded that our sacred writings remind us that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to gather and a time to throw away.
There is a time to work and a time to play.
That passage in Ecclesiastes concludes, “moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
All of our life and the world around us are God-given.
We are even told that God smiled at what was created and pronounced it all good.
God enjoyed the world and all that was in it.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
If there’s one thing that is immediately obvious from the
Ecclesiastes passage, with its sing-song contrasting statements, it is
that healthy life requires a balance.
Today’s gospel reading makes a similar point in a different way.
Jesus says “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ....”
He calls his hearers to step back from the purely obligatory matters of life
and ponder God’s care for birds of the air and flowers of the field
as a way to move beyond the worry that marks so much of life.
He advises against being preoccupied with the utilitarian side of life.
But more than anything else, put God's work first and then take pleasure in the day that is at hand.
Several years ago, author John Updike wrote about the game of golf, saying that there is
“a goodness in the experience of
golf that may well be ... a place where something breaks into our
workaday world and bothers us for evermore with the hints it gives.”
John Updike was suggesting that there is an intrinsic value to play.
Now we would not say that play is by itself sufficient for the meaning of life —
or for doing God’s will —
but in balance with other things, it is very important.
Studies have repeatedly shown that people who have done well and been happy in life usually have worked hard at their jobs,
tended their relationships diligently
and had passion for some leisure activity.
And this is no less true for Christians.
I know a pastor who has written several books.
This pastor is also a long-distance cyclist.
He has written books about Jesus,
and he has written books about bicycling.
In one of the books about bicycling, he tells of someone asking him if he had had any “spiritual” experiences while cycling.
He writes:
Bicycling, especially of the long-distance kind, gives me a natural high that is more than a physical sensation.
I’d go as far as to say it nourishes some inner part of me.
.... for spirituality — in the sense that I recognize that there is
that which is greater than I am — is an integral part of my makeup.
And I am grateful to my Creator for the opportunity to pedal the byways of this good earth.
Another pastor I know hits the golf course as many mornings as possible by 5 a.m., before he goes to the church.
In his book, called Golf in the Real Kingdom, Robert Kopp says, “All I know is that something spiritual happens when I’m on the course.
I lose my polemic edge.
I become irenic.
I feel close to God.
Indeed I talk to God when I play, and not just about the last missed putt.”
He doesn’t recommend golfing as a substitute for church attendance,
but he does mean that leisure activities feed his spirit.
We tend to think of our summertime activities as “Leisure” activities.
“Leisure” comes from the Latin word licere from which we also get “license.”
The root meaning of both words is “to be permitted.”
When you are at leisure, you “permit” yourself to do things you can’t do at other times –
when you are laboring, which is compulsory activity.
You see, leisure is not idle time but free activity.
In leisure, we do what we like, but in labor we do what we must.
In labor, we meet the demands of others,
in leisure we scratch the inner itches within ourselves.
For some of us, leisure means loafing, and there is a place for that.
For others of us, leisure means hard work, but at something we want to do, you know?
Something that we enjoy doing.
And leisure has a creativity of its own.
Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done while
a person was at leisure, and often it was never paid for in cash.
Few of us would call doing dishes a leisure activity,
but for some who labor hard at their primary task,
routine chores that busy the hands and part of the mind elsewhere,
relieve the pressure of work,
let the mind run leisurely and allow the subconscious to ruminate,
often with serendipitous results.
Agatha Christie, no slouch when it came to brainstorms, said she got her best ideas for her mysteries while doing the dishes.
There is one other biblical concept that applies to all of this as well, and that is the original idea of the Sabbath.
God created the world in six days, Genesis tells us, but on the seventh day God rested.
Now, for sure, God didn’t rest on the seventh day because God doesn’t get tired.
He likely stopped working just to enjoy what had been made.
Likewise, when observing the Sabbath became one of the Ten
Commandments, the idea wasn’t that the people of Israel would just spend
every minute of the Sabbath in worship.
In fact, in the Old Testament, worship, which centered around sacrifices, was a daily event.
The temple operated all the time.
But, The Sabbath was first and foremost a time for rest.
In the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land, the people of
Israel learned this in as simple a thing as gathering manna each day
for food.
God told them to gather it daily except for on the Sabbath.
Whatever was gathered the previous day would be enough to carry them over.
On the Sabbath, they should rest — have some leisure — from their labors.
Part of the idea was that people at leisure can open their minds to God.
For sure, even in summertime much of each day evaporates into work, doesn’t it?
shopping has to be done,
meals fixed,
bills paid,
the house kept tidy,
the yard needs to be cared for,
and we need to preparing for tomorrow’s onslaught. For many of us, leisure never has a chance –
even in the summertime.
And so, for most of us, even in the summertime, finding time for God is even harder than it is during ordinary time.
But, you know, we really can’t relegate God to certain “times.”
Christians really don’t find time for God.
We find God is in all our time.
If we are truly “in Christ,” then Christ’s Spirit fills us at every moment of our day.
In everything we do, we serve God.
Christians don’t take “time off” from being Christians.
We are as much in God’s time on a July day on vacation, as we are in church on Easter Sunday.
From this biblical perspective, it is clear that sometimes we do
have to take care of ourselves so that we can then continue to do God’s
work with renewed energy and improved vision.
But allowing our engines to idle for a while is different from completely shutting down all our systems.
If we are seeing all time as God’s time, we should be prepared to be surprised by God even when we are at rest.
Because, the main point of our faith is that God does not take break from being concerned for you – even in summertime.
You are invited,
you are encouraged,
you are urged,
to keep alert this summer –
keep open to the presence of God in the world around you – wherever you are,
wherever you go,
whatever you do.
Start the day every single day with the mantra:
This is a day the Lord has made.
Rejoice and be glad you get to experience it.
Every day is a new day.
Every day is a gift of God.
The world around you is a gift of God.
The people around you are gifts of God.
This summer, enjoy God’s gifts.
Let sunshine, and music, and springtime and gladness be in your soul –
this day and every day throughout this summer.
Amen.
The congregation of Christ Presbyerian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, experienced this sermon during a worship service in 2011.
