Sometimes, God, I Feel Marked By An Unknown Destiny
Sermon
Holy Email
Cycle A Second Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany
Object:
E-mail
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Marked With The Seal
Message: Sometimes, God, I feel marked by an unknown destiny. Lauds, KDM
A youth makes a naive but unwise choice that changes the rest of her life. Another's obsession with killing leads to destructive behavior and his own death. A third individual happens to be in the way of harm at the wrong time. A chronic disease becomes acute. A chance introduction results in an unpredicted career focus. A casual conversation begins a lifelong partnership.
Timeless, universal questions emerge when both injurious and beneficial life accidents happen that seem beyond our control. You, also, may have asked some of the questions that follow:
Who is in charge of my life, anyway? Have I a destiny over which I have little say? In the mind of God, is there a carefully designed plan for me? Is God's obvious action in my life the result of my wishful thinking?
Sometimes I feel distant from God. Do I miss God because I fail to pay attention? Am I inept at reading the signs of God's presence? Is God's calling to me as intense as my calling out to God?
You and I are not the only ones drawn to the mystery of how our freedom ranks in the soul of an unseen God. Paul wrote to the early Christians in Ephesus about God's role as an adoptive parent who has plans for chosen children. Paul prefaced all he wrote the Ephesian Christians with words about the blessing that God gives us through Christ. Listen again to God's action in this spiritual blessing. God blesses us. God chooses us. God destines us for adoption as God's children. God redeems us. God makes plans. God gives. God marks us.
Blesses, chooses, destines, redeems, plans, gives, marks -- these are the action words of an active God. What if we were to measure all that happens to us within the perspective of this faithful God, whose first thought is to wish well for us?
E-mail writer, KDM, also has pondered how God's design interfaces with human freedom. KDM's note to God this week reads as follows: Sometimes, God, I feel marked by an unknown destiny. Lauds, KDM.
An unknown destiny. These words declare the debate that chance happenings can set off within us. Do we know the freedom of independence, or are we captives of destiny? The "unknown" part of the phrase, unknown destiny, defends the freedom that we have to live out our lives. The word "destiny" suggests that our freedom lies within a greater plan. It is God's plan. Hear both words, unknown and destiny, sing with the surprise and suspense of epiphany.
Twice in today's reading, Paul says that God destines us. First, God has destined us for adoption as God's children through Christ. Second, he says, in Christ our lives have been destined according to God's purpose. There is nothing accidental about being destined. Consider its meaning: decreed, fated, foreordained, predetermined. To some, these words imprison. But do they? To others, they free.
Destiny speaks of a plan. Our parent God cares enough about us to have a plan for us. Whether we interpret this plan as a necessary fate or as an excuse to escape personal responsibility is, however, an individual choice.
Apparently, KDM could not wait for God's reply to today's e-mail. Attached to KDM's e-mail were seven poems. As we listen to this poetry, let us ponder if it might be an assertion of KDM's freedom and, also, of our own. The closest we come to understanding the Creator may be to let the untaught images of the poetry within us point toward both God's truth and our truth. We may have difficulty speaking directly about such topics. However, we might permit a poem to suggest how closely intertwined these two truths are.
Listen in the first of KDM's poems to the metaphor of active, responsive living as God's promise:
Prairie Sunrise1
Early day-birthing sun
Startles wind into unsettled gusts
Then, up, stands suspended --
Silent, full power
Surveying the possibility of a new day.
For everything, there is a plan. A Douglas fir knows it is a Douglas fir. The goal of its seed is to sprout another Douglas fir. On the floor of the great rain forest in the state of Washington, at the base of giant trees whose high canopy blocks most of the sun, the occasional fallen tree has created an opening to the sky, a path for a straw's width of sunlight to stretch to the floor. There, a rotting, long-fallen Douglas fir becomes a nursery for finger-length seedlings. Here is the poem:
Old Growth Forest
Tiny Douglas firs
Line up along a nurse log
Waiting in the forest duff
For a turn to sip the sun.
Who is in charge? The path of an absent tree, the sun ray strength, a seed's identity, the will of the smallest seedling to survive, the capacity to wait for and then to take one's turn to live?
God is convenient to blame when life accidents or wrong choices cause our greatest plans to break into smithereens, as imaged in this couplet:
Smashed Dreams
Icicles severed by sun
Slice into mute snow.
KDM's poem about someone who lives with an advanced disease reflects that, even amid the puzzles of the unknown, we can find freedom within our given boundaries:
A Lot Of Living In One Year
There's a lot of living in one year:
Loving, giving, sorrow, joy.
A comfort comes in knowing
I am now a one-year plan.
Chance might surprise that map
With sudden hope.
Yet even before I embrace this day,
An accident might waste
The angry shouts that hurl through my heart.
There's a lot of living in one year:
Peace, wonder, acceptance, calm.
A comfort comes in knowing
My basic truth remains untouched.
I am still God's holy child,
Still valid, worthy still.
A comfort comes in knowing
There's a lot of living in one year.
Within the paradox of our trying to give an either/or answer to a both/and question, we sense God's contact with us remains as constant as a persistent Nebraska wind.
Nebraska Wind
Nebraska wind sweeps the plain
Flutes past pipes
Crackles tree limbs
Until it pushes at my spirit.
Even within the paradox, we resist. We refuse either to blow away or to be pushed out of the way. Much threatens along the course to change who we are; yet we also persist. Something deep within us insists upon unfolding our reason for being. It draws us toward a seemingly given and inevitable destination. This unique, identifying part of us remains even though it tapers to a whisper:
Pianissimo
The music of my aged
Mother in her chair
Becomes pianissimo.
What do we know for certain about our destiny? Paul tells the Christians at Ephesis that God has marked us, as God's adopted children, with the seal of promise and hope. This seal gives us the trust to greet what is uncharted with the upbeat attitude of a challenge. The promise and hope of this seal transforms KDM's unknown destiny into a known destiny. KDM's closing poem carries the title, "On Course."
On Course
A poem prays me
Like an opening
Inner sunset.
____________
1. The copyrights of all poems cited in this sermon are held by the author.
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Marked With The Seal
Message: Sometimes, God, I feel marked by an unknown destiny. Lauds, KDM
A youth makes a naive but unwise choice that changes the rest of her life. Another's obsession with killing leads to destructive behavior and his own death. A third individual happens to be in the way of harm at the wrong time. A chronic disease becomes acute. A chance introduction results in an unpredicted career focus. A casual conversation begins a lifelong partnership.
Timeless, universal questions emerge when both injurious and beneficial life accidents happen that seem beyond our control. You, also, may have asked some of the questions that follow:
Who is in charge of my life, anyway? Have I a destiny over which I have little say? In the mind of God, is there a carefully designed plan for me? Is God's obvious action in my life the result of my wishful thinking?
Sometimes I feel distant from God. Do I miss God because I fail to pay attention? Am I inept at reading the signs of God's presence? Is God's calling to me as intense as my calling out to God?
You and I are not the only ones drawn to the mystery of how our freedom ranks in the soul of an unseen God. Paul wrote to the early Christians in Ephesus about God's role as an adoptive parent who has plans for chosen children. Paul prefaced all he wrote the Ephesian Christians with words about the blessing that God gives us through Christ. Listen again to God's action in this spiritual blessing. God blesses us. God chooses us. God destines us for adoption as God's children. God redeems us. God makes plans. God gives. God marks us.
Blesses, chooses, destines, redeems, plans, gives, marks -- these are the action words of an active God. What if we were to measure all that happens to us within the perspective of this faithful God, whose first thought is to wish well for us?
E-mail writer, KDM, also has pondered how God's design interfaces with human freedom. KDM's note to God this week reads as follows: Sometimes, God, I feel marked by an unknown destiny. Lauds, KDM.
An unknown destiny. These words declare the debate that chance happenings can set off within us. Do we know the freedom of independence, or are we captives of destiny? The "unknown" part of the phrase, unknown destiny, defends the freedom that we have to live out our lives. The word "destiny" suggests that our freedom lies within a greater plan. It is God's plan. Hear both words, unknown and destiny, sing with the surprise and suspense of epiphany.
Twice in today's reading, Paul says that God destines us. First, God has destined us for adoption as God's children through Christ. Second, he says, in Christ our lives have been destined according to God's purpose. There is nothing accidental about being destined. Consider its meaning: decreed, fated, foreordained, predetermined. To some, these words imprison. But do they? To others, they free.
Destiny speaks of a plan. Our parent God cares enough about us to have a plan for us. Whether we interpret this plan as a necessary fate or as an excuse to escape personal responsibility is, however, an individual choice.
Apparently, KDM could not wait for God's reply to today's e-mail. Attached to KDM's e-mail were seven poems. As we listen to this poetry, let us ponder if it might be an assertion of KDM's freedom and, also, of our own. The closest we come to understanding the Creator may be to let the untaught images of the poetry within us point toward both God's truth and our truth. We may have difficulty speaking directly about such topics. However, we might permit a poem to suggest how closely intertwined these two truths are.
Listen in the first of KDM's poems to the metaphor of active, responsive living as God's promise:
Prairie Sunrise1
Early day-birthing sun
Startles wind into unsettled gusts
Then, up, stands suspended --
Silent, full power
Surveying the possibility of a new day.
For everything, there is a plan. A Douglas fir knows it is a Douglas fir. The goal of its seed is to sprout another Douglas fir. On the floor of the great rain forest in the state of Washington, at the base of giant trees whose high canopy blocks most of the sun, the occasional fallen tree has created an opening to the sky, a path for a straw's width of sunlight to stretch to the floor. There, a rotting, long-fallen Douglas fir becomes a nursery for finger-length seedlings. Here is the poem:
Old Growth Forest
Tiny Douglas firs
Line up along a nurse log
Waiting in the forest duff
For a turn to sip the sun.
Who is in charge? The path of an absent tree, the sun ray strength, a seed's identity, the will of the smallest seedling to survive, the capacity to wait for and then to take one's turn to live?
God is convenient to blame when life accidents or wrong choices cause our greatest plans to break into smithereens, as imaged in this couplet:
Smashed Dreams
Icicles severed by sun
Slice into mute snow.
KDM's poem about someone who lives with an advanced disease reflects that, even amid the puzzles of the unknown, we can find freedom within our given boundaries:
A Lot Of Living In One Year
There's a lot of living in one year:
Loving, giving, sorrow, joy.
A comfort comes in knowing
I am now a one-year plan.
Chance might surprise that map
With sudden hope.
Yet even before I embrace this day,
An accident might waste
The angry shouts that hurl through my heart.
There's a lot of living in one year:
Peace, wonder, acceptance, calm.
A comfort comes in knowing
My basic truth remains untouched.
I am still God's holy child,
Still valid, worthy still.
A comfort comes in knowing
There's a lot of living in one year.
Within the paradox of our trying to give an either/or answer to a both/and question, we sense God's contact with us remains as constant as a persistent Nebraska wind.
Nebraska Wind
Nebraska wind sweeps the plain
Flutes past pipes
Crackles tree limbs
Until it pushes at my spirit.
Even within the paradox, we resist. We refuse either to blow away or to be pushed out of the way. Much threatens along the course to change who we are; yet we also persist. Something deep within us insists upon unfolding our reason for being. It draws us toward a seemingly given and inevitable destination. This unique, identifying part of us remains even though it tapers to a whisper:
Pianissimo
The music of my aged
Mother in her chair
Becomes pianissimo.
What do we know for certain about our destiny? Paul tells the Christians at Ephesis that God has marked us, as God's adopted children, with the seal of promise and hope. This seal gives us the trust to greet what is uncharted with the upbeat attitude of a challenge. The promise and hope of this seal transforms KDM's unknown destiny into a known destiny. KDM's closing poem carries the title, "On Course."
On Course
A poem prays me
Like an opening
Inner sunset.
____________
1. The copyrights of all poems cited in this sermon are held by the author.
