“Getting to Church on Time”

February 20, 2005

Scripture Reading: Psalm 121

Rev. Dr. Carol Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

Every Sunday a minority of people in Scarborough prepare to go to church.  Each man, woman, and child has a story.  Many of them rush to get to church on time.  They may be late but they get there.  Some are on the fence about whether to show up at all.  When they arrive they may still be unsure as to whether it was the best decision.  But, they get to church. 

Imagine a half hour before the service starts, a young mother shouts upstairs to see if her five year old son has finally brushed his teeth and found socks that match.  The milk has spilled.  She knows that if she stops to clean up the carpet the way it should be, she will once again be late for church.

A half hour before the service someone turns the alarm off.  He wishes he hadn’t agreed to bring the food for coffee after the service.  At this late time he can’t think of any excuse.  If he said he was sick, that would seem pretty flimsy.  So he pulls himself out of his soft warm bed.  While the car finally warms up and he is driving past the marsh it is quiet in his car.  He is struck by the beauty of the sunrise and the glitter of the sun over the Scarborough marshes. 

An older woman, a half hour before the service, frets over what she is going to wear.  She wishes people were more formal in church like they use to be when her husband was alive.  Things aren’t like they use to be.  She wonders if she will feel pangs of grief seeing all the happy, alive, couples. 

A woman stops off a Rite Aid on the way.  The florescent lights, the long section of candy bars, and the infinite selection of make-up is surreal juxtaposed to the sanctuary that she is going to.  She wants to go this morning because of the good news her husband got from the doctor this week.  She wants to thank God.  He is not coming though, out of a 20 year habit of not coming. 

They all do get to church this morning.  Although I shouldn’t say “they” instead I should say “we.”  We are part of that small minority in Scarborough who have come to church today.  We have gotten here.  We parked our cars, some minivans, some Volvos, some pick up trucks.  Some of our cars are dirty from the onslaught of muddy water on the roads.  Some are sparkling clean having just been taken through a car wash.  Some are new.  Some are old.  We have parked our cars and walked up to the green front doors and under the “God Is Still Speaking…” sign.  We came in.  We took our bulletin from the greeter.  We sat down and breathed a sigh of relief.  We think to ourselves, “I got here at last!” 

We barely think twice about our getting here.  We take the more or less short trip for granted.  In fact, we may label it a “hassle.”  But it is not a “hassle.”  If you picked it up, brushed it off, straightened its tie, the trip we took to get here is called something else.  If you look in the dictionary the right word for what we have just done is not hassle, but it is “pilgrimage.”  The dictionary says that a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place.  A pilgrim is a traveler.  So we have all been pilgrims this morning.  Even though it is not Rome, it is not Assisi, it is not Stone Henge.  We are pilgrims even though our destination just has been this local church, the Blue Point Church.  It is still a holy destination and we have made it here. 

In this way we are like the persons who composed the Psalm we read this morning, Psalm 121.  A pilgrimage is a major image in the Bible.  It expresses some of the deepest meanings of what it means to be a follower and worshipper of God.  In the Old Testament images of pilgrimage center around the annual pilgrimages that people and families made to festivals held at the temple in Jerusalem.  Psalm 121 is one of a cluster of Psalms that were written to be sung on the way to or from Jerusalem.  Let me read it again:

 I lift up my eyes to the hills –  From where will my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.  He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.  The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.  The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.  The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.  The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. 

Think about it, I lift up my eyes to the hills – From where will my help come?  This refers to the hills around Jerusalem.  The city itself is up on a hill and the pilgrim has to constantly look up while traveling there.  The Psalm tells of the maker of heaven and earth protecting them on their journey.  God will not let their feet stumble (foot be moved).  The Lord will be their shade from the brutal sun during the day as they walk along.  He will protect them from the moon at night.  Even when they are asleep on their journey God will keep watch over them.  The Psalm ends saying that the Lord will keep your going out, that is keep those who are going out of Jerusalem, and you coming in, those who are going into Jerusalem. 

We could adapt Psalm 121 to reflect our own pilgrimage experience this morning getting here.  Perhaps it might go something like this:  I look to the point – From where will my help come?  It will come from the Lord who creates a true refuge and safe harbor for all who arrive there.  My strength comes from God who made the wide ocean and the green shores.  I trust in God.  He won’t let me slip or fall.  He won’t let any accident happen to me on the way.  Just as he has watched me all night and helped me safely wake this Sunday morning.  God watched the whole time when I slept soundly.  When I woke worrying, worrying about work, about my life, family and health, I knew God was wide awake with me the whole time.  He was there to help me get through it.  Like a protective vizor in my car, God will shade my eyes form the sun if it tries to blind me.  Like the best headlights he will shine brightly in the darkness even if I come early or in a storm.  I can trust God completely.  He has gotten me safely so far and he will bring me safely home.   Like the word of the hymn says, ‘Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ‘tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.’

You might think that it is stretching the meaning of “pilgrimage” to its breaking point if we claim that we were on a pilgrimage getting here this morning.  It was nothing so special as that.  Hassle does in fact seem a better word.  The question is, when did getting here this morning start?  Did it start when you turned off the alarm clock?  Or, did it start the night before when you threw your clothes in the laundry so you would have a shirt to wear this morning.  Did it start earlier than that?  Did it start when you joined our church six months ago, or ten years ago.  Maybe it really started when you went to Sunday school as a kid.

If we think about when did we really start coming to this holy place, this Blue Point church today, the answer is not so simple. The reverence for what we have done to arrive here deepens.  Perhaps you started coming here when your boss gave you that promotion that you had been waiting for.  Maybe you started when you first fell in love.  It could have been when you had your first newborn baby in your arms.  When you looked into her blue blue eyes and thought how precious life is.  When you thought she is miracle and she needs to go to church to learn what a miracle she is and the God who makes such miracles.  Maybe that’s when you started coming here this morning. 

Maybe we started coming even earlier.  Let us hold in our thoughts the amazing convergence of events in history that created us and who we are.  Think of our parents.  Maybe our journey started when they started going to church themselves.  Or, maybe when they felt the joy of us sitting on their laps and we smelled the peel potatoes on their apron.  Or, maybe it was that our parents weren’t so great.  Maybe our journeys here this morning started when they drank and we had to suffer drunken neglect and insults that we learned to reach for something more, something higher.  Maybe that’s when we started coming. 

Perhaps it goes back even further.  All of our ancestors at some time or another decided to leave their homes in Europe, Asia, wherever and come to America.  They dreamed of a better life, more freedom, to make their fortune, to meet family.  Our religious ancestors were the Puritans.  They came for religious freedom.  Perhaps our journey here started with their journeys to America. 

Maybe our journey didn’t start with just history, but it also started with biology, and millions of years of evolution.  The color of our eyes, the shape of our faces, the fact that we are humans, gradually evolved through countless generations and biological intricacies. 

The more we follow our journeys here to their source, the more we will realize that the fact that we are here at all reflects and amazing pilgrimage with an abundance of factors, and the convergence of millions of events.  What strikes me is how abundantly lucky we are to be here.  The coincidences that had to happen to get us to arrive here are countless.  Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.  It is as if to get here we hit the megabucks not just once, not just twice, but we hit the megabucks millions of times.  Which begins to make me wonder if coming here for each of us is rigged in some way.  How could so many coincidences converge in such a way as to make this happen?  It makes me wonder if the success of our pilgrimage getting here is so amazing that perhaps God wanted us to be here.  Perhaps God has a reason for us being here this morning in this holy place.

We may have some idea why God wants us to have gotten here.  For me I think, “Oh I am here because I am suppose to preach this morning, and help the church grow, and to minister to people who need some help.”  But, what reasons we think God wants us to be here are just the tip of the iceberg.  God has many more reasons why we are here that we are entirely unaware of.  For instance, someone might be here that I will never see again, but I will have said something that they remember and tell their children.  Or, you might think you are here to be with a friend, or because you grew up here, or you got a postcard in the mail and thought you would drop by.  Yet, it ends up that you are feeling good when you leave here because of the anthem, you go to the mall, you are kind to the person at the check out counter, and that person realizes that they deserve more kindness at home, and begin to make a lot of changes.   Or, you might be here, because God wants you to know about psalm 121.  You remember what I say about it.  You like it.  You remember the number because it is a funny number – 1 with a 2 in the middle.  Then years from now when you face your greatest challenge you will take the Bible down and read this psalm. 

The truth of the matter is that we will never know the full reason why we are here today.  Only God knows that.  The truth of the matter is only God knows when our pilgrimage here today actually started.  This is because God orchestrated the intricate, complex, colossal abundance of factors that made us and converged onto us in such a way that ended in our arriving here at church today.  “I made it!”  Takes on much more meaning that it did at the beginning of the sermon. 

When did our pilgrimage here start?  When you take this question back far enough it doesn’t end except in God.  Our pilgrimage began before the beginning of life on the planet, it began before the beginning of the planet Earth itself, it began before the beginning of the solar system.  It began before the start of the sun, the spiraling of the Milky Way, before even the big bang.  Our journey started with God who created it.  So in some way it has not been only our pilgrimage here this morning.  I has also been God’s pilgrimage here also.  We are God’s creation and in a way therefore God has come here through us this morning to return to God in his holy place.  We have made it!

So the next time you come to church, the next time you feel hassled, stop and think what is really going on.  Your car might rattle, your teenager might think it is boring, you might rather read the newspaper, but when you get here and sit down with a sigh be really really glad that you will have made it!  Because the Lord who made heaven and earth has watched over you and protected you and has kept your going out and your coming in from this time and for ever more.