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July 01, 2007

July 1: A Witness to God's Dream

Rev. Vickie Hadaway
July 1st Sermon
Scripture Texts: Ruth chapter 1, John 1:43-51

A Witness to God’s Dream

As I mentioned in the introductory letter sent out a couple weeks ago, I was born and raised in Michigan and moved to Chicago after graduating from Western Michigan University. My three siblings and other family members still live in Michigan. And we have a family cottage in Northern Michigan on Pickerel Lake, outside Petoskey. The one other family member in the area is my dad who lives in St. Charles, Illinois. I’ve lived throughout the Chicago area for a number of years and consider myself a Chicagoan. It was here that I met and married Mark Hadaway. We’ll be celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary in August.

I grew up in the Methodist Church. My paternal grandfather, my dad’s dad, was a Methodist minister. I remember our family driving the hour to go to worship at his church once a month to hear him preach. Truth be told, I remember the time spend after worship at the parsonage—the family meals where everyone stayed at the table long after the meal was done talking (and us kids dying to get down!!), the large backyard where we’d run to play the minute we were let go, the root cellar where my grandmother would send me to get a jar of homemade applesauce to have with our cookies, and the wonderful joyful feeling at the end of the day when we drove the hour back home (armed with leftovers and my grandmother’s mouthwatering cookies!!)

The Sunday’s we weren’t with my grandparents, we were at our own Methodist church. My favorite church growing up was in Brighton, MI. I think it was my favorite for a couple reasons. I was in middle school then, 4-6 grade and can remember more of this particular church. And I loved our minister, Rev. Bob Brubaker. I still remember Rev. Brubaker and his family. They had four children of their own and they adopted a young African American boy. That was late 60’s and cutting edge stuff for that suburban church. Some members of the church weren’t too pleased when they did this, but the Brubaker’s didn’t care. This young boy needed a home and they wanted another son. Rev. Brubaker’s wife eventually went on to become an ordained elder herself in the Western Michigan Conference, and he died at a very young age…

Anyway, my mom sang in the choir and we’d sit with my dad, near the front so mom could keep an eye on us too. I was at the age where I could choose what activities I wanted to be involved in. Confirmation class came at that church and some good friends too—boys and girls. One weekend each fall, the entire church went to family camp at a local lake. It wasn’t more than 10 miles from the church but it seemed like a whole new world opened up for us there. Each family stayed in their own cabin but we ate together in the mess hall. We did other family camp type activities, built camp fires and made marshmallow so mores, had Bible study with the Pastor, and got to stay up late, drinking pop with other kids.

Our family moved around quite a bit during my school years. While I was still in grammar school, it was the church that helped provide stability and friends in my young life. Midway through the 9th grade, we moved from the Brighton Area to Petoskey Michigan, way up north and our affiliation with the church ended. For numerous reasons, we did not find a church that fit during my high school years. Our times of attending church and being involved as a family stopped. My grandfather had long since retired, so we didn’t go visit him at his church either. So after the Brighton church, my affiliation with the Methodist church dwindled. While I was a sophomore in college, my paternal grandfather was institutionalized with a form of what we know today as Alzheimer’s, and he died shortly afterwards.

That was a difficult time for me. I was very close to his wife, my paternal grandmother. Her name was Martha, a good biblical name. She’d always end each phone conversation with, “Are you going to church?” And most times I’d lie and say, “yes, I’m going,” not wanting to upset her. She probably knew I was lying, but she didn’t lecture or nag.
If we did talk about it she would encourage me to find a church home. However, Sunday morning came awful fast after a long, late Saturday night. Church was far from my mind while at college and through my twenties. When thirty hit, I started looking for some deeper meaning in my life. I was unhappy and thought that if I could just find the right partner, get a better job, have different friends, and/or make more money, than I’d be happy.

I tried self-help books, therapy, spirituality retreats, and it all helped to some extent. I had changed most of my friends, and the places I used to hang out. My new friends would take me to church with them. The problem was that the churches I attended where not for me. I spent about a year trying to become a Catholic (but that didn’t work out), went to Unity for a while (but I missed Jesus), went once to a fundamentalist church that scared me away, etc. I did go to one United Methodist church in the suburbs but I came in alone and I was immediately reminded of the way I felt when my brother and I tried to attend church in Petoskey without our parents—who are you and where is the rest of your family??

All this to say, I was seeking God but more than that, I was seek a community where I could be a part of something larger than myself—part of a group of people who were trying to put God at the center of their life and serve others in Jesus’ name. I found that place at the Chicago Temple, First Church in the loop. I was working in the loop, commuting from Oak Park. It was fluke that I happened to see a signboard that advertized their Wednesday, Noon service. I went once and then started looking forward to Wednesdays.

It was after Christmas and before Lent when I started attending Sunday morning too. They advertized small groups meeting in people’s homes and I decided to try that. That summer, I joined the church. I was like a fish to water because I became active right away. It felt as if I had come home—which of course I had.

I love the first chapter of the book of Ruth. The Old Testament book has important meaning for my life of faith. We get to know Naomi, the Israelite woman whose husband and two sons have died in the foreign land of Moab.
Now she hears that the famine in Israel is over and she decides it’s time for her to return to her homeland. She lets her daughter-in-laws off the hook and tells them to return to their families and marry again so they can have children. The one daughter-in-law, Orpah, kissed Naomi and scripture informs us, she returned “to her people AND her gods.” Naomi encourages Ruth to do the same. But Ruth turns to her mother-in-law and replies the famous line, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

Ruth decides to stay with her mother-in-law, Naomi, and adhere to the practices and rituals of Naomi’s people—the Israelite. Ruth chooses to worship the God that Naomi worships, the same God that Christians worship today. This passage has always held special meaning for me because of the choice that Ruth, the grown adult woman makes. Ruth and I are different in that she did not grow up in the faith in which she chooses to practice as a grown woman, but we are similar in that we both choose, as grown women to worship God.

This passage, and my life story, reminds all of us that each day is a choice. Today, you chose to come here to worship. Maybe you choose to come to worship every Sunday, no matter who the Pastor is, maybe you chose to come this morning to meet Mark and I for the first time, maybe out of curiosity, but maybe, just maybe there is an underlying hunger inside you, like there was in me and there was in Ruth. A hunger for something more in your life that called you here this morning. That hunger, that longing is for God and a community that reflects a life that is centered on God.

Churches aren’t always the easiest places to come to, especially if you’ve not been in awhile. I hope if you are a regular attendee here this morning, you will make an effort not to come greet me, but to greet the visitors who are here this morning. Greet them and thank them for taking the risk to come here to a new place when they could be so many other places this morning.

My call to becoming a pastor solidified in a Bible Study class called Disciple. You meet for an extended period of time with 8 to 12 people. There is a commitment to read and study specific biblical passages each day and come prepared to discuss and share your insights with the classes. We’d meet for 2 ½ hours once a week for 9 months. Over the course of this time together, we got to know and love each other. Our understanding of how God worked in our lives varied considerably, but we respected each other and had a desire to study the biblical text in a safe, committed setting. How many of you have belonged to a Disciple Bible Study Class? It was transforming wasn’t it?

At the end of the class, there is a time to identify gifts and graces that you believe other class members have and we were encouraged to share those with each other. Each individual was also asked to pray and reflect on where they believed God was calling them to go as they continued their faith journey. It was at this final time together, that I shared with my Disciple Bible Study class that I felt called to become a pastor. And every person in that room affirmed my call. It was an awesome feeling that what I thought might be true, was in fact reflected in the people that I trusted and had been with for the past 9 months.

I applied to and was accepted to seminary. Still not sure, told my current boss about my dream and he allowed me to take vacation time every Tuesday afternoon so I could attend my first seminary class. I knew after the first day of that first class that this was where I belonged! It was a wonderful feeling. That was in the fall of 1997. Over the course of the next year, Mark and I made adjustments to our lifestyle that would allow me to go to seminary full time. And in August 1998, we got married, I quit my job of 11 years, and I started seminary. Scared, overwhelmed, worried, but together we got through it and three years later, I graduated in 2001.

It was the summer between the first and second year of seminary that we made another big decision. We purchased our first dog, Casey, a Labrador retriever. He brought so much joy into our lives that three years later, we got a second lab. We named her Maggie Mae. I brought two cats, Calvin and Hobbs, to the marriage. We had to put Calvin down last June, just a year ago so now it is Hobbs the gray and black tabby cat with Casey and Maggie Mae.
I believe God has called me into ministry to share my story of one who left but has returned. It has also been my experience that since I’ve turned my life and my will over to the care of God, my life has blossomed and become so much more than I ever dreamed it would be. I want to follow the footsteps of this man named Jesus and to do that, I must turn my will and my life over to the care of the God that he embodies. The other scripture passage that was read this morning is the call of Philip and Nathaniel from the Gospel of John. I love this call narrative because Nathanael reminds us that a life with Christ can be beyond our wildest dreams—not dreams of new jobs, more money, or the right house. But a joy-filled life that revolves not around ourselves but around God’s plans for us.

In the Gospel story, Philip brings Nathanael to Jesus and Jesus speaks a word about Nathanael. Nathanael is impressed with Jesus’ knowledge of him, but Jesus informs him that if he sticks around, he’ll see and experience greater things than knowledge. That has been my experience. Like I told the young mom’s in our book group on Thursday night, I feel so blessed to be a pastor, to have been offered this call to be an ordained, official minister for God. So many people have helped to make me the woman, the pastor, I am today.

And just as I know in my heart, in my guts, that God has a plan for my life,.
I know this church has a rich history. For 119 years this church has been on this corner. A place of welcome and service for people of all ages, genders, colors, orientations, and various backgrounds. We need not be life-long Christians, or even life-long Methodists to be welcome in this house. And I will carry on that rich tradition, for this is God’s house. And God welcomes all people. We just happen to be the ones entrusted to take care of this place for those who are seeking a relationship with God. As individuals and as a community, we must be seekers too, constantly on the lookout for signs and witnesses of God’s presence in our midst.

What does it mean to be a seeker? As disciples, students of the risen Christ, we are students seeking a deeper relationship with Christ. To do that we’re going to open our Bibles at Irving Park UMC and study the Bible. But more than head knowledge, we’re going to look at it as the living, multi-layered story that is it.
We’re going to get comfortable telling our faith story with each other so we can go out into our community and share our experiences, strength and hope with others. We’re going to share the individual and communal gifts God has given us. Share them with each other and our neighbors near and far. We’re going to have exciting, invigorating worship services where you’ll leave here feeling different for having come.

We are going to be working on our individual relationships with this man Jesus. We are going to open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of all those saints that went before us. God has a plan for the body that is Irving Park UMC on the corner of Grace and Keeler in the Old Irving Park neighborhood. Join us as we discover that plan and live into its reality.

I get to stand up in front of you this morning and tell you a piece of my story. Each of you has a story to tell, an important story. And at our listening sessions, we’ll begin to listen to each other’s stories. I encourage you to sign up for one today. Members and friends of Irving Park UMC are encouraged to attend. We want to gather to hear your story so we can connect it to the larger story God has planned for this congregation.

Image of a wagon with a rope tied to the handle…We (our lives) are the wagon. God’s love is the rope tied to the handle, pulling the wagon along in an upward motion…

This morning, I invite you to be like Ruth and choose God. Choose God this week. Stick with God for one more week until we meet again. Be intentional to think of God and look for moments, expect moments, when God will talk to you throughout the week. Because when we stick around, when we show up for God, our lives and the lives of those in our circle of influence—our children, family, friends, and neighbors, get better. When I say better, I mean better in the ways of God, full of joy, content with self, passion for justice, and love and compassion for others.

Today is the first day of our journey of faith together. May we go expecting to God to take us to places that only She has seen for us and that we in our wildest dreams would never dared to dream.

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM