Seeking to Be Found
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
August 24, 2008

Message: Seeking to Be Found

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2008.

Rebecca wakes,
as she does most mornings,
with the alarm.
Stumbles around in the early light.
It is easier to get up this time of year
than in the winter,
when it is still dark out.
The winter is harder.

But even these late summer days can be tough.

Dressed for the day,
she turns on the radio
while she pours some cereal.
On the radio,
a commercial.
“Are you looking for a great deal on a washing machine?”
Rebecca thinks,
no, that’s not what I’m looking for.
I don’t know what it is,
but it isn’t that.

The cereal box wants to know if she
“want[s] to be healthier?”
Well, sure, who doesn’t?
I’d like to be healthier, she thinks.
But the quest for health,
by itself,
she’s not sure this is what she’s looking for.
She’s not sure what it is,
but it isn’t that.

She packs up her bag, grabs her keys,
and gets in the car to go.
Like most mornings,
she spends a few minutes waiting at the light
down the street from her house.
It always takes a while.
The cars go by,
and Rebecca watches the drivers as she usually does.
Most are like her,
she thinks:
solo passengers in their cars,
probably on their way to jobs or errands.

Sometimes, wistfully,
she notes a child in the back seat.
Some trucks, delivering something
made somewhere else by people she’ll never know,
on their way to people she’ll probably never meet.
There is a fire station down the road,
and sometimes a truck will come blaring by,
and Rebecca wonders where it will go.
Will it arrive too late, or just in time?
What lives just changed forever?

The light changes,
she takes her turn.
On her route, billboards ask if she’d like
life insurance
a new car
a date
a vacation
to vote for so-and-so
a triple-patty burger with fries
No, not really.
Some of those would be nice, I guess.

But I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for.
I don’t know what it is,
but it isn’t that.

The radio plays a song she vaguely remembers,
to which she hums along,
because she always forgets the lyrics.

The chorus goes like this:
“I don’t want the world to see me,
for I don’t think they would understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.”

She pulls into the lot.
Goes inside,
says
“hi”
“fine”
“how are you?”
to some people in the hall.
Not a true word heard,
not a true word spoken.

Time goes by.
That’s what it does most days.
Goes by.

Rebecca goes with some coworkers to the deli for lunch.
It is their usual haunt.
The conversation is light, gentle.
The weather.
News about kids.
Some gripping about the boss and some gossip about someone who isn’t there.

On the way back,
a young man is standing on the sidewalk handing out pieces of paper.
Rebecca takes one out of polite indifference.
Another question:
Are you looking to get closer to Jesus?

She thinks to herself,
I tried that one already.
Back in those days,
she thought if she really turned herself over,
devoted herself to Christ,
the meaning of things would become clear.

And it did for a while.
But then it started to fade.
There were questions,
about history and doctrine,
suffering and redemption,
and the answers didn’t work for her.
I’m looking for something, she thinks,
but that isn’t it.

She remembers, back then,
when the moment became clear.
She loved that song,
Amazing Grace.
And like most of you in this room,
she still knew the words and could sing it.
She knew the words,
but she started to think about them.
She liked the idea of being found.
That’s why she had signed up in the first place.
To be found.
But to sing for ten thousand years
while the other wretches suffer?
No, thank you.

Her church taught that grace was only for some,
that she was one of the lucky ones,
because she had chosen the right church,
and too bad about those other suckers.

She was looking to be found,
but not like that.
Not like that.

Home.
Dinner.
TV.

More invitations to buy something.
But not what she seeks.

Sleep, uneasy as usual.

She wakes the next day,
and begins again.

When lunch time comes,
most of the usual crowd isn’t there –
a special training day,
sandwiches provided.
It’s just Rebecca and Nancy today.

Nancy is not well known.
Like Rebecca, she’s quieter than the others.
There are some awkward silences as they begin to eat.

Eventually, for lack of something else to say,
Rebecca asks a question:
where are you from, maybe.
Or, do you have brothers or sisters?
Perhaps the question was,
what book are you reading?
But whatever it was, Nancy took the question to mean this:
tell me who you are.
Come hide with me –
It’s sardines, now, instead of hide and seek,
and we’ll hide together.
Nancy spoke real words.
Rebecca listened.

They lingered over their iced tea and salads
and only barely made it back before they were missed.

What will happen now?
We don’t know.

It is certainly possible that that was that.
How often have we come close
to being found
and shied away?

It’s not like we don’t have good reason.
I venture that every single soul in this room
has, at least once,
been betrayed by another.
We thought we had trust,
but it left, or was false.

It’s possible that that was that.

The larger group returns for lunch the next day,
and the conversations between Rebecca and Nancy
become,
once again,
light and gentle.
But I hold out hope that something different might happen.
That they might sit down together again.
Meet up, maybe, to take their dogs for a walk some Saturday morning.
Not every conversation will be deep,
but some will.

There will be friendship between them.
Kindness.
In a world where everything is made to be broken,
they will be known to each other.

In three months as a chaplain at a nursing home,
a year in Minneapolis,
five years in Colorado,
and two weeks here,
this is what, more than anything else,
brings people into the church and into my office.

They are looking for something.
But everything that everyone else is selling doesn’t seem to be it.
They have a lot of words for what it is.
Community.
Purpose.
Connection.
Meaning.
Sometimes, folks use the words they once learned but then left behind:
words like grace and salvation.
They recognize that these words point to something,
something that they have had glimpses of,
something that here and there they felt,
or heard about in a dream,
a sense of belonging,
a hunger satisfied.

This is our aspiration.
Our opening song this morning is our wish:
that all who seek here find a kindly word,
all who speak here find they have been heard:
The song acknowledges that fact:
life has its battles, sorrows and regrets.
Oh, how true.

How true.
But in the shadows, let us not forget:
we who now gather know each other’s pain
kindness can heal us,
as we give we gain.

That’s a description of reality for some, sometimes.
But it is also our hope.
It’s what we long for and what brings us back.

Life is hard.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.

We get confused about what matters.
We start to think,
maybe what I need is
life insurance
a new car
a date
a vacation
to vote for so-and-so
a triple-patty burger with fries.

We get confused and we need others to remind us of our true selves,
to remind us of our highest and truest aspirations.

We live in a world where things are made to be broken.
Planned obsolescence, they call it.
And sometimes we feel that we ourselves have been planned for obsolescence, don’t we?
We find ourselves wondering what we are doing with our lives, and why.

Life is hard.
Just when things seem to be going well,
they stop.

In our time,
we can be so lonely.
Our conversations are gentle and easy.
But we remain hidden to others,
and often,
to ourselves as well.

Life is hard.
One day fades into the next,
our rut gets deeper and getting out seems harder and harder.

What’s worst of all,
we are so often our own enemy.
We talk ourselves down from our own greatness.
We convince ourselves that we are not worthy.
Not worthy of love, not worthy of living as we wish to live.
We think we can’t,
so we don’t.

Tim taught you the song we’ll sing in a moment –
I wish I knew how it would feel
to be free
to share all I’m longing to share
that I could give all I’m longing to give.

The fundamental foundational principle of liberal religion
is that each person is holy and sacred.
Each person.
That means you.
You are sacred, wondrous, unique.
And you are good.
You were not made to be broken.

You were not made to be broken,
but sometimes we do break.
Sometimes we hide so well that no one can find us.
Sometimes we flee.
Sometimes we cover ourselves with layer upon layer.
We have good reasons, usually.

But the road leadns on.
We can’t go back,
we can’t hold still,
the road goes on.

Each person is holy and sacred.
Each person has a story to tell.
Each person dreams and hopes.
Each person has love deep in their heart.

The third verse, in part, is this:
I wish I could do all the things I can do,
though I’m way overdue I’d be starting anew.

And this is good news for all people:
you may start anew.
We religious liberals are not determinists.
We believe in freedom.
I pray that when Rebecca is ready for religion again,
she gives a liberal church a try.
Grace, we preach, is not parceled out to some
and denied to others.
What’s so amazing about grace is that it is for all.

Kafka put it this way:
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

It will roll in ecstasy at your feet –
I believe that.

Look, I could quibble with the theology of Amazing Grace.
I’m sure that my meaning for those words isn’t the same
as most folks who sing it.

But one of my major projects is to reclaim religious language.
Our foremothers and forefathers
proclaimed the wondrous salvation of universal love.
“Preach not hell, but hope and courage,”
they shouted out,
and so I shall.

St. Augustine,
the first and most important theologian of the Christian age,
said of God,
“I was restless until I found rest in you.”
In his God, Augustine found assurance,
calm and authority.
Ever since, we have learned that this
is what we are supposed to be looking for,
some experience that will give us clarity and show us the capital T Truth.
Many think this is what it means to be found.

But this has not been my path.
My experiences of mystery and wonder have not answered my questions
and they have not ended my quest.
For that I am thankful.

In hide and seek, when you’ve been found, your game is over.
You don’t get to play anymore.
In sardines, everyone is still playing until everyone is found.
Seeking to be found by yourself isn’t much fun,
and it is rarely successful.
The truth is that we discover who we are,
what is holy,
and what matters,
by being with others in love.

This is what good friendships do,
this is what healthy partnerships do,
this is what powerful religious communities do.
This is what small group ministry
and religious education
and worship and social justice are for:
to help us find ourselves by answering the call of the ultimate
in the commonplace and everyday.
Grace is not assurance,
it is the holy curiosity sparked by being alive to wonder.
Salvation is not escape from the world;
it is what happens when we love the world enough to make it better.

Joy is not the absence of suffering;
it is the presence of love.
The holy is not in the hiding place,
it is in the laughter.

Kafka also said
I do not read advertisements.
I would spend all of my time wanting things.

We are susceptible to manipulation.
Our fears can be used against our better selves,
we seek to be found
and we fear being lost,
and advertisers and religions and empires all know this.
They want us to lose ourselves in them,
to give ourselves over to their agenda.
And sometimes we do.
More often than we’d like.

But we are not determinists.
We believe that we can start anew.

We can start anew.
Olly-Olly-Oxen free!
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Whoever you are.
If you are living in quiet desperation, olly-olly-oxen-free.
If you are living in manic frenzy, olly-olly-oxen-free.
If you are muddling through, olly-olly-oxen-free.
If you long for more connection, more hope, more love,
olly-olly-oxen-free.

Come out.
It’s a new game.
Come out, we’ll play sardines this time.
We’ll laugh together.
Whatsoever is true and right and just,
we’ll figure it out together,
we’ll journey to wholeness together.
The road leads on,
and we’ll go together.
Olly-olly-oxen free.
It’s a new game.