January 2009:DESTINATION
Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-14; Psalm 147:12-20
Eileen Parfrey        Springwater Presbyterian Church

           
            The year 2009 is the 500th anniversary of Jean Calvin’s birth, and Presbyterians are gearing up with characteristically Presbyterian celebrations.  Jeremiah has feasting, parades and dancing; Presbyterians have lectures, liturgy and conferences.  What we really ought be gearing up for is all the flak we’re going get. You know the drill.  People find out you’re Presbyterian and ask, “Aren’t you the ones who believe in predestination?”  They always say it with a sneer, dismissing Calvin as if that’s it for him.  Predestination is the theory that God already knows who’s in and who’s out for eternity.  God knows, all right, but God’s not in the business of keeping people out, as those sneer-ers would imply.  From the description in Jeremiah, and even in Ephesians, the God has a destination in mind for us all right, and it’s a party.
            But today is Epiphany, not pick on Calvin day.  Epiphany is the culmination of Christmas’ celebrations, the next-to-final punctuation point in a season completely oriented to our destination.  If Jeremiah’s party manifests our destination—makes it visible with his metaphor of singing, dancing, feasting, comfort and joy, easy paths, and tender loving—well then, Ephesians is the theology behind it, where it comes from, God’s intention in giving it.  Jeremiah is the what and Ephesians is the how of our rescue. 
             Forgive me, but this was the point in the sermons I was raised on at which the preacher would highlight our utter shortcomings, general sinfulness, and overall deserving of condemnation.  We’d be given a graphic description of where we didn’t want to go, with a descriptive account of how we were getting there.  I’m just not sure that’s a useful way to do Epiphany.  If Epiphany is insight and “Now I get it!” I don’t think we need to hear yet again how guilty we ought to feel.  I think most of us already have enough trouble not feeling worthy of God’s love.  I don’t think we’re going to find our destination any quicker by revisiting that.  This communion table represents a better road map than that worn, dead end road of accomplishing our salvation.God already loves us.  We don’t have to earn it.  God proves the depth of that love with Christmas.  God reveals our destination by sending Christ.  Our spiritual GPS is hard-wired with a permanent lock on our destination, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
            Ephesians tells us we’re not second-class, passive victims of God’s idea of destination.  Our redemption destination, according to Paul, is an active and interactive relationship, and God starts it.  God always initiates.  God declares us free of penalties and punishments.  Not necessarily of the consequences of our misdeeds, but we are given everything we need to live abundantly.  Which more than outweighs consequences.  Our lives are given purpose and meaning by this relationship, because we know where we’re headed. 
            There’s a really sad bumper sticker that I think sums up a life that has no sense of destination.  The bumper sticker says, “You’re born crying, and when you’ve cried enough, then you die.”  Christians don’t believe that.  Sure, we cry.  Our lives have as much crying as anyone else’s.  But we don’t believe that the sum of life is “crying enough to get to the point of dying.”  Ephesians promises us abundance and life and an in with the God who lets us in on “the plans he took such delight in making.” 
But there’s more to living than just knowing the destination.  We also need to know how to get there.  Our house is located in a place that internet map services don’t know how to handle.  We’re near a road the city hasn’t incorporated and therefore doesn’t maintain, but Google didn’t get the memo.  Google sends people from the interstate to our house on Barton Road.  If you follow Google, and if you don’t miss the turn-off, if you can dodge the axle-breaking ruts on the ascent and the downed tree, then for sure the 20-foot long, 2-foot deep pothole is going to make you wish you were better at backing up narrow dirt roads.  Just knowing the destination isn’t always enough.  We need guidance we can trust.  Like going to my house, we need someone who can take into account the real conditions, people who’ve gone this way before.  Someone like Jesus, or his earth-bound helpers, the church community.
           I appreciate my brothers and sisters in Christ letting me know when I’m headed down an unincorporated road.  My spiritual director tells me that Franciscan theology frames our destination in context bigger than that bumper sticker, and it starts with love.  God is love.  Before we are born, we are embedded in God’s eternal love.  We believe that in life and in death we belong to God, so we know that when we die we return to God’s eternal love.  Before we are born, God is saying to us, “I love you.”  After we die, God is saying to us, “I love you.”  In between, during this very short period of temporal time that we call our lifetime, we get to say, “I love you, too.”
            Friends, here is the important thing.  The sentence ends with “too.”  Also.  I love you also, God.  God starts it.  God initiates.  God begins everything saying to us, “I love you.”  Our time on earth is our one big chance to say “I love you, too.”  But first of all, we have to let God love us, otherwise there’s no “too.”  This table here—with bread we will break, with wine that we’ll pour—is tangible, visible, eatable, drinkable witness that God already loves us.  You have done nothing and will never be able to do anything to earn that love.  It is already given.  It is enough to trust that.  It is enough to know that this is our destination.  God’s love, an abundant life freely given to us.

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