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Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 27, 2006
Delivered by Reverend Sandra Stayner
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-25
Ephesians 5:21-33
John 6:60-69
I wish you could all have been with us at chorister camp this past week. Our choristers joined choirs from 6 other parishes from this diocese at Camp Incarnation a camp and conference center in Ivoryton CT. Although each parish had their own cabins and living space, we ate together in a large dining room three times a day. The schedule we maintained was quite rigorous, with periods of intense rehearsal interspersed with opportunities for swimming, playing on enormous rope swings in the woods surrounding the cabin, farm visits where we were able to pet and even walk donkeys and llamas. Every afternoon we went swimming in the beautiful lake just down the hill, which also offered the opportunity for canoeing and kayaking or bouncing into the water from a huge trampoline that was anchored just off shore. In the evenings after dinner we played games or sat around a bonfire making smores. We even had a movie night!
With just nine choristers we were by far the smallest and youngest choir. So we were a bit nervous when on Wednesday evening each choir was encouraged to sing a piece of music for one another after supper. After ice cream sundaes in the dining hall we were joined by the Elm City Girls choir. By now there were well over 100 choristers packed into the room. We were picked to go first. With June Hale, our new choir mistress at the piano and Robert Lee conducting, our children stood up in front of the most experienced choir directors and choristers in this state and sang for all they were worth. They sang beautifully. As soon as the song was finished the place erupted with applause, as the other choristers cheered and clapped and stamped their feet. This brave little group of singers sang praise to God with everything they had, and the result was the sweetest offering you can imagine.
The kids had a lot of fun at camp, but the schedule they kept was stringent. They had to get up at 7:00am every morning for breakfast down the hill at 8:00 and nap for an hour after lunch in order to be ready for the afternoon rehearsal which began promptly at 2:00PM. Every day 3 choristers were table managers whose job it was to go early to the meals and set the tables, get the food and clear up afterwards. The kids rehearsed hard for at least 4 hours every day, and sang morning and evening prayer daily. On several days we went to services during the evening that were sung by other choirs in order for our choir to gain more experience. It was very moving to those of us who were chaperoning them to see their depth of commitment. They chose to serve God as they worked hard to learn how to use their voices and sing the anthems, as well as in the way they related to one another and to their chaperones throughout the week. By the end of the week even Thomas Bonitz who is 4 years old was standing by the piano learning new songs to sing in worship. These children were offering their lives to God by using their gifts to his glory. In return I think each one of them would say how much their lives were enriched and blessed both by the friendships that were made and by the exciting opportunities that were opened up to them during their work and play.
By coming to choir camp and working hard our children made a choice to serve God by using their gifts for God’s glory. We also are asked to use all that we are and all that we have in service of our God. “Choose this day whom you will serve” Joshua says to the tribes of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness, put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.” It is all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the choice to serve God is made once and for all at the time of our baptism. But for most of us the choice to live our lives in service of God is a daily one. Our lives are filled with an abundance of choices to be made, some which are life-giving and some which are life destroying. The choice we have to make has not so much to do with the right system of beliefs, but the way we live our lives. It has to do with how we choose to do the work we have been given to do, what we do with the resources with which we have been gifted, how we relate to the poor and the marginalized and how we respect those among whom we live our lives.
The choice to serve God requires us to live our lives with the same spirit of generosity that God has shown us in the gift of his son Jesus. After gathering the tribes of Israel together Joshua begins his speech with a recitation of God’s generosity towards them. He then makes it clear that each one of them will be asked to choose in whom they will put their trust before concluding with the words, “I don’t know about you and your family, but I and my house will choose the Lord.” While living in a nominally Christian society it’s perhaps hard to understand what it means to serve the God of our ancestors. We are here because we are Christians. We’re not Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus, so we fool ourselves into believing that we must be serving God. But in our world the Gods of our ancestors come in many different disguises and we have to work hard to recognize them. Perhaps Jesus’ words, “you cannot serve God and mammon can help us recognize the choices before us. How much of our life is spent acquiring things for ourselves? Someone once said that the easiest way for us to recognize what really controls our life is to open up our checkbook to see how where our money goes. When we assess how our money is spent we might begin to understand what Gods we really worship.
If we really want to make the choice to worship God with integrity we must begin to make a stab at unearthing some of the forces that subtly draw us away from loving God and our neighbor. Although we live in a country that is nominally Christian we are surrounded by values that do not reflect the incredible compassion of God. Instead of being encouraged to place our trust in God we are told we must all fend for ourselves. We are encouraged to compete against our neighbors instead of helping them out. As Walter Brueggemann says, “we are asked to invest our lives in consumerism. We have a love affair with more – and we will never have enough. Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. It has become a demonic spiritual force among us, and the theological question facing us is whether the gospel has the power to help us withstand it. The Gods of our ancestors are no longer the Gods of other religions, instead they are Gods that are hidden within the very culture in which we live.
Nine of our children actively chose to give a week of their vacation to hone the skills they have been given in the service of their Lord. We also are asked to choose today and every day to offer everything we have in service of our God by the way we live our lives. Our children experienced the fullness of joy that is to be found in offering themselves to God. We will learn the same. “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods your ancestors served in the land beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshual 24:14)
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