To paraphrase the Christian mystic and civil rights leader Howard Thurman: Do you believe that life, your life – is not finished yet? That you are potential. Regardless of your age – that you are potential. That life is dynamic and always presenting newness. Do you believe that?
Because the hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions, you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.
And I don’t believe he was just talking to 60, 70, 80, 90-year-olds – The challenge to keep discovering the green growing edge is for 30, 40, and 50-year-olds as well.
As an adult of any age, it’s very easy to cave to the shape our previous decisions have carved into us – to continue, day by day, making similar decisions to those we made yesterday – and so gradually close down our horizons and shave off those green growing edges without ever even seeing them.
One of the things I love about being a liturgical church is that our calendar routinely puts in front of us opportunities to re-look at who we are, and to find those growing edges and move, maybe ever so slightly and awkwardly, but continuously in those directions. Here’s what I mean:
Advent is the beginning of our liturgical year. It is the four weeks prior to Christmas, and year after year, we encounter the surprising and frankly fearful ways God entered Isaiah’s life and John the Baptist’ life, and Mary’s and Joseph’s lives. In Advent we encounter God or life disrupting plans and catapulting ordinary people in new directions.
In the twelve days of Christmas, we encounter the awe of newborn life, the wonder of God coming to us in flesh and blood and mess and joy. This is a time to go out under the night sky and stretch your imagination to hear angels singing in the heavens.
Epiphany stirs curiosity and action. What if you joined the wise men who saw a star and didn’t just wonder what it might mean but took the next steps of going to find out. What if you joined the Magi who when they found the newborn King – fell down in worship and offered their resources to fund this new life. The gold they offered most likely helped save the life of the Holy Family as they fled violence and joined the stream of refugees seeking safety in another place.
And now here we are – in the season after Epiphany. This is a time we remember that God is constantly continuing to reveal God’s self to us.
And on this first Sunday after Epiphany, we are stepping into the baptismal river water with Jesus. We hear God reveal how beloved he was, and how much pleasure his Divine Father took in him. That was enough affirmation to set Jesus off into a very public very bold ministry that continues to reverberate through the centuries. So here is this season’s question – how is God revealing God’s self to you now? What is the green growing edge for you? What is stretching your horizons?
And I don’t care if you are 90 or 19 – I believe that God wants to encounter you this morning – in worship or coffee hour or in the store doing your weekly shopping afterwards. And I’m speaking to those of you joining us online as well.
Maybe it is to prod you forward or sideways, or encourage you, or comfort you, or challenge you. Maybe it is to bring something or someone to mind for you to forgive, or ask for forgiveness, or say thank you to, or simply call and be in touch and maybe renew a friendship with. Maybe it is to participate in some work of justice or mercy or maybe just set down your phone and go outside more. Maybe it is simply to encourage you to sit and wait – which can be the hardest thing of all.
Because here’s the thing – it’s quite possible for that voice of the Lord to speak through silence. For there to be no message that you can pin down or put any kind of shape to. Darkness and the silence, my friends, is also the voice of the Lord. It doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. It is simply part of the path. A hard part of the path.
Because it is hard, particularly with all the quick fixes and loads of distractions – it’s hard to be silent. To admit that we don’t know. To not be able to Google “what is God revealing to me?” or “where is my green growing edge?” To not have any heavenly Siri we can ask.
Without any technological crutches – we are asked to stand up and walk again and again into our Baptism. Into Beginnings. Into Listening – maybe to something. Maybe to nothing. We are asked to listen to that baby thing just beginning to form – that might just be a feeling of discomfort at what is, and maybe an intuition of what might be.
And of course, beginnings are exciting, but they are also anxiety producing – so here is the good news. The same foundational wisdom the Heavenly Father gave to Jesus as he emerged from the baptismal waters is given, through Christ, to us as well: You are God’s beloved – God is well pleased in you.
All green and growing edges arise out of this Jordan River voice. You are God’s child, God’s beloved, deserving of love and respect. God will use you to change the world.