Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Psalm 122, Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16
May 16, 2004
Last Sunday….Mother’s Day….Sue Ives was sharing a platform moment with the children who attend our Sunday Night Alive service in the Christian Life Center. Using a bird’s nest as her prop, Sue led the children through the stages of being a mother bird, from bringing food to the nest so her offspring could eat, to gently pushing them from the nest so her offspring could fly. Bright child that she is, Anna Kileen (age six) figured out where Sue’s message was going and inched closer and closer to her mother who was also on the platform. Then she announced in a stage whisper, loud enough for me to hear, that she had no intention of ever leaving, and she was sure that her mother had no intention of ever pushing. As for the opinions of Sara and Ben (Anna’s older sister and brother), they did not voice them, so I cannot report them.
When we are six, we can’t conceive of leaving home. But when we are sixteen, we can’t conceive of staying home. For there comes a time in every life when home, for all of its comforts, seems like an endless diet of “same old, same old,” and you are ready for a breakout year, punctuated by a number of breakthrough experiences.
Still, there is something that every parent finds funny. The same kids who leave because they are ready for things to be different, when they return home, expect everything to be the same.
What do you mean, you rearranged my room?
What do you mean, you bought a prime rib instead of a turkey for Thanksgiving?
What do you mean, you and Dad switched to an artificial tree?
Whassup with that?
The more things change, the greater our need for some things to stay the same.
Gail Sheehy once suggested that human life….all human life….swings between a pair of poles, responding (as it were) to a pair of urges. There is the nesting urge. And there is the venturing urge. Call them seasons of settling in and seasons of breaking out. And, if memory serves me correctly, the swings between the two urges occur in seven-year cycles.
Not that such shiftings are necessarily cataclysmic. They can be relatively simple. During the nesting times, we work harder on old friendships, restore old furniture, and even relish the predictability (along with the security) of old jobs. While during the venturing times, we may read a few more want ads, devour a few more travel brochures, or respond favorably to invitations from people we didn’t really know before, to do things we’ve never really done before.
One of the tensions in marriage results when two people, at any given time, suddenly find themselves responding to different rhythms in the nesting/venturing cycle. It could be as simple as one wanting to remodel while the other wants to sell. Or it could involve one who has fallen into disenchantment with employment and wants to move, just as the other has fallen in love with the neighborhood and wants to stay. Or it could be that one has grown weary of the cottage and wants to spend the summer backpacking through Europe, just as the other is dreaming of repainting the cottage and upgrading the boat.
Scott Peck, in his 25-year bestseller, The Road Less Traveled, illustrates the same issue with different images. Peck talks about the difference between climbing a mountain and maintaining a base camp. It’s not a matter of either/or, but a matter of both/and. If you are going to climb a mountain, you need a good base camp….a place equipped with provisions….a place for sharing instructions and telling stories….and a place where you can take nourishment and rest before seeking summits.
For the last several summers, Carl and Pat Price have led week-long trail hikes from Maine to Montana. This year they’re doing the “Big A”….Alaska. Knowing that the work involved in these outings is not getting any easier, and that Carl and Pat are not getting any younger, trail groupees of the Prices have said: “Wouldn’t it be easier on you if you didn’t have to haul your trailer, set up a campsite, and then cook four or five suppers for twenty or thirty hikers?” To which Carl always responds: “If all I do is select the trails, pass out the maps and do the other organizational paperwork, where is the fun in that? The fun is in the cook fire where we warm our food and the campfire where we tell our stories (what we saw….who we saw….what happened to us….what almost happened to us). That’s what makes us happy. And, in some cases, keeps everybody safe. But if we don’t haul the trailer, we can’t do the above.”
Carl and Pat both know the importance of base camps to trail hikes. And are happy to tend them. Although if that’s all they did….all they ever had time to do….all they ever were allowed to do….they would probably say to each other: “Who needs this?” And to the rest of us: “Who needs you?” Which is what happens in marriages when one spouse does nothing but climb the mountain while the other spouse (without consultation or compensation) does nothing but clean the camp.
Religiously speaking, we see the same swings….between a faith that settles and a faith that travels. You can’t read the Bible without seeing such swings and surges. Recalling the grand sweep of the history of Israel, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes:
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith, he sojourned from the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
Abraham, our ancestor, was a tent dweller. Paul, our apostle, a tent maker. There is much in our faith history (and much in our Bible) that is mobile. People are told to leave at a moment’s notice….go at a moment’s notice….shake the dust from their feet and seek new congregations at a moment’s notice. They are told to go on foot….on donkey….on sailing vessel….or, if Methodist, on the back of a horse. The advice is clear. “Don’t be too much at home, for too long a time. Because, when it comes to ‘home,’ you’ll never find it back there, so much as out there. Truth be told, you haven’t seen it yet. Nor are you going to. At least in this life.” I dare you to read your Bible cover to cover and tell me that such is not so.
But there is another word….a word within the Word, if you will….that always wants to settle. Because for every word about tents, there is a word about tabernacles. And what are tabernacles if not permanent structures for housing the people of God? While threaded through the narrative are words about temples….especially the magnificence of the Jerusalem temple when it stood, and the longing (the intense, aching longing) for the Jerusalem temple when it didn’t.
I was glad when they said unto me
let us go to the House of the Lord.
Which may have been the first words of the Bible I memorized, given that they were artistically rendered on the sanctuary walls of my childhood….along with the couplet: “The Lord is in his Holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” You see how important the early messages are? Sunday after Sunday I saw those words. And long after my head made room for bigger theology, my heart believed that God resided in that building. And, in some rather primal way, still does.
Let me confess something to you, given that (at this stage in our relationship) there is little to be gained in the keeping of secrets. When I came out of Yale in 1965, I was much more into venturing than nesting. And I was more enamored with a faith that traveled than a faith that settled. I wanted the kids in my youth group to see faith at work beyond the walls of the church. I took them camping and canoeing to experience God in the green. I took them to the inner city to experience God among the poor. I took them to colleges and universities to experience God among the learned. I took them all the way down the east coast to Georgia on a ten-day go-see tour my first year, arriving back in Dearborn a scant 46 hours before my wedding. I even dragged my senior highs to the south side of Chicago and farmed them out for three days to live and work with Vista Volunteers. Just picture it. These kids were the cultural heirs of Orville Hubbard (the seemingly-eternal mayor of Dearborn, where everybody knew that the city slogan, “Keep Dearborn Clean,” meant “Keep Dearborn White”). I had them hanging out in Cabrini Green, the most notorious housing project in the Windy City. Looking back on it, it’s hard to believe the trust those parents had in me then.
But that was the sixties. If I had any thoughts about church buildings during those years, I thought of them as places where God and God’s people could be dangerously imprisoned. So I figured the best thing I could do for the Methodist church in general….and the parishioners of Dearborn First in particular….was to lead an occasional jailbreak. I didn’t want anybody…. especially those kids….to get too comfortable in that building at 22124 Garrison, no matter how lovely it was.
To some degree, I have spent the totality of my ministry fighting against an overly-narrow understanding of “church.” And as long as I’m spilling secrets, let me confess that I purposefully chose today’s issue of Steeple Notes to report our record-shattering total of $926,000 committed by us….beyond our doors….to make ministry happen elsewhere in 2003. I didn’t want anybody to think that in trying to raise $1.6 million to renovate our sanctuary, I was settling in or you were selling out.
But things have mellowed me through the years. First, I realize that every time I go to Europe, I gravitate to the great cathedrals, finding myself in awe….not only of the sacredness I feel in them….but of the sacrifice somebody made to build them. Then I wonder who, if anybody, will preserve them. Or, in future days (and other places), who will expend a similar effort to replicate them.
Second, I realize that for nearly forty years, I have not only poured my life into four very lovely sanctuaries, but have made a pretty good living in those sanctuaries. Yet I built nary a one of those sanctuaries….instead, having hitchhiked for years on the sacrifices of others.
Third, I realize that for everyone who uses the sanctuary to retreat from life-in-the-raw, there is someone who comes here to redeem life-in-the-raw. On some days….for some folks….our sanctuary helps shut out the real world. But on other days….for other folks….our sanctuary is as “real world” as it gets. For every person who comes to hide here, there are ten people who come to heal here.
Fourth, I realize, especially every time I do a wedding or funeral in this place (and I do a lot of weddings and funerals in this place), that I am speaking to a higher percentage of outsiders than insiders. Meaning that there may be as much “mission” happening in here as I could ever hope to accomplish out there.
This sanctuary is our base camp. But in a strange way (and I want you to wrestle with this when you go home), this sanctuary is also our mountain. For this is where we come from other base camps to seek the Lord….see the Lord….serve the Lord….and be stretched by the Lord.
I have spent the last four years thinking about my role in this campaign to replace our organ and renovate our sanctuary. I find that in my thinking, I have replaced the word “luxury” with the word “necessity”….and, in more recent days, I have replaced the word “necessity” with the word “opportunity.” And given my increasing belief that relatively few things happen in my professional life for no reason, I have concluded that one of the reasons God has placed me here….and kept me here….is to complete this work. In a strange way, this “nest” has become my “mountain.” And….dare I suggest it….yours, too?
