Liberating Learning
Psalm 119:12-18   Acts 2: 42-47
The Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

"What I Did On My Summer Vacation," by Odette Lockwood-Stewart.
I grieved.
I grieved my mother's death.  I also grieved other losses: deaths of members of this community whom I loved; relationships unfulfilled; roads not taken; illness; failures, war, waste and want.  
Summer vacation granted me the space, place, and grace to grieve.

Now, I don't want you to think I didn't have fun.  I did.  I played with six wonderful grandchildren in Monterey.  Jim and I walked across the city of Boston and cheered the Red Sox to victory at Fenway Park.  I swam in the warm waters of the Atlantic off Cape Cod and I read... and played... and prayed... and rested...and loved and learned.

But because I had time to reflect, there was also a whole lot of grieving going on. I was free to learn from things that were already a part of me.

We often move from event to event, feeling to feeling, experience to experience, task to task, book to book, conversation to conversation, day to day without recollection or reflection. We react to news.  We respond to others.  But when do we reflect on the meaning of it all?  
We move through our lives like the character in Carrie Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel Postcards From the Edge, who wrote, "Having a wonderful time.  Wish I were here."

I'll never forget the night our son, Josh, then a teenager, said to us, "I'm one Josh at school. Somebody else with my friends. Somebody else with you.  I don't know which one is me."

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story about an orphan boy, Harry, who grew up to be a shy stock clerk in a small town's hardware store.  Harry did not know who he was, what he thought, or how he felt.  UNTIL he became involved in the little community theater group.  There he learned that he could become selves by playing roles.  Cyrano, Stanley Kowalski, Romeo... Harry was fully alive and clear in each role... until the curtain came down.  As long as he was playing a role he knew who he was.  And before each production he would ask, "Who am I this time?"  A young woman loves Harry and helps him discover who he is in and beneath and beyond the roles he played.

"Who am I this time?"  "Having a wonderful time, wish I were here."  
"I don't know which one is me."  

Annual vacation, weekly Sabbath, daily quiet time, and community of shared life and faith are places and spaces for the grace to learn the meaning of the lives we are living.
Learning is radically relational.  This morning I asked our children to share symbols and stories from their lives this morning.  It's never too soon or too late to find ways to explore the meaning of our lives in sustained and faithful community.

The Book of Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. It's the story of how the beginning and growth of Christian community was the continuation of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.  The verses that Scott read for us today, are from the story of the day of Pentecost, where wildly diverse people gathered in Jerusalem fifty days after that first Easter, and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lives were turned around and communities of new life were born.

After this dramatic experience of inspiration and transformation, Scripture says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." (v. 42)

That is how early Christian communities sustained the spirit of God they received.  They did it through fellowship, koinonia, shared life on every level - they sold possessions for common good, cared for those who were in need. They broke bread from house to house.  They learned and prayed together.
This vision of sustainedSpirit - challenges us.

I give thanks to God for you in a world that continues to be deeply torn by war, by economic violence, and by the ever-impending threat of ecological disaster.   I give thanks for you who are confronted by personal challenges that seem too much, and yet, who bear witness through your own strength and vulnerability to the grace that sustains.  I give thanks for this community in my own grief and delight.

Psychologist and Environmentalist, Molly Young Brown writes:
"When we expand our awareness, strengthen our center, clarify our purpose, transform our inner demons, develop our will and make conscious choices, we are moving toward deeper connection with our spiritual self."

We are moving toward a deepening fellowship of shared lives ... a fellowship that can, and does, dance, pray, study, celebrate, share meals and act up ... a fellowship where learning liberates us from limited perspectives, where interdependence liberates us from the oppressive weight of ego and individualism. Koinonia that nurtures connection with all life ... and with the God whose name is love and whose work is justice.

Prayers, support and celebration can carry us when we cannot go on. Community can help us to exercise love and forgiveness when we don't feel like it.  Caring together for our brothers and sisters in Jamaica, Peru, Iraq, Utah, Gaza, Minnesota, Guatemala, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, San Francisco... ,  compels us to use our gifts in God's world.
Walter Rauschenbusch, theologian and activist, and guiding spirit of what became known as "The Social Gospel", wrote in his 1907 book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, these words:

"Last May a miracle happened.  At the beginning of the week the fruit trees bore brown and greenish buds.  At the end of the week they were robed in bridal garments of blossom.  But for weeks and months the sap had been rising and distending the cells and maturing the tissues which were half ready in the fall before."

The creative grace of God already is at work before we even can see it ... drawing us toward wholeness when all we can see are fearful fragments.

The sustaining grace of God already is at work before we even think to name it ... surrounding us with kindred spirits and challenging friends, with whom we can talk, and cry, and laugh, and learn, leading us into connection when all we can feel is isolation.

The saving grace of God shows us who we are this time... and all the time ... blessed to be blessings to each other and to the world.  As we learn to live in the assurance of this love we are set free to serve and celebrate.