Texts: Luke 13:31-35, Psalm 27, Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

The Blues Brothers was a movie that came out in 1980, and it is a Zencka family favorite – not only because it is set in the Chicago area, but also because it is the first movie that Carl and I ever saw together, on one of our first dates. Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, of the original Saturday Night Live crew, play Jake and Elwood Blues, the Blues Brothers. The movie opens as Jake is being released from prison, and as Jake and Elwood revisit old haunts, one of the places they visit is the Catholic orphanage where they grew up.

The nun they call The Penguin, in reference to her black and white habitual garb, shares with them that the orphanage is about to close because it doesn’t have enough money to pay property taxes, and so Jake and Elwood become determined to rescue the orphanage. They visit a church, whose pastor, the Reverend Cleophus Jones played by the late James Brown, is preaching as one might imagine James Brown would preach a sermon ….and when Rev. Jones reaches the peak of this sermon, and is asking “Do you see the light?? Do you see the light??” –an otherworldly beam of light comes in the church window, hitting Jake Blues in the face, surrounding him in a kind of transfiguration radiance, and he says from within the vision “I see the light, I see the light!” Dan Ackroyd’s character, the even more hapless Elwood Blues looks around, oblivious to his brother’s aura, and says, baffled, “What light?”

Recently, a group of us have been meeting to discuss the needs and opportunities for learning about faith here at Frame. This group, the Christian Education Task Force, was created to look at our Christian Education programs for children, youth and adults, to consider the needs and desires for learning, and to try and develop opportunities for people to learn about faith – opportunities that would consider the very busy lives most of us lead. The CE Task Force has started its work by reading an extended article by Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra, called Christian Practices and Congregational Education in Faith. The article opens with the following words:

“Ours is a time of widespread spiritual hunger. People seem to be searching for something, though they often have a hard time articulating exactly what it is. Sometimes it seems that the search is for meaning, sometimes for worth or belonging. Sometimes this elusive something is called "spirituality." Whatever they call it, many people feel that something is missing from their lives. Yet it is clearly not some thing that they are lacking. This search is not for more but for kind, for a qualitative dimension. It is for a kind of life, a way of living, a way of being and doing that is truly alive to God, neighbor, and self – a way of life that, to use a biblical phrase, chooses life.”

I can tell you that many of us here at Frame are experiencing that spiritual hunger. In the short time I’ve been here, several folks have spoken with me about their desire to learn more, or to experience God, or to find a group to share with – and this is not terribly surprising. After all, that’s why many people come to church in the first place – to experience God, to discuss issues of meaning, to feel the pulse at the center of life. We know that our daily life leaves us hungry for more – and no matter how many more things, more activities, or more friends we have, we are still hungry. And we grow to understand that the hunger is spiritual, and so we come to church.

And church membership is deeply satisfying to many folks – for many of us, the relationships we form in church are among the most important friendships we have. The CE Task Force has been wondering whether church functions for many people as the kind of community that a neighborhood used to be. And we think that’s a good thing. Some people find through church a way to connect with the hurts of the world in a way that is satisfying and makes a difference.

And inside Frame, we have an increasing number of members making a difference to our church – through the committees of the church, our members are bringing new vitality to our ministry in ways that will make this church stronger.

And yet, many folks, including some who are very busy, find that the spiritual hunger described by Dykstra and Bass persists. While the activities of ministry make a difference, there is still for many folks, something more that seems to lie just out of reach.

I remember once, in one of the churches I served, being with a member as they neared death, and although they had been a very active church member, as they came to the end of their life there was a deep grief and a sense of unease that seemed to connect to a feeling of having missed something essential in their connection to God.

And yet, when we hear a phrase like “seeing the light” we are vaguely uncomfortable – many of us don’t want to be converted, and we don’t understand or trust the language of being “born again” and we feel a little like Elwood Blues: what light? And yet, we do seek greater understanding, some kind of experience, that je ne sais quoi that Dykstra and Bass described as “a kind of life, a way of living, a way of being and doing that is truly alive to God, neighbor, and self….” While there are people who have a “seeing the light” experience as Abram did in the story from Genesis when God took him outside to see the stars, and there with the Creator of those stars Abram’s understanding was changed – he saw the light; many people will see those stars one by one over a lifetime. And even people who have an important conversion experience will have other insights or experiences that shape their faith journey. I am one of those people, probably unusual in the Presbyterian Church, who had an important coming-to-faith experience – it was when I was 14, and I understood it at the time as a conversion experience. But like Abram, who had that important experience, and yet also had other experiences (less dramatic perhaps) in which his understanding grew or changed, so also have I. I am not the same person I was in 1970, and my faith is not the same either. People have different experiences, and because of that, we can learn from each other things we cannot learn on our own.

Jesus modeled life in Christian community in the small community he built with his disciples. In a small group, he taught them, they asked questions, and they went out together (sometimes in pairs) to live out what they were learning. Many churches have found that small groups are a wonderful place to connect our lives with our faith in a way that supplies that missing piece for many people. In a small group, people can share with one another authentically from their real lives, acknowledge their doubts, listen deeply, and forge the kinds of connections that provide wholeness. How many stories from the life of Jesus involve a conversation, or sharing a meal? Somehow the learning that takes place in the context of sharing a meal and our experiences moves beyond head learning to provide meaningful connections in our lives.

I participate regularly with a small group: I meet each month with two ministers, Scott Marrese-Wheeler from Marshfield and Stephen Wright from Wausau. We share a meal, share our ideas and experiences, ask each other questions, support and challenge each other. I started taking a regular day off after these colleagues challenged me to just schedule it in and do it. We talk about books we are reading, doubts we have, and situations that confound us. We share our hearts and we share our sermons. Yesterday, members of our session met with elders from Wausau, Marshfield, and Preble Park along with the pastors, and the national organizer for the Covenant Network, an organization in the Presbyterian Church that supports the inclusion of all members into full membership in the church, and particularly works for the openness of the whole denomination to ordaining Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people as deacons, elders and ministers. While Frame has been fully open for years, the denomination still has barriers to full inclusion, and so part of our discussion was around how our churches might work together to make a difference. This shared effort was one result of our monthly lunch. If we lived closer, I imagine we’d meet more often, as many small groups meet weekly.

I also meet regularly with the Men’s Group, which studies books one chapter at a time, and discusses them over lunch. The same dynamic exists in this group – people gathered to support one another, to share ideas, to learn, and to break bread together. That weekly meeting takes time, but the practice of learning while sharing is clearly worth it to the men who are participating, and it is important to me, too.

The adult forum over the next several weeks is a video and discussion series called Affluenza which takes an in-depth look at the excessive consumption of our culture, acknowledges the results of emptiness, stress, debt, and waste that result from the lifestyle that become the norm in our culture.

Years ago, Mother Teresa visited the United States to receive an honorary degree and she said, “This is the poorest place I’ve ever been in my life.” She was talking about spiritual poverty, and some of it may be directly related to the overload in our lives. I mentioned in the newsletter that I’m wondering if anyone would like to meet on an on-going basis to study a book called Simple Living, Compassionate Life which examines how to live more intentionally in order to experience a fullness of life which acquisition does not provide. I am suggesting that a group meet Sunday evenings, share supper and study this book in order to intentionally seek simpler lives. We will likely start soon after Easter. I’ll put a signup sheet by the office to see how many might be interested.

I know that there are many people in our congregation who would find a small group to be an important way to connect faith with life – I know this partly because of the folks who have spoken to me already sharing their desire to learn more, or experience more, in their faith. I hope that over the next year we will find ways to develop other small groups, and if you’re interested in the concept, but not the Sunday evening one I’ve proposed, come talk with me, or call me.

Jesus said in the Gospel passage that Alyssa read: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” He found people not willing to respond to the simple, but compelling, challenges he placed before them, even though he knew they longed for a deeper sense of knowing God.

Just like in our health, no one practice is the only answer – we need to watch what we eat, exercise, get enough sleep, and avoid bad habits – all of these are important. So too in the spiritual life,-- no one practice holds the key to the spiritual life – worshipping God, connecting to missions, learning about our faith, finding people with whom we can authentically share, giving generously, all of these contribute to an abundant life that radiates the light of God’s love. No one star makes the night sky bright by itself, but many have found small group to be the one missing piece that made the difference....

The choices we make shape our life. Yes, we’re busy, but the practice of committing to a small group to learn and share regularly can create an opportunity to see those stars one by one that reveal God’s light to us. And if we’re feeling more like “What light?” perhaps someone else can point to the light they see. The psalm we sang talked about seeing the goodness of God in the land of the living – for many of us, seeing that becomes more possible when we’re looking with others. The model of small communities of faith is not exotic or complicated – but it is the model that Jesus used, and is the way the early church was organized, when Christianity was dynamic, vibrant, and changing the world. Let us form constellations of faith through which we, and those around us, will be changed. Amen.