Context: On January 28, 2024, I preached a message about the urgency of caring for our teens and families. This message was prompted by twenty of Plymouth Church's teenagers asking me to preach on "Youth and Mental Illness." You can find that sermon here, https://peterstrobel70.wixsite.com/rev--peter-strobel-s/post/naming-all-names-speaking-directly-to-our-teens-romans-16-1-16-january-28-2024-9am-service. However, message should not stand by itself. As I talked to our teens, I thought of our oldest adults, and the ease with which they are also overlooked. I could not preach one word without adding another. The next week, on February 4, 2024, I was offered a neutral pulpit as part of a church interview. I was invited to work with the Epiphany theme of "hearing and listening" and preach from the lectionary texts for the week. This message, inspired by Luke 2:22-40 was my response.
Today’s sermon requires a bit of context because, last week, I told the teens at my home church I would preach on any theme they picked. What is relevant to this week is, often when I am preparing a sermon, I feel two Good Words coming. And I always struggle to not have that be too distracting, to whittle it down to one. I believe the reason it happens is I am less concerned about who the word moves, and more worried about who it misses. If I took the other path, that path I did not preach, was that the Good Word they needed? Last week, when preaching about teens, and the need to have children, families, and teens supported in the church, I was worrying and praying that everyone else would not feel overlooked. I hoped they were not hearing, “step aside so we can focus on who the church is really for.” That is why I give thanks, feel something sacred is here today, because this Good Word fills the gap from last week.
Don’t put a step where God would put a ramp. There are only a few steps between the beginning, in-between, and end. In Dave’s case, there was just one step, a single stair step. Dave had known adversity, fought on the beaches of Normandy, raised a family, triumphed in business, been considered a great man skilled at overcoming obstacles. And then he met the step.
A single non-descript step separated the church lobby from the sanctuary. He had triumphed over that step thousands of times. Although, for the five decades, in which he had gone up and down with ease, he would hardly have considered the raising and lowering of himself triumphs. Surviving D-Day? Persuading Lois to marry him, then spending sixty-one amazing years building a life together? Keeping four kids fed and getting them through college? Those were triumphs, moments worth talking about and being remembered for.
But Lois was gone. It had been four years since he lost her to cancer. For a while, the kids checked in daily, until the demands of raising their kids, his grandkids, pulled them away. Weeks, even months went by without seeing them. Dave had not expected to be alone, but he made no complaints. He had his house, his car, his church. Men's Bible study. The choir and the property committee.
Over time, though, things changed. Dave changed. He had less energy in the summer heat, so he shrank his beloved garden to a few well-tended tomato plants. His vision was not what it used to be. He slowed down during evening walks to watch for slick spots and other hazards. Lois used to compare him to a mountain goat as he climbed the extension ladder to clean the gutters. But times had changed. If only icy spots had changed as well.
Ten years ago, Dave would have seen the icy spot. Forty years ago, he would have slipped and been fine, be he wasn’t 75 or 45, he was 85. So, when David slipped, that slip led to a stumble, that turned into a full-on fall, right on the hard ground. The loud “crack” and pain were indicators enough that something had changed. The ambulance trip to the hospital, emergency surgery, and rapid gathering of his children confirmed the obvious. Things had changed. Dave had changed. And that is how Dave met the step.
If there had been a ramp, a different way of entering the sanctuary, the step would not have mattered. But there was not a ramp, so Dave had lots of time to familiarize himself with this new foe, this immovable object his new wheelchair could not traverse. Dave was still getting used to the wheelchair, to changes in pace and maneuvering, to seeing things he had overlooked before. Maybe that was why he happened to see her; a straggler come late to the service.
Toddling along, rising, and falling, but moving forward with glee was Little Rose Lynn Parker, the twelve-month-old daughter of two younger members, Kate, and Charles, both of whom Dave had known since they were in diapers. As Rose toddled forward, her awkward path led her to the step. As Dave watched, young hands clasped the top edge of the step, young eyes looked upward with stubborn determination. With strength and coordination that were still haphazard, little Rose shimmied halfway up, kicking off the ground and pulling herself over the carpeted service, until she was over. She had done it! She was over the step, on her way to growing up and facing bigger, weightier obstacles.
Most of the adults in the sanctuary would say the altar, the pews, the fellowship hall, or the doors were where the church started. Dave knew differently. It began and ended with the step, that obstacle before the sanctuary, the overlooked testing ground of who was the church, that great, non-descript barrier between the beginning, the in-between, and the end. Rose was the beginning, the hope and life of the church, and the world, raising itself to life, to the in-between, the formation and action where everything happened, everything mattered, until the end.
It is all forward progress until older architect’s wheelchairs hit the steps they thought nothing of when their younger selves raised cities and determined layouts. Ramps and railings cost more and disrupted views, cut down on grandeur, so the world of the young and able builds sprawling metropolises with stairs stacked as if they can reach heaven. Vigor and energy, do not value or remember frailty and weakness, do not understand hope or stillness, so the energy of the in-between spins around itself, without consideration of beginning or end. All are part of the in-between until they are not. Until a stair, patch of ice, lengthy bus route, emptied savings account, or some other obstacles pulls them out of this worship of busyness, power, grandeur, and ejects them into the outside, to that threshold, to that step.
All of this connected with a clarity Dave had rarely known, a eureka moment that should have been put to paper, would have been put to paper, if the moment was not interrupted by the arrival of Rose’s mother, Kate.
Kate had noticed Rose’s absence, had looked for her. When she finally spotted Rose, perched precariously on the top of the step, Kate rushed over, plucked her up, and quieted her down. With Rose now fidgeting in her arms, Kate turned to Dave and apologized, saying, “I hope she was not bothering you. I looked away for one second and there she went. I’m still trying to keep up because no obstacle gets in her way anymore. A few months ago, she couldn’t walk, let alone get over that step. I would be grateful for all the times that step kept her in this area if I hadn’t had to lift her stroller over it to get up or brace for the drop every time I had to go down. You must wonder who would make someone step up to get into a sanctuary.” Kate said this last part more to herself, so she was surprised when Dave spoke up.
Dave said, “I know who built it. I knew him well, some hotshot architect who convinced the church planners it was a holy transition from the mortal plane to God’s Kingdom. It was not sound theology, but what was sound was adding how much more it would cost to do a ramp. We are just lucky the planning committee said, “No” when that young man suggested they make it three steps, one for the Father, one for the Son, and another for the Holy Spirit.
Of course, that was all said with some proclamation about how he had fought each step up the beaches of Normandy, so a tiny step to get away from that world, to enter God’s house, was not too much to ask. I remember him promising to personally lift people over the step if it became a problem. Such arrogance. But who would not have confidence when propelled by energy, ambition, and ability? Kate was shocked that any church designer could be so intentionally graceless, especially a member of this church. Kate asked, “Why would you be friends with someone who said such a thing?” At that, Dave chuckled and shook his head.
Thinking he was laughing at her, Kate turned away, but paused, when Dave apologized, saying, “I was not laughing at you. I am just glad you feel the outrage now that I should have known then. I have been a poor friend to myself and God’s children. Maybe I can be excused for not being overly occupied with stairs when I was thirty. After all, back then there was fame, renown, wealth, and glory. I can appreciate the irony that someone would have to be lifted over that step. I just did not expect that someone to be me.”
I leave it up to you to decide how the rest of that story goes. Rose is just a babe, so the story can have many chapters left. But Dave was a babe once as well, a babe who grew up, gained the strength and assuredness of youth and, in the prime of his life, he boxed himself in. Dave built a neat, snug box around the Holy Spirit, estimated where God was or was not working, valued the things he knew and took for granted, that rush of vitality, ambition, and dreams still coming together. That box was wonderful when Dave was young, but as he aged, I believe he became curious about what he had left in that box, began to wonder where it might fit, as he fit in less and less.
With age, Dave gained the wisdom and longing that comes to all who have been on the outside, that certainty that they want God’s world. For all his genius, Dave had designed this world without a place for himself, for his whole self. But the Holy Spirit cannot be boxed in and breaks through to speak and be heard and known wherever it is expected least.
I want to know your story, your whole story. As the church, let us live into and tell our stories from beginning to end, birth to death. But let’s listen first, know each other more fully. If we want to know God more fully, we must listen for the stranger, the unknown.
I think we are in a beautiful part of church history. A time when we are finally realizing a call does not start and, like a bus, pass and leave if you miss it at twenty. We are in an age of second, third, and fourth calls. We are in a time when, truly, no matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you have a call, and that call does not expire. When we have churches with declining attendance, and are asking ourselves, “who will be in the pulpit?” I believe we are in a beautiful time, a time when you can look up and say, “that might be me.”
We are being formed and asked to raise up. We are being asked to reexamine who we expect to be a pastor, who we think looks like a pastor. We must see we are made in God’s image, are wonderfully and fearfully made. It will be a shameful and hard thing if we let these gifts expire, let calls go unanswered, waiting for someone else to do the job we have been made for. The world needs to know your story. I hope you will share it.
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