“Connecting the Dots of Faith”
6 Epiphany C –
Luke 6:17-27
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
How many of you have played “connect the dots”? Probably when you were little? You know what I mean: the puzzles where you have a bunch of numbered dots scattered across the page in what appears to be a completely random pattern. And the challenge is to draw lines between the dots in ascending order by number.
I can remember getting books of that thick newsprinty paper from Kresge or W.T. Grant filled with connect the dot puzzles for my birthday.
And if you don’t skip any and don’t connect any out of their proper order, when all the dots are connected . . . bingo! You get a picture -- the outline of an elephant or a bicycle or a birthday cake with candles. And in the process, you’ve learned numbers, you’ve learned how to work with those numbers, and how to count them in order.
But there’s something more that accounts for the enduring attraction of doing connect the dots. Even now, as adult, when I am in waiting room at the dentist or doctor and I see one of those books on a table or in a rack, I’ll kind of sneak it out and do one real quick before any sees a 51 year old guy doing a connect the dots. Why do I do that -- besides being a little strange?
Because I want to see what the picture is. Because I like to see order and beauty and meaning emerge out of what appears to be chaos. I like doing connect the dots because it reminds me of the Bible. That book to which we can turn when events in our lives make them seem chaotic, disconnected, random, without rhyme or reason. The book which helps us discern which dot to connect to when things are going well. The book that maps the outlines and paths of the
To show you that I’m just blowing smoke, let’s do a little connect the dots of our own. For our friends in the radio audience, I am going to ask you to crank up your imaginations to sort of follow along in your minds -- just like you used to do with the old radio shows.
I’d like the folks here in the pews take out a pen or pencil and then open your bulletin flat so that pages 2 and 3 are facing up. Now draw a dark circle around the number seven (verse 7) upper left corner of page 2 next to the word “Blessed”. Next, go the lower left corner of page 2 (in the gospel) and put a circle around the number 18 by They had come. Now go up to the second reading and but around the number 19 in bottom of the right column. Finally, go across the page, in the upper left side and circle 23 next to “rejoice” in the last part of our gospel reading. OK, you should have 7, 18, 19, and 23 circled.
Connect the dots mean starting with the lowest number, so look at verse 7 in the reading from Jeremiah. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord whose trust is the Lord..” What a great statement of being saved by faith through grace; the faith we need is given freely in and by the one we believe in. Like a tree by a stream whose roots draw on the water of the life-giving stream.
Think of that faith now as you draw a line from the 7 circle down the page to the next highest number, the 18 circle in the gospel. It was faith in the healing power of Jesus that drew the mentally and physically ill, even the possessed that brought them to him on the coast of the sea. And Jesus healed them, in that moment and place. And in their healing they experienced the
But the kingdom also draws near in the Beatitudes of Jesus to the poor, the hungry, the ones who weep. Jesus gives a blessing and a promise to each. A blessing now and a promise to come. The
Remember heaven and earth, present and future as you draw a line from the 18 cirlce up to the 19 circle. Paul reminds us “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Without the resurrection, there is no Christian faith, no Christ. Only another ancient healer among many, another teaches among many. Christ came to give us eternal life through his death and resurrection. If we focus only what he can do for us today, we deny his very reason for coming. The truth of Christ’s resurrection changes everything -- faith, the blessings and woes of this life all must be seen in light of a Kingdom of God that embraces life today and life beyond death -- an endless tomorrow. In light of the resurrection, Paul says, the Kingdom must be both/and not either/or.
So draw a line from 19 to 23, where we see that Jesus proclaims that because of faith in him, we will be trials in this life. But those trials that will be seen very differently in the eternal life offered in him
Draw a final line back across the page to where we began at verse 7 in Jeremiah. And reflect that, according to the book of revelation, flowing through the city of God, the new Jerusalem, is the river of the water of life, and on either side of the river is the tree of life bearing 12 kinds of fruit, a different fruit each month, and the leaves will heal the nations. And this new city is God himself, the beginning and the end calling all the faithful to eternal life in him.
So what kind of a picture have you got? 7 Blessing & Faith; 18 healing & blessing and woes; 19 Hope in resurrected Christ now& future; rejoice now; reward in heaven because of faith; 7 a heaven with a tree of life planted by the river of life.
Not a circle of life, ala the Lion King, But a triangle of faith -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit? -- anchored at each corner in the revelation of God through His Holy Scriptures. A connect-the-dots that reveal Christ to be the center of life in heaven and on earth. He is its light and life now in our lives on earth and through his resurrection he unites this earthly life with the eternal in Him after our deaths.
This is the scriptural picture. But last week I saw another kind of connect-the-dots of faith picture. And I saw it right here, and I saw it twice, at both services. When I made the announcements about the death of Elianna Tye and the news about Kathy Falk, I saw the reactions of people in the pews, the shock, the tears, the hands to the faces, the heads bowed in prayer, the collective intake of breath.
There were dots of faith scattered throughout the congregation, there , there, there, and there, all over. People shell-shocked, confused, hurt, angry at the unfairness of it all. I saw the dots. They didn’t have numbers; they had faces and names. And it was chaos of emotion and suffering and sympathy. The chaos that erupts into this earthly life of ours with all-too painful regularity. Like random dots on a page.
Until we sang You Who Dwell in the Shelter of the Lord (Eagle’s Wings). Then I saw the picture. Then those hurting dots of faith connected with the One to whom the scriptures bear witness. Then I saw the people of God.
It’s like going out on clear night and looking at the stars, trying to find a familiar constellation, the dipper, Orion, the northern cross (Cyngus) and suddenly among the vast blanket of millions of stars, the pattern pops out at you. And once you have found it, have you noticed that you can never NOT find it for the rest of the night? It stays with you.
I wish you could have seen what I saw from up here last week. Maybe you did. Maybe you heard it too, or felt it as your throat tightened around the words “I will bear you up, on eagle’s wings”
In the midst of this unexpected news and the loss and pain of brothers and sisters in the faith, to sense that though we weep now, we are blessed now to weep among people whose faith can bear us up on eagles’ wings when we are paralyzed.
I saw who this congregation is and can be. I saw its capability to be the body of Christ. I saw the Spirit move in way that gives me hope for the future of this congregation and its healing mission in the world. And in the face of death and loss, I saw a witness to the resurrection, a witness that like the tree by the stream, will not cease to bear fruit.
As we confront the blessings and woes of this time, let us be the body of Christ to one another and the world by connecting the dots of faith in our own lives and in the lives the world around us. Amen.
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