2023.07.30 | Wherever You Go
“Wherever You Go”
The Rev. Pepper Swanson
Associate Minister
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Today for my last sermon before retiring, I wanted to talk about what the Bible says about leaving one place and beginning a new phase of life somewhere else. Mulling it over, I realized that there are actually many stories in the Bible about someone who leaves a place, for one reason or another. And, in fact, many of these stories are very well known Bible stories — regularly the focus of a sermon or poured over in one of our Bible studies.
Consider the younger son in the story of The Prodigal Son. The Bible tells us that he asks his father for his share of the family estate and receiving it, leaves his home for a distant country where he squanders his wealth in wild living before he ends up poor, hungry, and working for a pig farmer. He comes to his senses and returns home, begging forgiveness from his father, who welcomes him home warmly.
Or consider the story of Ruth, the daughter-in-law of Naomi, who leaves her county of Moab to return with Naomi to Naomi’s home in Judah after both their husbands are killed. In contrast to the Prodigal Son, Ruth proves her steadfast loyalty to her mother by leaving her home and insisting not only on traveling with Naomi, but also adopting Naomi’s people and Naomi’s God as her own. In her new home, Ruth marries Boaz, one of Naomi’s clansmen, and goes on to give birth to Obed, father of Jesse and grandfather of David, making herself, according to the Gospel of Matthew, an ancestress of Jesus himself.
Or consider today’s Scripture Reading about Jacob. Our English-language Bible Study knows this story very well because not only did we read Jacob’s story in the Bible this spring, we also read the Red Tent, which is a novel based on Jacob, his wives, and his children, especially his daughter Dinah. Today’s Scripture begins with Jacob leaving his home in Beersheba for his Uncle Laban’s home in Haran.
We have to reach back a little further in Genesis to discover why Jacob leaves his home and it’s kind of shocking. Jacob leaves neither for adventure or for loyalty but because his twin brother Esau wants to kill him! At the instigation of his mother Rebekah, Jacob tricks his father Issac into giving him Esau’s rightful blessing as the first born. To avoid becoming the victim of his brother’s fury, Jacob takes his mother’s advice to leave home and flee to her brother’s house in a distant land.
It’s on his journey away from home that Jacob camps at Bethel and has a powerful dream of conversation with God who tells Jacob that he will have numerous descendents and that all people on earth will be blessed through him. As important as that is, God also promises Jacob that God is truly with him, saying:
“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
In response, Jacob names the place of his dream Bethel and vows that if God will be with him and watch over him and return him safely to Issac’s house, then the Lord will be his God.
I wonder if any of these Biblical stories about leaving resonate with you? Perhaps you, like Jacob, have left your home or your place because you were involved in a family dispute that endangered your well-being. Or perhaps, like the Prodigal Son, you left in search of adventure because the life you were living was not satisfying what you thought were your needs. Or perhaps like Ruth, you left your home or place out of loyalty to another, embracing a new life, a new culture, a new faith because you loved someone and wanted to be with them.
Or perhaps like the nearly 80 million people who are currently “displaced” from their homes, you left because of economic insecurity, safety concerns, political factors, or environmental issues. The Bible has a story about that as well, doesn’t it? That is the story of Exodus and how the Jewish people left Egypt to escape slavery, poverty, and tyrannical power. It’s a story that proves that the foundation of both Judaism and Christianity is based on…leaving.
However you relate to leaving, it’s important to remember that leaving, even when absolutely necessary for your safety or survival, is not easy, can be quite emotional, and can impact families for generations. I’ve mentioned before that my father’s family left Oklahoma in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl when environmental factors made it impossible to farm any longer. The family traveled Westward, picking crops primarily, for years until the ten kids grew up and my grandparents ended up working in the shipyards during the Second World War and my father joined the Army.
While I consider it their story — the story of my father and his brothers & sisters — there have been times in my own life when I left what appeared to be a good situation and traveled around the West in my car, eating peanut butter sandwiches out of the trunk while parked in rest stops, campgrounds, and national parks. I haven’t done that in awhile, having been domesticated by a happy marriage, motherhood, and this Church, but I have to confess I am strangely comfortable with leaving and moving about and suspect some Dust Bowl-related genetic cause or internal family narrative at play.
What lifted my family out of the migration-related poverty that persisted well into my childhood was a complex of government and nonprofit programs not dissimilar to what we here at Eden are always pushing for our neighbors. I thank God for our VA home loan, my dad’s union, the Girl Scouts, a local Church who came looking for Sunday School kids, free summer recreation programs, the American Red Cross, scholarships, scholarships, and scholarships, and truly the kindness of neighbors and strangers when we needed it most. I am a living witness to the fact that “every little bit counts” when it comes to helping people transition from one situation to another, from instability of poverty to the stability of the working class.
And, while it’s important to remember that leaving can impact individuals and families for generations and programs to assist are vital, it’s also important to remember that leaving can have advantages as well. Like the Prodigal Son, Ruth, and Jacob, people who leave home have learning adventures, meet new people, and test their ability to adapt to new and different situations and cultures. Sometimes people who leave meet their mates like Ruth met Boaz and how Jacob met his four wives Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah, or for that matter, my parents and all my aunts and uncles who married people in the places they moved to rather than other Oklahomans. And sometimes, like the Prodigal Son, people who leave end up learning many things about themselves, such as compared to starving, they really didn’t mind working on the family farm.
It is also true that people who leave, regardless of why, often begin to experience their faith in a very different way than they might have if they never left their customary situation, be it their job, their home, or their country. There’s an old boating term that applies to why people start thinking about their faith differently: unmoored.
A boat that is unmoored is no longer attached to its moorings, be that a dock or an anchor. A person who is unmoored is uncertain or confused because they are detached from all that anchors them to life, be it home, family, friends, or job. An unmoored person, like Jacob in today’s story, is more likely to be wondering or dreaming about God because they are in that precarious state of not knowing who loves them or to whom they belong or from where their help, their protection, their guidance will come. Imagine how overwhelming it would be to go to sleep in the desert with nothing but a rock for a pillow and then dream of a divine being who declares: I will watch over you wherever you go.
As I leave Eden UCC to retire with my husband Scott who turned 75 this year, I think about these Bible stories and the values that each represents.
Since neither wasting my life savings nor feeding pigs appeals to me, I think it’s highly unlikely that I’ll do anything like the Prodigal Son but I do rely on that story for an image of God who welcomes us with open arms, regardless of the mistakes or errors we make along the way.
Like Ruth, I embrace the life journey I am on with Scott and feel so blessed that we found Eden UCC together and that we have been equally committed to its mission, its people, both members and staff, and we share with one another a belief in a God that values us for the unique gifts and graces that we brought to Eden and which we will continue to share with the world.
And like Jacob, I fully expect that leaving Eden will “unmoor” me a bit. For at least fourteen years as an intern, student, and minister, I have been anchored by the daily, weekly, and seasonal activities of the Church. Tomorrow, I will set sail into the open sea without a Zoom meeting or Sunday service in sight. If I become confused or uncertain, I will pray, I will read my Bible, and I will engage all those colorful and arty spiritual practices that have sustained me while your minister. And, I will lay my head down each night, hopefully on a pillow rather than a rock, and welcome God to remind me in a dream: I will watch over you wherever you go.
My friends, this sermon about leaving is not complete without two more things: a poem and a blessing.
When I was searching for just the right poem, I pulled out my ordination paper, which is the paper you write to explain your theology to the Committee on Ministry. I remembered it having a lot of poems that I loved but what I found instead was a really great paper based on the lyrics of the hymn we will be singing in just a minute, You Are Called to Tell the Story. Ironically (or perhaps illustrative of my need to retire due to memory loss), I had already asked our Music Director to add You Are Called to today’s service when I “remembered” my paper and found not poems but a strong memory of my ordination and how much I love the lyrics of that hymn.
I thought instead to share with you a poem called In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver, which I believe touches on loss in a powerful and poignant way. It was one of the poems we used as a spiritual practice for this year’s Good Friday Labyrinth service, but it worried me that it spoke more to the pain of loss than the joys and challenges of leaving.
But I woke up yesterday remembering that some of you are “sort of” (i.e., deeply) ambivalent about poetry and probably wonder why I occasionally add poems to my sermons or in the case of this year’s Christmas Day service, make the whole sermon a poem. I think the best way to explain my theology of poetry is to share with you one of my own, written sometime in the middle of seminary as a way to clarify my own thinking about our ever--watchful God. It’s titled God Lives in Poems:
God
is beyond words
but lives in poems
God
is neither he nor she
but answers to either
God
is inside and beside me
but I still look up
God
loves humans
but revels in nature
God
can make miracles
but mostly adjusts attitudes
God
is the perfect parent
but expects me to grow up
God
forgives us
but wants authentic apologies
God
speaks very softly
but we have to stop talking to hear
God
inscribed “love one another” on our hearts
but sent Jesus (the Word) to show us how
God
lives in poems
but goes to church each Sunday
My friends, in all your leavings, be they a minor change of life or job or a major undertaking such as leaving hearth and home like the Prodigal Son, Ruth, and Jacob, I hope you will continue to anchor yourself this understanding of God: you are loved, you are called, you are guided, you are forgiven, and wherever you go, God goes with you. Amen.
Final Benediction
My friends, lift up your heart’s for God’s blessing. It has been my pleasure to be in ministry with you and it has been my pleasure to be your teacher. But most of all, it has been my pleasure to be your friend and to be of service to you and the Church that we made together. Go now to love and serve our neighbors, rejoicing in the presence of the Holy Spirit, remembering always that God is with you. Amen.