Today we were pleased to welcome back to the pulpit our Minister Emeritus
Rev. David W.Good, who was our beloved Senior Minister for 37 years
from 1976 through 2012.
A TRIBUTE TO ST. PAUL, A TENTMAKER FROM TARSUS
BY PHIL O. DENDRON (AKA David W. Good)
Acts 17: 22-28
2 Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1
Philippians 4: 8-13
[Introductory Remarks]
Back many moons ago when I first began my ministry here in 1975, after our morning worship services, Corinne and I and Felix Starkey, our church organist, would repair to the parsonage where our former minister, Dick and Harriet Hoag lived.
By the way, I’ve intentionally used the rather old fashioned word “repair” for I rather like its double entendre, meaning not only to go to another location — that’s the archaic part — but also to fix that which is broken or, in the case of the human spirit, “to restore to a sound or healthy state.”
What better way to be “repaired” than to enjoy wonderful hospitality with friends, lively conversations over a glass of bourbon to discuss what went right and what didn’t go so right in the morning worship service.
Dick and Harriet were friends of a number of the Old Lyme impressionists, and it was a pleasure to see their exquisite paintings on display, but in our Sunday visits, I was particularly fascinated by a faded picture of St. Paul, and all around the frame, a long vine of heart-shaped Philodendron.
Now, over the last 45 years I have often remembered and cherished that precious time with Dick and Harriet, but up until January of this year, I had long forgotten about that old portrait of St. Paul and the long, unkempt philodendron wrapped around it.
Then, sometime just after the new year, I had a dream, a dream in which I was preaching a sermon about the legacy of St. Paul and why he should be remembered.
So, today’s sermon is a few fragments from that dream.
Here at the outset, and I’m rather embarrassed to confess this, but it seems that dreams can be in black and white or in color, and if we listen to them, they can be our personal wisdom keepers, revelatory of things we should remember, but also, as I learned from this particular dream, they can also have a rather bad sense of humor.
Somehow, in the chemistry of my dream, that long vine that wrapped around the portrait of St. Paul became personified as a preacher by the name of Phil O. Dendron! So, I’ve brought in a heart shaped philodendron to remind us of who the real preacher is this morning!
So, any complaints about today’s sermon, take them up with Phil!
Dreams are whatever we make of them, and this dream that I had back in January reminds me that every church of every denomination would do well to remember the life and teachings of St. Paul. The word “Philo-dendron” means “lover of trees”, and surely St. Paul is one of the Legacy Trees of Christianity, and so unabashedly, like a long vine, I will wrap my arms around St. Paul and his wisdom.
St. Paul, originally known as Saul, was from the city of Tarsus, which is now in Turkey. By trade, he was a maker of tents. In Tarsus, apparently there was a special breed of goats and the hair from those goats was particularly good for tents.
I’ve pitched a small tent on the front lawn as a reminder of how St. Paul made tents for a living, and in all his travels, I’m guessing he probably brought a tent with him in case there was nowhere else to stay.
With at least three long journeys, by land and by sea – taking his tent with him — St. Paul helped to plant Christian communities in Rome, Jerusalem, Thessalonica, Corinth and Athens in Greece, Philippi in Macedonia, Galatia, Colossae and Ephesus in what is now Turkey. He was shipwrecked on the island of Malta. He had an eye-closing and eye-opening experience in Damascus, Syria. He may have traveled to Spain as well.
He was in many ways, by virtue of his itinerant ministry, the thread that connected these fledgling churches and so helped to prepare the way for all the different churches and denominations we have today.
You might be interested to know that in less than 5 years, St. Paul wrote many of the letters that constitute nearly 50% of the New Testament. Think of that for a moment. Most of what we call “The New Testament” was written by this one man.
So, there’s no way in the span of a single sermon to cover all or even most of St. Paul’s contributions to the church.
Suffice it to say for now, he was a community organizer par excellence, the genius behind the establishment of the Christian church, and so St. Paul should be given the credit or the blame for what nowadays is called, “organized religion.”
So, let’s stop first in the City of Corinth in the Peloponnesus of Greece.
In one of his visits to Corinth, I love how he said to the Corinthians, “The Kingdom of God does not consist of talk.” Throughout my ministry, at long boring denominational meetings and yes, at some of our own church meetings, I’ve been reminded of that wisdom. And yes, those words have served as something of a reprimand for myself and my vocation as a preacher. The Kingdom of God does not consist of talk. No matter how eloquent our words might be, those words are really insufficient, for faith is not a summation of beliefs but rather what we do with our lives. Not a noun but a verb.
I will always remember how Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, said to Cathy Zall and me on one of our many visits to Koinonia Farm, “More people act their way into a new way of thinking than think their way into a new way of acting.” As much as I love philosophy and theology – and believe me, my navel gazing far surpasses my star gazing — those churches that survive and thrive are those that engage their members in the universal struggle for human rights and human dignity.
Those that survive and thrive are those that roll out a red carpet for the stranger. Those that survive and thrive are those where there’s room for those who say, “I don’t have the foggiest idea of what my theology is, but by God, I will do all that I can to “rescue the perishing and care for the dying.”
In our Christian theologies, we don’t need to have all our questions answered; we don’t need to put a final edit on whatever our creeds might be, for as St. Paul said, “the Kingdom of God, the basilea, the “beloved community” does not consist of Talk.”
So, if the Kingdom of God does not consist of talk, what then does it consist of? Well, in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, St. Paul answers that question.
As a minister, I have presided over thousands of weddings, more than I care to remember, and for those weddings, I’ve been asked to read all manner of things, some good, some not so good, and I’ll leave it at that!
I’ve always loved Shakespeare’s Sonnet, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alternation finds or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark…” I dearly love those words, but even more, I love those words of St. Paul to the church at Corinth.
“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
These are not only beautiful words and exalted wisdom for a couple on their wedding day but also, I can think of no better manifesto for a church. It is love that keeps a church from being a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.
One of our friends, Rebecca Vilkormerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, in talking about why she does what she does on behalf of Palestinian human rights said that “Solidarity is the political expression of love.” When this church joins together with Jewish and Muslim communities to be in solidarity with those who suffer, that’s music to the ear for those sick and tired of noisy gongs and clanging symbols.
It is this church’s love for refugees from around the world – from Syria to Rwanda to Laos to Burma to Iraq to Puerto Rico to the Congo – that keeps this church from being just one more ecclesiastical noisy gong or clanging symbol.
It is love for those who have long felt unwanted by churches such as this that led us to write the Welcome Statement that proudly appears in our church bulletin every Sunday.
It is your love that makes this church wary of hard boundaries that define who is out and who is in. Do I need to mention our food pantry and soup kitchen ministries?
And it is that Love that propels us, drives us, energizes us to keep hope alive even in what might seem to be a hopeless situation. Do I need to mention the situation in Palestine and our Tree of Life ministry?
Now, one of those “hard boundaries” that churches – organized religion – has tried to demarcate is the line between the sacred and the profane.
So, travel with St. Paul now as he goes from the City of Corinth to the city of Athens. He’s standing on a hill called the Areopagus, and he’s looking out over the Agora, that ancient shopping center, the Big Y, the Crystal Mall, Amazon.com, Wall Street all rolled into one. Athenians are his audience, no doubt proud of their heritage, the land of Heraclitus – “We never step in the same river twice”, Socrates – “The unexamined life is not worth living”, Archimedes, “Give me a lever and I can move the world.” Plato, and Aristotle, the land of exquisite architecture where the golden ratio of the Parthenon would equal the mathematical genius of Johann Sebastian Bach, the land of such dramatists as Aristophanes and Sophocles.
So, here is Paul with his flimsy tent there to tell them about the life and teachings of Jesus.
Now, he could have taken the arrogant condescending, self-righteous approach exemplified by most evangelists, but what does he do?
I love how he uses this occasion to quote from a so-called “pagan” poet, a poet by the name of Epimenides.
This was not only the savvy thing to do – and you can see why he was so good as a community organizer — but also, it was the right thing to do.
Our job as Christians is not to convince others that ours is the only way. Rather our job is to show that Jesus would be equally at home in Athens and Jerusalem, equally at home in a Catholic church or a Protestant church or an Orthodox Church but also at home in a Mosque, Synagogue or Sweatlodge. Our job as Christians is to look for that blessed tie that binds all humanity. In the name of Jesus, our job is to celebrate the common ground we have with others, other cultures and other traditions and always be ready to receive epiphanies, wisdom and revelations of truth wherever they may be found, even in so-called “Pagan” literature.
But there’s another reason for my appreciation of St. Paul’s quotation from Epimenides.
Throughout the bible, you’ll find not one but many different images or models of God. Many portray God as being up there and out there, separate from Creation, but Epimenides says, “it is in God that we live and move and have our being.”
Do you see how this could change everything? To argue a bit with my friend, Millard Fuller, it’s not only our actions that that can change our way of thinking” but also through our thoughts and our imagination, we can undergo a reimagination of who we are ….God is seen to be not up there controlling things down below. Rather, we’re all like unborn children in our mother’s womb, intimately interrelated but foolishly arguing with each other, saying “my mother is better than your mother.”
Personally, I don’t think we’ll do a blessed thing about global warming until we change our way of thinking, until we collectively undergo that reenchantment of nature. Not much will change until we take off our shoes and feel the sanctity of this earth oozing between our toes. Nothing much will change until we regain what Schweitzer called, a “sense of reverence for all that is”, remembering that it is “in God that we live and move and have our being”.
Amen to Epimenides and his understanding of God! And Amen to Paul for seeing the wisdom in those words.
Now, we move from Athens north to the Macedonian community of Philippi. Paul had visited that church on previous occasions. A fairly wealthy woman by the name of Lydia was one of the primary leaders of that church, and in fact the church met in Lydia’s home. Paul was enormously grateful for her leadership and the ministry of that church, and I love how he referred to them, saying, “You shine like stars in a dark world.” What a beautiful image for what a church should be!
When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, he was in prison, probably in Rome. I’m sure the conditions in that prison were not unlike those endured by the Count of Monte Cristo. Like all prisons, I’m sure he was humiliated beyond belief, and yet it is St. Paul’s belief in God’s love that shines through so magnificently in his letter to the church at Philippi.
Another Paul, Paul Tillich said that faith is the “courage to be in spite of” whatever our conditions or captivity might be. Listen to the tenacity, listen to the resilience of St. Paul in this letter from prison:
I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in God who gives me strength.”
That’s the bravado that built the Christian church; that’s the faith that St. Paul brought with him on his journeys, along with his tiny little tent. That’s the faith that he propagated from Macedonia to the island of Malta, from the Peloponnesus to even Rome itself.
“I can do all things in God who gives me strength.” I don’t care how powerful you think your empire might be, the love of God that is coursing through my veins is more powerful than your armies. That love, God’s Love, the Love “in which I live and move and have my being” is more powerful than Jim Crow, more powerful than Apartheid, more powerful than tribalism and xenophobia in all its ugly forms.
I don’t care how entrenched you are in your racism and white supremacy; I’m here with my little tent and I intend to stay right in the public square until you too come to see what a joy it is to be set free of hate and fear…. So that you too can experience that Love that believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Somehow thanks to those 3 long missionary journeys, the life and the faith of St. Paul, Lydia, Timothy and all the others resulted in a divine chain reaction that ultimately brought that faith and that bravado to a place called Old Lyme, Connecticut.
I love the bravado of this place.
I love the bravado in our sign on the front lawn:
In this House we believe:
No human being is illegal.
Love is everything.
Science is real.
Kindness matters.
Human rights belong to everyone
Hate and fear have no place here.
But you do.
That’s organized religion at its best, and in my prayers of thanksgiving I give thanks for all the countless ways you incarnate, you embody those words. I hear the echoes of St. Paul’s words, “I can do all things in God who gives me strength” in the majestic grace this church exemplifies.
I have seen that bravado in the way this church built a Habitat for Humanity house on land donated by Judy and her husband.
I have seen that bravado in the solar panels on our roof. I have seen that bravado in those who took their tents and stood with the water protectors on Standing Rock. I have seen that bravado in this church’s ministry of hospitality. I love the countless ways in which you say, not only with your words but also with your actions:
“I can do all things in God who gives me strength!” Amen.
David W. Good, Minister Emeritus
The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut