Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
The Shepherd’s Keep: Path-Tender
February 10, 2008 Psalm 23
I had two unexpected snow days this week, so I did what any rational, responsible adult would do when the snow flies: that’s right, I spent hours shoveling the car out only to have the road crews plow it back in when I wasn’t looking. Then there was the roof that needed raking so our heater exhaust wouldn’t back up into our apartment. After that, I went out and played in the snow. With a second straight snow day to play with, I decided to spring for the trail fees at Mount Van Hoevenberg, my reasoning being that they would have groomed the trails and made it a little easier to enjoy the great outdoors. Which was true: the cross-country trails were beautifully groomed. For those of you who have never been there, let me explain something that I found a little surprising. I tend to think of woodland trails as being slightly wider than the average person’s shoulders, and they wind and twist their way through hills and valleys, with trees and streams and boulders shaping the immediate landscape.
But at Mount Van Hoevenberg, every trail that I was on was at least as wide as a two-lane road, and there was even one stretch of trail that was as wide as a three-lane road. Fortunately, there were no logging trucks screaming through the woods, and the outing was quite pleasant because the trails had been so perfectly groomed. Their trail markers were enormous, larger than any street sign I’ve ever seen around here. From the outset, though, I was curious about something I had seen on the map and that the cashier had told me about before I started. They have a couple of trails designated specifically for snowshoes, “But I don’t think anyone has been in there yet today, so you would be breaking the trail,” she warned me. Just before I got back to the lodge, I spotted one of the unbroken trails that the cashier had mentioned.
Feeling a little adventurous, I got off the beautifully groomed trail and started breaking through eighteen inches of snow. Before long, there was a large tree down right in the middle of the trail. After picking my way through dead branches, exposed roots, and prickly shrubs, I picked up a trail marker showing me the path, which wasn’t clearly marked at all. Because of the lack of markers, I made several wrong turns along the way, as I tried to find the tiny little things playfully hidden under sagging branches or toppled trees. At one point, I completely lost the trail. Not knowing where I was or which way to head, I made a disappointing but strategic decision to retrace my steps back to the superhighway of woodland paths. I guess they don’t make enough money from snowshoers to be able to maintain those trails the way they do the cross-country trails.
There have been times in my life when God’s guiding presence in my life seemed as clear as a two-lane road heading in the right direction. When things are going well like that, the trail markers seem to be so enormous, that you can’t miss them, even if your eyes are watering from the cold or blurring over with fatigue. There have been other times in my life when it seemed like God was playfully if not deliberately hiding from me, leaving me struggling to find any rhyme or reason in chaotic circumstances beyond my control. In those times, even though I searched high and wide for any clue that I was headed in the right direction or even the wrong direction, I’ve ended up retracing my steps more often than I wanted to.
As a result, I’ve often wished that the righteous path described in Psalm 23 were more clearly marked and more carefully maintained. Am I the only one who’s ever had this expectation, reasonable or not, that following God shouldn’t be such a difficult endeavor? If God wants us to follow that path of righteousness, so the argument goes, you would think that God would put a little more effort into marking it out, or maybe even taking a few of the obstacles out of our way so we’d know that we were headed in the right direction. Today’s section of Psalm 23 seems to have that kind of a promise hidden in its poetic phrasing: He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. My life experience, however, leads me in a completely different direction.
In retrospect, I would have to say that pursuing God’s path for my life has been difficult, painful, arduous, and extremely labor intensive. The obstacles have seemed to easily outnumber the clear and level times, and the sacrifices required of me and my family have sometimes been staggering to the point of utter discouragement. As a result, I’ve had to re-examine my expectation that God should exist to make my life easier. My mother started my training for that epiphany early on, when she would gently remind her three boys, “God didn’t put me on this earth to make your life effortless.” That was usually our first warning that it was time to tend to our chores. In recent years, Betty has had to shoulder that burdensome task.
It would seem that a more mature understanding of God is going to require the death of a false god who does nothing but scurry around to spoil us and make us extremely comfortable. It’s going to require that we spend a little less time contemplating what we want God to give us in this life, and a bit more time pondering what God might want us to give back to God on this journey. In order for us to keep our perspective along the way, it helps to have a destination in mind, doesn’t it? Many of the trails I’ve traversed on my snowshoes in recent weeks have been named after the destination: the Lower Lake Road in St. Huberts, or the Lewis Clearing Trail up at Split Rock, for instance.
The best way to make sense of this “paths of righteousness” phrase, then, is to look at the destination, which is focused clearly on the pinnacle of the trail: “for the sake of God’s name,” or “for his name’s sake.” According to this verse, there can be no greater goal in life than to live it for God. There can be no loftier aspiration than to give our lives away in the cause of God’s purposes for us. That, after all, is where each and every one of those right paths will take us: toward a righteousness that speaks volumes about the nature and character of God. This is where the self-righteous have stumbled off the path and confused their being right all the time with the righteousness of a God who yearns over the lost, the lonely, the abandoned, the abused, the forgotten, the betrayed, and all those who fear that they are ultimately unlovable.
The true righteousness that God calls us to live in isn’t about me and how wonderful I am or how deserving I might be of other people’s praise. It’s about living in such a way that people will look at our lives and reach the conclusion that this is how they want to live, too. It’s about demonstrating the love of God in such a way that people notice their yearning to live in the center of that love as well. And yes, those right paths are filled with obstacles, because everyone I have ever known who feels lost or abandoned is living a life characterized and defined by those obstacles. Those righteous paths are difficult and painful, because the people wandering and staggering up and down those deep-woods trails have been driven there by the difficulty and pain of their lives.
Those paths of righteousness are arduous and labor-intensive, because it takes hard work to survive, let alone thrive, in a world grown increasingly indifferent to the plight of its neighbor. One of the safety zones of snowshoeing at Mount Van Hoevenberg is the fact that they have trained ski patrols patrolling the trails on a regular basis. It gave me some reassurance to know that if I got into trouble, there was a good chance that someone would eventually be by to lend a helping hand. As we journey through the highways or byways, and as life sometimes takes us to the lesser-used trails, wouldn’t it be reassuring to know that if we got into trouble, there would be someone placed there by the ultimate path-tender to lend us a helping hand?
That’s what I’ve been called and trained to do, and each one of those disappointing forays into the unknown has taught me something else about God’s availability along the way. Each and every strange twist in the trail has brought me a greater appreciation for the people who linger long and hard in the thankless jobs that no one wants to do, or about the vitality of people who live with setbacks and tragedies that far outweigh anything I’ve ever had to bear. Thank God for the people who are willing to serve as path-tenders in the lowliest positions, who offer their smiles or listening ear to anyone and everyone who comes their way. Their righteousness shines in the compassion they extend, and they have been instruments of grace to me at the hardest times in life. Their warmth of spirit speaks volumes about the love of God at work in their lives.
In retrospect, I can look back at the most challenging and painful times of my life and see how God was training me to be a path-tender to others who will have to journey this way. When I worked as the back-up delivery driver for a microfilming company, I got used to finding my way to the back door of the businesses we served, and met the invisible people who keep our hospitals clean, and stocked with supplies, and who manage the growing mountains of medical information. Back at the office, sitting at the desks where we filmed the records, I met the quiet refugees who hadn’t mastered the English language, and those who had been trained to believe that they were not worthy of anything more than the seven or eight dollars an hour they would earn there. In my brief stint as a quality control inspector, I met both the worker beaming with pride over their work and the sullen defeated who thrilled at my mistakes when I missed their shoddy workmanship.
In the weary world of WalMart, I met workers who couldn’t afford medical care or the costly premiums that would be extracted from their meager paychecks if they did purchase health insurance. I met both the young who wanted to climb the corporate ladder and the seasoned worker who had long ago resigned themselves to living just above the minimum wage. Microfilm technician extraordinaire, mediocre cell phone salesman, quality control inspector, store planner, greeter, and cashier at WalMart: was that the right path for me? At the time I didn’t think so, and I spent a good many hours protesting my plight, reminding God how special I am, brooding over my two masters degrees and how they were being wasted.
But along the way, I met some path-tenders whose dignity prevailed over their demeaning work: a guy who cleaned the toilets at WalMart, but who always had a smile on his face; a guy in his seventies who needed the extra work, who looked like the work was going to kill him, but who had a kind word for everyone he met; people who might not have a mastery of the language, but who understood the universal language of a welcoming smile; people who were barely scraping by themselves, but who were always right there to give whenever there was a special fund being raised for someone facing tragic circumstances.
Along the way, I decided that I wanted to be like them, and not like the sullen defeatists who preferred to make everyone else miserable. Along the way, I came to the realization that God had placed them in my path to help me prevail in the midst of setbacks, that God had used them to help transform my attitude about the messy, unkempt trails that keep popping up in front of me. Was it the right path for me? At the time, I hated working at WalMart, and my prayer pattern on the way to work each day was remarkably similar: first I would whine about having to work at WalMart, then I would ask God to open a door somewhere else, and then, usually as I was pulling into the far parking lot, the prayer that I believe God answered every single day: God, let others see you in me today. It’s not about the path we’re on; it’s about the way we live along the way. I want to be a path-tender. How about you?
Order of Service back to sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
February 10, 2008
Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Candle for Peace NC #575, verse 2
Call to Worship
Leader: O Promised One, speak to our hearts in ways that we can understand. Call us forth from the darkness of winter into the light of your love.
People: Call us to the worship that turns our hearts and our love toward you and toward your world.
Leader: Call to us with your word of grace, that with honest spirits we may recognize and receive the gift of your presence among us.
People: Send your grace upon each of us gathered here, that we may follow your ways of truth, and walk steadfastly in your righteous paths of love.
Leader: As we worship together, give us the courage and inspiration to live as your people, a people of light and love.
Hymn NC #565 God, Whose Giving
Responsive Prayer
Leader: God of the pilgrim and the journey, we begin our Lenten pilgrimage with that nagging suspicion that this year won’t be any different from all the other Lenten seasons we’ve known.
People: We confess that our view of the world around us has been dimmed with disappointment, and our trust in you has been tainted by the ways that others have let us down.
Leader: So we find ourselves tentative before you and before this sacred season, confused amid the clutter of our abandoned dreams and tattered faith.
People: We are worn out from our efforts to improve the world, cramped by responsibilities, and adrift in an ocean of time.
Leader: In our brokenness we turn to you, Good Shepherd of our souls. Guide us as we follow the righteous path, where pain and sorrow can be transformed into something stronger and better.
People: For your name’s sake, O Mighty Shepherd, take the fragments of our faith, and in your mercy, resurrect them to make us whole.
Leader: Teach us how to find love again, to recognize more fully how much you love us, and to experience anew the joy of loving others extravagantly.
People: Teach us how to pray for those who have more pain in their lives than hope, more trouble than calm, more fear than faith.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #531 God, Speak to Me
Psalm 32, Isaiah 26:1-9, Matthew 7:7-14
Sermon The Shepherds’ Keep: Path-Tender
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #179 We Yearn, O Christ
Benediction
Leader: God of our Lenten journey, thank you for your presence along the way.
People: Thank you for your guidance and reassurance when things are difficult.
Leader: Thank you for your promise of the abundant life to be found in the life of faith.
People: Bless us now with eyes to see and hands to bless those who need your loving touch.
Leader: Go forth into the righteous paths that God has set before you, that you might be blessed in being a blessing to others
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