Held

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, June 10, 2018, the third Sunday after Pentecost and Pride Sunday. A Tempo sermon series.

Texts: Isaiah 41:8-13, Acts 17:16-28

Back in the mid-80’s, the band U2 had a hit called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”[i]  When I went back and read the lyrics, I recognized in that 1980’s song the same yearning addressed by Saint Augustine in his book The Confessions written at the turn of 5th century of the Common Era. A famous prayer from that book is, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”  For Augustine, this was not a naïve, untested sentiment, but rather a reality discovered through the crucible of living, through relentless looking for meaning and happiness.  As one author puts it, “Behind Augustine are a succession of desperate searches for fulfillment: excessive pleasures, false religions, philosophy, dissipation and distractions—futilities that left him so weary of himself he could only cry out, ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’”[ii]  In other words, Augustine had tried to find what he was looking for all over the place, in all the obvious ways presented by the world, and yet remained restless and unsatisfied, not at peace or happy.  He still hadn’t found what he was looking for.

What he finally discovered is that fulfillment, peace, and purpose are found most profoundly through life in God, relationship with God, loving God, being loved by God, being held in the grace and mercy of God—this is the context in which it is possible to truly find rest.  Our Christian tradition affirms that we live and move and have our being in God.  We are always surrounded by God’s grace and mercy and love—whether we know or acknowledge it or not. What United Methodists call God’s “prevenient grace” is always present and at work, loving and nudging and holding us. Active awareness of this reality is a form of prayer.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a story about my first spiritual retreat and my surprise that the initial “exercise” I was given consisted of floating on a raft in the pool and simply imagining the raft as God holding me. I was directed to spend my first couple of days “resting in God.”  It wasn’t as easy as it might sound.  In the world, we get used to the idea that we have to always strive for things, to produce things, search for things, to be a certain way, to prove ourselves, to measure up, to succeed and put on a happy face and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and convince ourselves and others that we are OK and that life isn’t as hard as it is sometimes… How can we possibly just “rest in God” with all that to manage?  Don’t we need to get busy??

Add to that, to be held in God requires trust and trust is not a simple proposition. When we’ve been burned, trusting anyone or anything becomes a challenge.  Trust is hard—for some of us more than others.  There are big trust questions that may make it difficult to allow ourselves to be held in God: Is God really there? Does God want me or love me? If God holds me will I be OK? Will I be held back or set free?  These questions are too big and deep to address fully this morning.

But on this Pride weekend when we celebrate the beauty and gifts of LGBTQ people—and do so in active, sacred resistance to a world and church that continues to discriminate and reject; at the end of a week that saw two well-known people (Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain) end their lives through suicide after long struggles with depression; and in the face of heart-rendingly cruel policies inflicted by our government upon migrant children and their families