"A Way Will Be Made"
Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly, Westmoreland UCC
Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 13:10-17

Today we are challenged to “Expect great things from God and Expect great things from ourselves.”

Confronted by his inexperience and the challenges that faced him, Jeremiah stammered:

“Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy. Give the job to someone else.” And God responded, "Jeremiah. Do not say, 'I am only a boy,’ Don’t focus on your inexperience or the challenges ahead of you, for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. You’ve got this, Jeremiah. Don’t be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, for I am God and they are mortals."

One evening, two thousand seven hundred years later, just as Martin Luther King retired for the night, he received an angry phone call, threatening his life and the lives of his wife and children. Unable to sleep, King went downstairs to fix a pot of coffee. In King’s words:

I was ready to give up. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage was almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God. My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud …. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength or courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”

Sometimes, when you hit rock-bottom, you discover that you are standing on solid rock! King continues:

At that moment I experienced the presence of the divine as I had never experienced it. I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth, God will be at your side forever.”

The external world did not change, but now he had confidence that God was with him, and God would give him everything he needed to face the evils of racism and hate with courage and wisdom.

Lord knows we face limits every day. And they can overwhelm us. Some days, the world seems like it’s going to hell in a handbasket and our resources as individuals seem meager and we wonder if we can do anything to respond to the challenges that lie before us. We know those mountains well, and we’re tempted to let them determine our fate. The mountains aging …powerlessness … tasks too big for our abilities … The mountains of white nationalism, leaders who have lost their reason, and the demands of growing up if you are a child or youth … and the mountains of learning new things. We feel small and unprepared. Sometimes, in our minds, the battle against aging, and the challenge to grow this church, is over before it’s begun. Sometimes it feels like it’s downhill for us, our congregation and our nation. Like the women, walking to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body, we anxiously ask, “Who will roll away the stone for us?”

And large as that stone may be, and feeble as our resources appear, God makes a way where there is no way ... God rolls away the stones of fear, anxiety, hatred, and negativity … and we can proclaim the words of the Spiritual, “Over and over, over and over, my soul looks back and wanders how I got over.”

On his desk in the White House, President Kennedy placed a plaque with the words of the poet William Ernest Garrison:

Thy sea, O God, so great
My boat so small.
It cannot be that any happy fate
Will me befall
Save as Thy goodness opens paths for me
Through the consuming vastness of the sea.
Thy winds, O God, so strong,
So slight my sail.
How could I curb and bit them on the long
And saltry trail,
Unless Thy love were mightier than the wrath
Of all the tempests that beset my path?
Thy world, O God, so fierce,
And I so frail.
Yet, though its arrows threaten oft to pierce
My fragile mail,
Cities of refuge rise where dangers cease,
Sweet silences abound, and all is peace.

I visualize young President Kennedy, reading those words in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the fate the Earth, hung on every decision he would make.

Medical researchers contrast the “placebo effect” with the “nocebo effect” – the power affirmative faith in contrast to the negative anticipation of failure and defeat. You can literally believe yourself into health or sickness. Now, faith is not denial. A person who trusts God also looks at their bank account, health condition, or the state of America today. But, larger than their fears, they have their eyes on the prize – they keep their eyes on Jesus – and even in what appears to be failure, they are victorious.

Remember the gospel story. Jesus is walking on a stormy sea, and Peter jumps out of the boat to meet him. As long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus, Peter can do the impossible. But, the moment, he fixates on the storm, he sinks. Still even in Peter’s failure of nerve, Jesus picks him up and they walk to the boat together. In the storms of life, when fear overwhelms you, keep your eyes on Jesus.

No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Love is lord of heav’n and earth,
how can I keep from singing?

If you keep your eyes on Jesus, you’ll have a song your heart, and illness, fear, and the tyrants of life cannot defeat you. Falsely imprisoned, with their lives in danger, Paul and Silas start singing, and the prison doors open – even behind bars, their spirits are free, and God makes a way where there is no way. People, even governments, may try to stand in the way of God’s healing vision. They may say, as they did to Jesus, that it’s the wrong time to heal a woman in the need. You can’t do this on the Sabbath. But every time is the right time when it comes to healing and loving and justice and compassion. And so, Jesus faces down those who want to confine his spirit and his energy of love breaks down the walls of limitation, the barriers to an open future, for a troubled woman.

We don’t need anyone to tell us about the challenges of life, and sometimes that boulder in our way paralyzes us. But God is with us, and God will have the final word and that word is Love. In the height of the Red Scare, when fear was at its height, and demagogues like Joseph McCarthy were instruments of hate and intimidation, Doris Plemm added this stanza to “How Can I Keep from Singing:”

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear
And hear their death-knell ringing
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them go winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

And here we are at Westmoreland, looking for a settled senior pastor. In the slow and uncertain process, we can be overcome by uncertainty. We can panic and make inferior choices. But, God has planted this church on a solid rock on one of the busiest corners in the DMV, and our church is a beacon of hospitality, justice, love – and we have vocation – God has called us, not think small, but be faithful.

The story is told of Mother Teresa. She had a dream to reach out to the houseless dying in India. She came to her superiors with the dream. Being realists, they asked, “how much money do you have?” Teresa responded, “two pennies.” To which they rightly rejoined, “with two pennies, you can’t do anything.” Then, with hope in her heart, Teresa announced, “with two pennies and God, I can do anything.”

God is not through with us, God has a dream for you and God has a dream for our church, and God says, don’t think small about your life, don’t give away your power … don’t let the stones in your way defeat you … you may have to climb above or go around the stone in your way or push it out of the way but there is a promised land … I rolled away the stone on Easter morning … keep the faith, I can roll away the stone for you and I can roll away the stone for Westmoreland … I’m making a way, and you will walk it.

Thanks be to God. Glory Hallelujah! God’s truth is marching on.