A Fourth Church Sermon by Adam H. Fronczek

September 20, 2009 | 4:00 p.m.

Finding Space

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 1
Mark 9:33–37

In May, for the first time I bought a phone that allows me to see my email wherever I go. I thought this was a great thing. I don’t spend a lot of time actually sending email from my phone, but I really liked it that I could stand in a line at lunchtime or at the post office or in a doctor’s office and at least delete my junk mail. Not a second lost. No longer would I have to wait in those places with nothing to do; no longer would that time disappear; no longer would those times become minutes that I could never get back.

Seems great, doesn’t it, that I would find good ways not to waste time, and I admit, I love it that technology allows me to make better use out of some of these lost moments in my day. What a gift.

I want to tell you about a story I read earlier this week that really struck me, because I had experienced it myself. Have you ever read to a child before bedtime? Maybe you’ve had this experience: the child chooses the longest book in the whole collection or goes to the bookshelf and climbs into bed with a whole pile of books and every time one book is finished, the child cries, “One more, please. One more story.” I think it’s a somewhat common strategy for busy parents, at least on occasion, to walk into a child’s room, full of books, and grab the shortest story—you know, the book with the most pictures, the biggest type, and the fewest pages—and read through it with the child consistently stopping us and saying, “Slow down. Not so fast.” I’ve had that experience, and I don’t even have my own children, and I don’t go through that bedtime ritual every night.

And it’s a little chilling to reflect on that. What’s the hurry? The hurry is that most of us live at a pace of life where, whatever we may be doing, we are painfully aware of what we haven’t done yet, what task is waiting when the current one is done, what we should be doing instead of what we’re doing right now, where we would rather be—and we hurry through so much of what’s in front of us.

And the frightening thing about the bedtime story anecdote I just told you is this: what might that child be missing, and what might we be missing, because we hurry through that bedtime story? And if we can agree that something is missed when we rush through our time with that child, doesn’t it stand to reason that even in the most mundane things that we do—moments like waiting in the lunch line or at the post office or in the doctor’s office, face glued to email to squeeze just a few more seconds out of the day—we might be missing something there too?

I don’t mind the things in life that are more convenient than they used to be. I don’t mind saving time when it can be done well, but my fear is that “when we rush, we skim the surface [of life] and fail to make real connections with the world or with other people.” And if we can do this with everything from email in the palm of our hand to a bedtime story with a child, isn’t it scary to think that we might be doing the same thing with our faith? So concerned with how long we’ll be here, or so concerned with how many words and songs and prayers we can fit into this 4:00 hour, what if God is here and we miss it altogether because we’re moving too fast?

The passage we read tonight from Mark is like that. Jesus, traveling with his disciples for the day, picks up on the conversation they’re having. Can you picture it? There they are—see if you can imagine yourself there—walking on the road all day long with God. Wouldn’t you have tremendous questions to ask and have Jesus answer for you: Why do people suffer? Why do the evil prosper? What will happen to me when I die? The possibilities are endless. But the disciples walk down that road arguing about their own professional advancement: Which one of us is the greatest? Which one of us will lead the group after Jesus is gone? And realizing that I’m no better than anyone else, my guess is that if I had been there, I probably would have had my head buried in my smartphone when God went walking on by.

In order to show the disciples what they’re missing, Jesus takes a child in his arms. He says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Whoever has the time, the kind of time it takes for the bedtime story with the child, that person is the one who welcomes God into their life.

It’s my hunch that many of you are here because you want a sense that God is in your life, that you come here to find God. And I would do you a great disservice, would I not, if I filled every second of this time with lots more to do and did not give you a chance to figuratively put down your phone or pick up a child as Jesus has told us to do and make some space for God to come in. Let’s take a little time, today, to do that. Maybe you’ll experience this place differently if we think about it together for a few minutes . . .

The first thing I notice in this place is the amount of space there is. For me it’s created by the great height of the wooden ceiling. Did you know it was designed to look like ribs of an upside-down ship? That’s what the architect intended, that something about that ceiling makes it possible for you to come into this space and go on a journey. Look at that ceiling. Imagine yourself in the hull of this ship on this journey God has created for you. Take a few moments to consider this: What journey are you on?

This space, the whole middle of the sanctuary here, is called a nave. Did you know that the word nave come from the same root as word naval? And although it might make sense, given what I said about the hull of a ship, I don’t mean naval as in the U.S. Navy. I mean naval like my belly button. The ancients, who would’ve given us both of these words, related the naval with the human soul. When we’re born, this is where life was created and fed; this is the seed of who we are. And so we call this a nave because space for the soul is created here. Take a few moments to consider this. The seed of who you are, your soul, is welcome here. This space, this nave, is for the sake of your soul.

Imagine this nave, this soul space, as the naval of your spiritual life, because here in this space we are made clean and we are fed, and the space is supposed to tell you that. In this space, this nave, there are two things you will see in the nave of every Presbyterian church you will ever visit. There is a baptismal font. Did you come here with any anxiety about something you’ve done or something you’ve left undone? We slowed down, we took time at the beginning of the service for confessions, so that here in this soul space, you can take those parts of life that are soiled and they can be made clean by the power of God. Take a few moments to consider this, that every time you walk into this nave—or any nave—and see a baptismal font, you may know that God has placed it there to remind you that in God’s eyes you are clean.

In this soul space, we are not only made clean by God, we are fed by God. Is there a part of your life where you feel weak? Is there a part of your life where you don’t feel fulfilled? God wants you to bring those concerns here. God is not afraid to sustain you in your weakness. God is eager to fill you up where you feel empty. That is why this table is here, with this bread and this cup. Take a few moments to consider this: a table is always here, so that you will know there is a place for you to come and receive God’s strength in the midst of your weakness and God’s fullness in places where you feel empty.

If you look up at the west window, you’ll see our ancestors, the people who have gone before you and me in the faith. They’re gathered around Christ, who is in the center of the window. I want you to know that that Christ is the risen Christ, the Christ who lives on, who invites us to think with him about the kingdom of heaven, about eternity. I don’t know any more than you do about what heaven looks like. I don’t know if there are streets paved with gold. I don’t know if my great-grandfather Howard Hartzell or a high school classmate of mine who died suddenly last week are there waiting to talk with me. If they are, it is a mystery to me what they will look like, or what I will look like.

What I am convinced of is this: that eternity does not mean more of this. It does not mean an endless march on the other side of death with email coming in faster than you can get it out or the cold weather coming sooner than you want or the next bill coming before you can pay it or the next deadline before you can finish the job.

An ancient Christian scholar described eternity as a circle with you at a point in the middle of it or as sitting on a mountaintop with all of time passing below you, where you can see it all at the same time. Have you ever wished time would move faster so that you could get further away from that mistake you wish you hadn’t made but you did. In that place where Christ calls us to, there is no more anxiety about that. And if you have worried about what is coming next and how soon it will get here, if you have ever had anxiety about how fast you can move and how much you can get done, in eternity there is no more anxiety about that, because the future is just as close as the present.

And in the present, in this present moment, in each moment that you spend in this space and in each moment in your life where you can remember this space, know that that risen Christ, who calls each of us to join him in eternity, is the one who tells his disciples to slow down and does so by taking a child in his arms and telling us his story. And you are his child. And consider this for just a moment: he has all the time in the world for you.

Amen.