Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship ·January 23, 2005
Prayer of the Day
Holy Companion, we seek your shining light and direction in our lives. Be with us as we sing songs of joy, as we pray prayers of hope and determination, as we offer our intentions and plans into your love and dreams for us all. Amen.
Scripture
Psalm 27:1,4-6,13-14
The Lord is my light and my salvation – so why should I tremble?
The one thing I ask of the Lord, the thing I seek most, is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his temple. For he will conceal me there when troubles come; he will hide me in his sanctuary. He will place me out of reach on a high rock. Then I will hold my head high, above my enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy, singing and praising the Lord with music.
Yet I am confident that I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.
Message
Singing from a High Rock
Kim Ryan
It was a Sunday morning, a typical Sunday morning. The visitors had arrived early. There was some confusion about the starting time of worship that day, so the sanctuary was empty and quiet when they got there. Some waited inside. Some waited outside. Then gradually the church folks began to get there. You know… the ones who come there first, the greeters, the Sunday School teachers, the music director, and the sound guy, checking those microphones, making sure everything is ready. Then the sound guy stopped to make a funny face and pat the head of a little boy who had been watching him so very closely.
No, that sound guy wasn’t Frankie. No, this wasn’t Broadway Christian Church. It was Sunday morning at St. George Catholic Church in the heart of a township in southern Africa. It was January 2, 2005, and the visitors were the 15 Americans from Broadway Christian Church and some of our South African friends from Father Chris’ retreat center, just about 20 minutes from St. George.
The sanctuary filled slowly until the last two minutes, kind of like it does here. Then, boom, it was packed with men and women, and mothers and fathers, and children and babies, and young and old, and everything in between. It was crammed full of people.
Now a township is a neighborhood. It is a neighborhood that was created during the Apartheid years intending to separate and isolate black from white. It was created to keep distance from white neighborhoods, and it did that for many years. With the ending of Apartheid in the late ’80s, the restrictions of where people could live and what neighborhoods they could live in were lifted. But the townships remained fairly intact. They are home all across South Africa to thousands of black Africans, and mixed-race Africans, and Indian Africans.
St. George is predominately a black African township, and ours were the only white faces at worship that morning. But even so, we were met with the warmth and hospitality of Christian greeting and enthusiasm.
Then the service began. The choir started singing, and the drumming started, and the congregation joined in. There were no hymns books. There were no song sheets. There were just words known by heart, sung in three different tribal languages, but not all at the same time. I don’t think. And then there was that occasional Latin word that even we knew. “Alleluia!” And we sang along when we could.
Now think for a moment of the best church singing you have ever heard – a Christmas Eve service, or Easter morning, perhaps. Take that memory and turn it up about 50 notches, and you will catch a glimpse of what the spirit of that singing was like that morning. It was like nothing I have ever heard, and I have heard wonderful singing in this sanctuary! It filled that building. It filled our bodies, and we couldn’t help but sing, and we couldn’t help but move – body, soul, and heart. Then the candle lighters, and the ministers, and the worship leader came in. A group of women came next – all of them were moving, and all of them were dancing their way their way up the center aisle as if there were no choice but to dance their way into worship that morning.
Then came the moment I will never forget. A woman came from the back holding a large Bible and singing and dancing her way up that center aisle. There was a woman at the highest spot in the chancel of their sanctuary who was singing, and she was dancing, and she was pointing to that Bible as it came up that center aisle, as if she was drawing those Scriptures through the people up to the front and pointing all that tremendous energy in that sanctuary right there at those Scriptures as they came forward.
It was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen. I would call it a kaleidoscope moment. Do you know about kaleidoscope moments? Well, you know about kaleidoscopes – those things you look in and look through, and there is a beautiful pattern of color and form. Then you twist them just a little bit, and a new pattern emerges, equally as beautiful. Kaleidoscope moments are like that. They offer multiple viewings of beauty and color and meaning in a single act. Now don’t feel badly if you aren’t familiar with the term, because I just made it up. But it really works for me. It is how I have come to understand sacred moments, and holy, exquisite happenings. Like baptisms, and Lord Suppers, and Christmas Eve – deep and rich in their symbolism, and their powerful, multiple meanings. A Bible carried through a gathering of people – a simple action – yet deep and rich in its symbolism and the power of its meaning.
I couldn’t help wondering how many times, how many Sundays, that Bible had been brought forth during those bleak years of Apartheid – Sunday after Sunday, year after year. Had that beautiful, elderly woman who stood up at the high point of that sanctuary, pointing to it as it came through that Sunday… had she been a young woman who had pointed tenaciously to the hope and to the promise of the Scripture that told here that “in Jesus Christ there is no male or female, nor Greek or Jew, no master, no slave, no black, no white? Had she grown old waiting and hoping and then finally celebrating the birth of freedom in her country in 1994? Were there Sundays when the singing had not held such exuberance and energy? Or was it like the phase in the history of our country for those in slavery as the music of their church and their faith held their hearts fast to the hope of the message of Jesus Christ and the promise that God would prevail?
Turn the kaleidoscope just a bit with me. I couldn’t help but be struck by the powerful imagery of the Bible coming through the people, literally through the people, carried, brought forward in the midst of those gathered. And I understood in a deeper way than I ever had before that is exactly the reality of the Scriptures in our midst. A gathering, a collection of words and stories and affirmations and disappointments and reaffirmations, held and carried, that have come through people over thousands and thousands of years.
Somehow, some of us, somewhere, got the idea that the Bible arrived in tact, all at once, written by the hand of God in the King James English version. You know what? That is what I thought. But nothing, nothing could be further from the truth. But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that until I was 22 years old, sitting in classes for my graduate degree. I didn’t know that until I had already made a decision to go into ministry, and so I was getting the training I needed – church history, Old Testament, New Testament. That’s when I learned the fascinating story and the adventures of how the Bible came to be – how the stories came together, how we have them now. They were brought through the life and experience of so many people by the grace of God.
In just a few weeks our third graders will receive their Bibles. Broadway Christian Church does that every year. They are invited to a workshop on the Saturday before. The workshop is always more fun than they think it’s going to be. A Bible Workshop? And their parents seem to learn as much as they do at the Bible workshop. The one thing I always hope, that whatever else they come away with from that day, they will have an understanding that the Bible is a library. I hope they and their parents will get that truth. The Bible is a library. It has many different kinds of books, many different kinds of stories told by many different kinds of people. It is the life-long journey of a follower of Jesus Christ to explore the library of the Scriptures. And never are those Scriptures brought together to a person alone. Always, the stories of the Bible are brought to the collection of Scriptures in the midst of a community of searchers – of people struggling, of people trying, of people leaning towards the hope and understanding of God and themselves.
OK. Turn that kaleidoscope with me one more time. As I watched the procession and that wise woman pointing the way, I couldn’t help but think of the women and the men in my life who have done just that for me. I thought of those who have stood and have pointed to the light, to the beauty, to the hope, and the strength of God for me. And you. What about you? Are there people whose names and faces come to your mind? People who have been pointers, and guides, and encouragers? Think of them with me for just a moment. As Vickie encouraged us to do earlier, say “thank you.” “Thank you, God, for this person in my life.”
This morning we are thanking those who are part of our Christian education ministry, and there are over 125 people every Sunday who serve, in some way, by ministering and pointing to the light of the Scripture. But today, I want to mention one person in particular. Today we are specifically honoring Jennie Griffith.
If you know Jennie, you may know she has been one of Columbia Public Schools’ finest kindergarten teachers, until she recently retired. You may know she raised five remarkable children, who are five remarkable adults now. You may know she now works with Parents as Teachers. But what you probably didn’t know about Jennie Griffith until this week, if you read it in your newsletter, or until you are hearing it right now at this moment. Jennie Griffith has taught Sunday School for 50 years! We are celebrating her 50th year anniversary as a Sunday School teacher. She insisted I tell you that she began when she was four! Not quite true. She did begin when she was twelve.
Her story is a wonderful story. It started right here in Columbia when Trinity Lutheran Church was still on campus. Mrs. Neeby, the minister’s wife of that congregation, asked Jennie, age 12, to teach with her. There was a new class that was starting. It was kind of a novel idea. It wasn’t something that was really happening too many other places. They were going to start a class for three-year-olds. It was a time before small chairs, and Bible-story books were even a reality. Jennie was thrilled to have been asked. She had some good examples in her growing up years. Iris Goebel had been one of her Sunday School teachers. (Is Iris here this morning? This is usually her service.) She had been Jennie’s teacher. So Jennie and Mrs. Neeby started this class. They met in the outer room leading into the women’s restroom. Sounds like some of our space issues around here. Doesn’t it?
For 50 years Jennie has taught preschoolers and kindergartners in Sunday School classes. When she moved to the state of California, she was the preschool director of their Sunday School program. She returned here. She has taught. She has been Christian Education chairperson. What she says she has enjoyed so much is that Sunday School children are a totally volunteer attendee population. (Well, add in a little parental persuasion.) She enjoys that it is not outcome based, that it’s flexible, that it allows children to do their own thing, and to grow in their own way.
Get this. Her first class of kindergartners included Darren Day, Michael Crews, Sam Bornhauser (only we called him Sammy), and Ian Miller. That is quite a crew of five-year-old boys who have grown into wonderful 23-year-old young men.
Can you keep a secret? All four of them are going to be at the 11 o’clock service to escort Jennie forward to receive her gift. She doesn’t know that. Don’t tell her, because she’s teaching Sunday School right now.
I asked her when we were on the trip to South Africa, because Jennie went on that trip, too, why she had done it? Why in the world had she taught for 50 years? She didn’t even have to pause when she told me. She said, “Oh, because I love it! I love those sweet, bright children.” And she said it was a good way to meet young families. She said, “It’s the gift I could give.” What a wonderful witness, and example, and leader. Then she had some advice from her 50 years of experience. For parents, she said the greatest gift a parent can give a child is religious education. Can I get an “Amen?” “AMEN!” For a congregation, here advice is, “A church is as strong as its Sunday School.” Can I get an “Amen?” “AMEN!” Oh, by the way, she is not retiring from Sunday School teaching. She is looking forward to teaching another 50 years. And we could only be so lucky.
Thanks be to God for this woman, and for the woman in South Africa, who Sunday after Sunday, points to the light, to the love, to the hope of God, and who have done so for so many years. Thanks be to God for each and every woman and man you thought of, who in your life has pointed to the light, and the love, and the hope of God for you. They have helped us to believe we shall see “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” and encouraging us “to wait for the Lord. Be strong. Let your hearts take courage.”
Can I get an “Amen?”
“AMEN!”
Benediction
Word of God, speak to and through us. Weave in and out of our hearts and all around the earth and back again, that we might, at least in this shared word, commune with all people who dance in the light. Amen.
