Whether we consciously think about it or not, rituals are an integral part of our lives, and not only in church. The understanding of the word “ritual” is one that includes it being a customary, repeated, often formal act, or series of acts, according to religious law or social customs. So think about it. How many rituals have you participated in during this past year? How about this week? What about this morning?

 

Well, this morning my cat and I began the day with our daily ritual. If you know cats, you know it’s all about him and his social customs. I wasn’t quite awake at my usual 5:15 time, so he not so gently patted my cheek and gave me a sharp meow to get us on our way to the sink in the bathroom where supposedly I turn on the water to fill a glass and take my morning pill. I know, however, that he knows that I know that I’m really turning on the water so that he can get a drink from the faucet! Then I make the bed while he is drinking water right from the faucet. Then, when I remember, I turn the water off, and we head to the kitchen for his breakfast and his morning appointment with the backyard and the birds and the dog next door.

 

Ron Crouse reminded me earlier this morning about the difference between dogs and cats. Dogs think you are family. Cats think you are staff. And as with most ritual participants, this cat desires that his ritual remain consistent and predictable. Those of us who are owned by cats know that it’s simply up to me to play my part and comply with his social and not so social customs.

 

Of course there are more significant rituals than the morning ritual with the cat. There are family rituals. Think about some of yours. There are community rituals. There are national rituals, and this Memorial Day weekend is an example of the power and importance of ritual – the way all of those weave together to create a tapestry of rich meaning and significance in our lives.

 

Do you know when Memorial Day began? May 30, 1868. It was the response to this nation’s need to embark on the long road of healing from the wounds and the grief of the Civil War. The very first graves decorated in Arlington Cemetery were the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers in 1868 with the hope for reconciliation and unity, and with the hope that the division that occurred in our country at that time would never occur again. Of course, it did take until after World War I before the southern states participated in this spirit of unity and remembrance.

 

Here in Columbia there are several time-honored rituals observing Memorial Day. One of them is the Memorial Day parade. How many of you have been? How many are going tomorrow? It is a Kim and Bill Ryan family ritual to attend the Memorial Day parade. We have not missed one in 18 years. The best years are the ones when we get to sit next to Charlie Maris, who attends the 8 a.m. service. Charlie knows everything about every vehicle that goes down that street. He can tell you about airplanes, and tanks, and trucks, and cars. My boys think Charlie Maris is the smartest man in the world. And they are right. He is!

 

Sometimes I have wondered why do we do this? Why do we go to the Memorial Day parade every year? Neither Gage nor Keller have ever marched in a school band. They have never ridden on a float. Why do we do this? As some of you know, we as a family hold deep concerns and deep reservations about the choices and the motivations that carry one country into war against another. We are not a family with strong military ties or inclinations, like our Broadway family of the Cassels, where Marley leaves in just a short time to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Or the Kerseys who have a son and a grandson at boot camp. Or Chuck Naugle who made it back safely from Iraq. That’s not our story.

 

So, why are we there, hot or cold, rain or shine? I think it’s because beyond the parade of military artillery, and beyond Shriners’ shenanigans, and beyond the fresh beautiful faces of young students playing patriotic music is a deep meaning that calls to us as individuals, that calls to my family, that calls to us as a collective community, and to our national hearts to grieve the loss of those who have died due to war’s bitter fruit. To respect and to honor their sacrifice and the sacrifices of their families and their loved ones, to love and appreciate our country, and to hope in that spirit of the beginning of a Memorial Day observation, that spirit of hoping for unity rather than further division, not only in this country, but in the world. A hope for unity for the world. I think it’s about grief, and it’s about honor and respect and love and hope. Maybe at their best and at their very heart, that’s what rituals are about – the invitation to step in and toward something deeper, to step in and toward hope.

 

Certainly that would be true of the rituals of our church life. They are an invitation to step into something deeper, to step toward something of hope. Hope is at the heart of the ancient words of Psalm 78. I hope you heard that. It is not only an invitation to hope and pass that hope on, but also an invitation to be active participants and creators of hope alongside our children, even the children not yet born. Psalm 78 echoes that call from thousands and thousands of years back to our world today, into our lives, into our rituals and worship and Christian community.

 

You may not know it, but this is a Scripture we read every year, here at Broadway, in connection with what, I think, are our services of deepest hope and blessing. That is our service of baptism and confirmation. But this Scripture is not read in worship. It is read the day before when the parents of those who are considering baptism and confirmation come together. When they come together, they meet on Saturday. The young people are at the Rickman Center at a retreat preparing to make their decision for baptism and confirmation. Their parents come together, and we talk together about the varied and deep meanings of communion, and baptism, and confirmation. We tell our baptism stories and our confirmation stories. If we haven’t been brought up in a church, we tell how we started to think about becoming a disciple of Jesus, and why we are even connected with a faith community. We read the Scripture, and we pray. What we do is a ritual on that Saturday.

 

[Lighting a candle on the pulpit…] We light a candle, just like the candles anyone who is baptized or confirmed here at Broadway receives. We light the candle, and we stand in a circle. The candle goes from parent to parent, and each parent holds the candle and says the name of their child. Then all of us in that circle say, “May Corey set her hope in God.” “May Laura set her hope in God.” “May Carl set his hope in God.” The candle passes from parent to parent. Each child’s name is spoken, and each prayer is offered for that child.

 

Then the day of baptism and confirmation occurs, and together we celebrate that highest and holiest of times. Now in that circle, as we pray that prayer, you can almost see it on our faces. We know it won’t be the only time we pray that prayer for those children. Over and over again our prayer will be that those children will set their hope in God, because we know the Christian life is an over-and-over-again turning toward the hope that God offers us. We know that is true for our own lives as well. We know there will be times in our lives when we will need others to help turn us toward hope.

 

So, I ask you to think for a moment of the persons, the circumstances, the places in your life where you have been encouraged to turn toward hope. Begin to let those persons come to mind for you, to remember them, to remember the circumstances when you needed that encouragement, that direction.

 

As you are thinking of yours, I am going to offer just a few of mine. I would first be grateful and say “Thank you” to my parents, who took me when I was a baby into a church nursery. They sat me there. They left me there. They sat me in that nursery, and they set the course of my life direction and my hope in God. 

 

I would thank my kindergarten Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Gilmer, who was a tiny little lady. I never saw her sit in a chair. She always sat on the floor in the circle with five-year olds, cross-legged, as she told us the stories of Jesus. And a very interesting connection… Years and years after I was five, when I was engaged to be married to Bill, we learned that her parents offered a room to a young ministerial student in West Virginia for him to live with them and to do his studies. That young man was Bill’s Dad, Bill Ryan Senior. Small world! But I began to learn the stories of Jesus sitting in a circle with Mrs. Gilmer. Most importantly, I began to believe that Jesus loved me, because I knew Mrs. Gilmer loved me. 

 

I would remember and thank my adopted Grandma Ruby, who came to be a Christian in her late forties and provided for me a witness I had never seen before of the transforming power of what happens in an adult’s life when they become a Christian and start to follow Jesus. What a tremendous witness her life was to me.

 

I would have to remember Larry Keifhoffer, a minister I worked with when I went to college. It was the last semester of my senior year of college, and he looked at me one day and said, “Have you ever thought about being a minister?”  And I said, “NO!” He gave me hope. He set a direction in my life toward God. 

 

Lastly, but certainly not least, I would have to thank the saints of Broadway Christian Church. When I came to Broadway 18 years ago, this congregation had within it people whose names and reputations I had only heard in Disciples’ history. I heard of them with reverence. Some of you will not remember these names. You never had an opportunity to meet them: Orville and Iris Peterson, Bill and Margaret Starns, Martha Taylor, Louise Mosley, who is still living with us at Lenoir, and Paul and Esther Ehly, also at Lenoir. I was terrified at the thought that I would somehow stand in a pulpit and somehow preach a Word of God to these giants of faith.

 

Paul Ehly, God love him, would come out the doors of the sanctuary and shake my hand and say, “That was the best sermon I ever heard on that Scripture.” It took me a few years before I figured out that probably wasn’t true, but Paul was so encouraging of me. He gave me the hope to keep trying, to keep trying to bring a Word of God’s presence and gift of life. 

 

Of course, I am grateful to the saints and the sinners here at Broadway this very day, and for the way that you encourage me to set my hope in God every day.

 

So what about you? Who are those persons who come to mind that you claim as those who have helped you set your hope in God again and again and again? Give thanks and praise for them.

 

As a congregation, I believe there is no higher calling and purpose for us than to be about encouraging one another and encouraging others beyond ourselves to set their hope in God, and to be builders of hope. 

 

So we celebrate, and we dedicate today, every dollar spent and every brick laid, and every wall painted, that is creating space and welcome for the children and youth of this congregation, and even those yet unborn, so that they might learn how to set their hope in God, and for all of us, who we know as children of God, to continue to learn what it is to follow Jesus in faithful ways.

 

We celebrate and dedicate the proceeds of a garage sale – our giveaway stuff – that will provide a Habitat for Humanity house built in love and hope, and creating a secure home, and a fresh start for a family here in Columbia. We pray for Heidi Stallman, who grew up in this congregation and is in Uganda, Africa today, with Habitat for Humanity there.

 

We celebrate and dedicate the incredible generosity to the tune of $100,000 that this congregation has committed to support a program for young ministers in our denomination as they weather the turbulence of their first five years of ministry. Jacob Thorne, our youth minister, is in this program, and Sarah Griffith, who grew up in this church and is a pastor in Florida, is also in this program. What we hope is they will survive the loneliness, which is the number one reason pastors leave churches. Go figure! We hope they will endure unhealthy and dysfunctional congregations. I wish I could tell you there aren’t many of those out there, but there are a whole lot of those out there. We hope they’ll hang on to their calling and the intention of their ordination. We hope they’ll hold fast to a hope that churches can be dynamic, and faithful, and significant. We know there will be times when they will be disappointed in themselves and disappointed in the church, so ultimately, every dollar of that $100,000 is going to encourage at least 50 young ministers, so that they try not to set their hope just in themselves, or try not to set their hope just in a church, but that they set their hope in something deeper and wider and higher and lower. We hope they set their hope in God. In doing that, they will be empowered to encourage thousands of others in the years ahead.

 

We celebrate and dedicate that every day one of our trained lay persons is acting in the role of a Stephen Minister, reaching out to others with heart and hand and hope when someone is going through a difficult time and a crisis. These are just a few of the ways we are building hope in God through Broadway Christian Church.

 

So, I ask you, in the spirit of the commercial ads I trust most of you have seen, “Got milk?” – “Got hope?” If you don’t, you are in the right place, because this is not a place of meaningless rituals. This is a place and a people intensely committed to the repeated acts of setting our hope in God. 

 

“You got hope?” If the answer is “Yes,” then you are in the right place, because there is someone here who needs you. There is someone out there who needs you, needs your strength, needs your encouragement, needs your wisdom, and needs your witness.

 

My prayer, our prayer: May you set your hope in God. May I set my hope in God. May our children set their hope in God, and the children yet to be born.

 

And we say together… “Amen.”

 

 

God, in whom we trust, our hope is built on you. May this legacy be lived out and passed down so that each generation will put its faith in you, and in that trust, might have peace. The peace that passes all understanding. Amen.