February 17th, 2008 - Reasons to Come to Church

Pastor Mark gave the sermon this Sunday while Pastor Dayle was in Arizona with family.

His sermon began with a question, “For what reason do we come to church?” Pastor Mark cited statistics and practical benefits to answer the question, answers that did not necessarily center on belief in God. From here, however, he moved quickly to belief in God and our private and shared inquiries into the nature of God.

He preached about how God can speak directly to us, through people, through messengers, through God’s word and in dreams.

After college and before seminary Pastor Mark had an experience where God spoke directly to him in a dream which was to prepare him to go into seminary and to be a pastor. It centered on John 3:16, the last verse of today’s gospel lesson.

He dreamed he was in a small church with a pastor-like figure in front of a congregation. Pastor Mark was seated in the front and was called up and given a question “What are the two most important words in John 3:16?”

As he attempted to answer the question, thinking through the possibilities, the church melted away and he was on a mountain top. From here there was an incredible view of trees and instantly he saw the colors of the trees change, cycling through the seasons.

After this vision, Pastor Mark’s dream continued and he was back in the church. As he gazed into the pastor-like figure’s eyes which focused on him directly and compassionately he found the answer to the question was “everlasting life”.

Pastor Mark prefaced this with an observation that we, on the whole, do not freely share experiences of direct communications with God like this. From my experience he is right. I once considered asking for and gathering direct God experiences like this to share but there is a level of discomfort and reluctance in communicating personal, mystical moments. Not so much in a mystical experience itself but in how and with whom you reveal the experience.

It may have something to do with our concern about defining and separating ourselves from one another. God speaks to one and perhaps not another. Do we have faith in the source of these communications / visions? All this may have to do with a rational, sense-based view of the world we are comfortable communicating with publicly as opposed to another vision rooted in personal faith which demands more in our faith and in our shared vision of God within us.

In Adult Education Paul led the discussion. We talked about the parable of the talents. Paul shared a story he has shared before about a conversation with a man in Mexico in which each shared what their typical day was like with one another. Both felt sorry for the other and the life they lived, Paul from what little the man had in his life and the man for all the busy tasks and preoccupations Paul faced in his life.

All of us talked about being more focused on relationships in our lives rather than what we had focused on earlier in our lives.

Our relationships to one another certainly teach us about God.