Magnolia Presbyterian Church                                             Rev. Deborah Sunoo

August 2, 2009

“Beginning in the Middle”

(Psalm 145:1-13 and Hebrews 12:1-2)

In medias res is what the English teachers call it.  Beginning in the middle. How many books have we read, how many movies have we seen, that employ this particular plot device?  Whether we’re entering the magical world of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the origins of which country C.S. Lewis won’t explain to us until a later volume, or being introduced for the first time to Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which opens with George Bailey ready to take his own life, our curiosity is piqued.  We can’t wait to get to that next chapter, or sequel, or fade into a flashback sequence.  We’re eager to start filling in those earlier parts of the story to help us better understand the opening scene. 

          So it is for me as I begin my ministry here in the middle of your story.  And so it is for you, as you welcome me in the middle of mine. 

We all begin a new journey today.  But this is only a beginning of sorts.  The Magnolia Presbyterian Church story has of course been in progress for quite some time now.  Coming in in the middle like this, I’m eager to learn more about your history as a congregation, to piece together the background of this gifted community, so that I can move forward in ministry with you with a better understanding of your family of faith, and its individual members.   I have much to learn from your stories, and am depending on you to help fill me in.

As I begin to learn more about you, you’ll also be learning about me: where I’ve come from, who I am as a pastor, as a person, how I’ve changed and grown over the years. 

At turning points like this I find it helpful to look to texts like those we’ve read this morning.  From the particulars of this moment in time, the psalmist helps us pan back a bit, to put things into a broader perspective: “Your kingdom, [Lord], is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures for all generations.” (Psalm 145:13)  In Psalm 90, we find a similar reminder: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” (Psalm 90:1-2)  In other words, the story in which we find ourselves is an immense one that both precedes and outlasts us all.  Meaning that we always enter the picture right in the middle of things. 

Our second lesson from Hebrews 12 then highlights those who have come before us in this overarching story.  The prior chapter actually lists dozens of specific examples of men and women from the Scriptures, and we can’t help but call to mind, as we read about them, more recently departed saints as well: family members, dear friends, members of our church family.  The word of comfort here is that our predecessors in faith needn’t fade from memory, but can remain very much in the picture, as sources of inspiration and encouragement while we run the race now set before us.   I just love this image of the great cloud of witnesses – around the world and across time – who surround and support us as we live out the particular pieces of the larger story that God has given each of us.  This is why it’s so important to familiarize ourselves with that bigger picture, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities to do that together over time. Sharing insights with one another into our rich heritage of faith, introducing one another to the particular individuals who have been formative in our lives, discovering the ways in which the Scriptural story has itself been meaningful to each of us. 

So, too, we’ll need to keep in mind those coming along after us. Again, in the words of the psalmist, “one generation shall laud [God’s] works to another.” (Psalm 145:4)  I expect that’s a word of challenge, as much as it’s a word of comfort.  For surely if we are each surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, we’re also called to take our place in someone else’s cloud.  Standing as we do at this midpoint, it is critical not only to look back but also to look ahead, to commit ourselves to passing on this heritage to a new generation. They say faith is caught, as much as it’s taught, so reflecting back on those who shared God’s grace with us will at its best inspire us to do the same for others.  It sounds like a number of you have already had opportunities to do this through the confirmation mentor program here, and as “Godly Play” leaders and music leaders for the younger children, and as youth and scout leaders and Sunday School teachers over the years, and surely there are countless more informal opportunities to form these kinds of faith-friendships too.  So that every single person coming through this church is invited both to receive and to pass along the baton, and so, as one songwriter puts it, “find [their] place, in the history of grace.” [Matthew West, “Thirteen”]

Again, we’ll have a chance later on not only to fill in earlier parts of the story, but also to dream together about how it might inspire us as we move ahead.  But today we begin here in the middle…

And the middle is an exciting place to begin.

How glad I am to be with you now, after these several weeks of waiting since we were first introduced.  What a privilege to have been called to serve a congregation so committed to mission and outreach, so attentive to your children and youth, so warm and hospitable to newcomers, so blessed with a dedicated and professional staff, so good at building meaningful relationships among your members and maintaining those relationships even with those who can no longer be with you regularly in worship.  I look forward to supporting each of your important ministries in every way I can.  I also know I have a lot to learn, so please feel free to assume there are significant gaps in my overall MPC knowledge at this point, and help bring me up to speed in whatever ways you can.  I’d be most grateful for your help.  I am, after all, beginning in the middle of quite a lively and exciting story.  I have a lot of catching up to do!

For your part, you are meeting your new pastor roughly midway through my life (at least, at the age of 42, I presume that’s the case), in the middle of my child-raising years, and 15 years into my service as an ordained minister.  So there’s a bit of back story for me to share as well.

For instance, you’ll learn that my church background includes several early years in a nondenominational evangelical church, followed by late elementary through college years in the Episcopal church, and that it was not until seminary in Princeton that I became Presbyterian.  (This involves a related episode about an Episcopal bishop trying to talk me out of ordained ministry entirely, since he felt I had the wrong number of X chromosomes.)  You’ll learn that I spent every summer from age 8 to 18 at a Christian camp for girls in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate NY, a place I loved so much that I now send my own daughters there each year – in fact they were there just a couple weeks ago.  You’ll learn that my extended family includes Baptists and Catholics and a few devout agnostics, along with a number of other Presbyterians.  You may be interested to know that the multiethnic component of my family isn’t limited to the four of us sharing a home here in Seattle.  (So far all of the Mexican-Americans are on my husband’s Korean side of the family, and the Taiwanese-Americans are on my Scottish side.)  You’ll learn that I accepted my first call as a pastor just a few weeks before my eldest daughter was born, and – never one to allow life to get boring - defended my dissertation while pregnant with daughter number two. And you’ll learn what a surprise it was for a former country girl from the East Coast to find herself so at home here in Seattle.  (Let’s put it this way: my college town in New Hampshire felt like a burgeoning metropolis, with its 3 traffic lights on Main Street, since the little village in which I grew up had just a single stop sign. Still does, in fact.)

Bottom line, my background, like each of yours, is a mix of ethnicities and geographies, schools and jobs, traditions and travel, grocery lists and reading lists, and of course family stories ranging from tragic to comic.

I thank you for welcoming me into your family, so that we can now begin to build new memories together.

          For in the end, no matter where we come from or who we are, we are each here this morning because Christ himself has invited us.  Whether we arrive at the Lord’s Table today closer to the beginning, middle, or end of our life journeys, we are equally welcome.  Whether we have worshipped in this place for a great many years, or are entirely new to the life of faith, we are all of us beloved children of God. Whether we find ourselves grieving a significant ending, celebrating a new beginning, or caught right up in the middle of the busy chaos of life, Christ promises to meet us here.

You and I have a great deal to learn as we look back, and a great deal to look forward to.  The middle is an exciting place to begin.  Amen.