Go and Learn

A month or so ago,

your vestry spent a day together asking two deceptively simple questions.

Who are we?

And what should we do?

Simple questions. But the longer you sit with them, the deeper they become.

Who are we?

What should we do?

Churches ask those questions.

Families ask those questions.

Communities ask those questions.

And if we’re honest, every human being asks them sooner or later.

Who am I?

What am I supposed to do with, in the words of the poet Mary Oliver

my “one wild and precious life?”

As I sat with this week’s readings,

it struck me that Scripture asks those same questions --

but in a slightly different order.

Before we can answer who we are, we must first ask:

Who is God?

And before we can answer what we should do, we must ask:

What does God desire?

That is where Hosea begins.

The prophet speaks to people who know how to do religion.

They know the prayers. They know the rituals. They know the sacrifices.

But God says:

“I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Notice what God does not say.

God does not reject worship.

God does not reject prayer.

God does not reject gathering as a community.

The problem is not this panoply of practices we call worship.

The problem is forgetting what worship is for.

The people have become skilled at religious observance

while losing sight of God’s heart.

And God’s heart, Hosea says, is steadfast love.

Love that remains.

Love that endures.

Love that keeps showing up.

Love that makes room.

Love that refuses to give up on people.

That is who God is.

And Hosea says that to know God is not merely

to acquire information about God.

It is to participate in God’s life.

To know the merciful God is to become merciful.

To know the welcoming God is to become welcoming.

To know the compassionate God is to become compassionate.

This knowledge of God takes flesh in the way we live.

Then Jesus comes along and quotes Hosea.

He is sitting at a table with tax collectors and sinners.

The religious authorities are scandalized.

Why is he eating with this disreputable lot?

Why is he crossing those clear boundaries?

Why is he spending his one wild and precious life with them?

And Jesus responds:

“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

Go and learn.

Not go and explain.

Not go and correct

Not go and argue.

Go and learn.

I love that phrase because it affirms there is still something to discover.

Something still unfolding.

Something we do not fully understand yet.

And because apparently there are some things about the mercy of God

that cannot be learned from a distance.

They must be practiced.

They must be experienced.

They must be lived.

The Pharisees look at the table and see a problem.

Jesus looks at the table and sees a possibility.

A place where people discover what God’s mercy actually looks like.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus gathers people around tables.

And around those tables people discover that they belong.

People are restored.

People are welcomed.

People are reconciled.

People come alive.

Because around a table we remember things

the world encourages us to forget.

We remember that every person carries a story.

We remember that every person bears the image of God.

We remember that no one is merely a category.

No one is merely a political opinion.

No one is merely a success or a failure.

No one is merely an insider or an outsider.

Each one is a child of God.

Each one worthy of dignity.

Each one worthy of welcome.

Each one worthy of a place at the table.

And whenever that truth becomes visible, however briefly,

the Reign of God becomes a little easier to see.

Now if Hosea asks who God is, and Jesus shows us what God desires,

Paul asks a different question:

How do we move forward when we do not yet know what comes next?

Abraham, Paul says, lived by faith.

Or as Paul puts it so beautifully:

“Hoping against hope, he believed.”

What a phrase: hoping against hope.

Abraham could not see the future.

He did not know how the story would unfold.

He could not calculate the outcome.

He simply trusted the God who

“calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

The God who brings life where life seems impossible.

The God who creates futures we cannot yet imagine.

And perhaps that is where these readings meet us today.

Because I wonder if we are in a season of learning in this community.

Not a season of certainty. A season of learning.

We are asking questions.

Who are we?

What should we do?

What is God calling us to become?

And perhaps the most faithful answer we can give right now is:

we are learning.

Learning what God’s steadfast love looks like here.

Learning what mercy looks like here.

Learning what belonging looks like here.

Learning what it means to participate in the Reign of God here.

Some of that learning may happen around tables.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll gather for a shared meal

we are calling “Common Table.”

We’ll be speaking more about this. There are details in your bulletin.

We do not know exactly who will come.

We do not know what conversations will unfold.

We do not know what friendships may begin.

But perhaps that is part of the learning.

Some of that learning may happen in a garden.

After this service, people will gather to imagine what new life

might grow in our community garden –

a space that has been waiting patiently for tending hands.

And some of that learning may happen alongside children.

Not because children are the future of the church,

but because they are already part of the church.

Their questions, their wonder, their honesty, and their joy

may reveal things about the Reign of God that we adults

are sometimes too sophisticated to notice.

Some of that learning may happen in our liturgy and music.

As we continue discovering how old prayers and new voices,

ancient faith and fresh imagination,

can help us encounter the living God together.

Because the truth is that none of us has all the answers.

Not the priest. Definitely not the priest.

Not the Vestry.

Not the lifelong member.

Not the newcomer.

Not the oldest among us.

Not the youngest.

And that’s OK.

Because Jesus does not say, “Go and figure everything out.”

He says: “Go and learn.”

And perhaps that is the good news for us today.

We do not have to carry the world on our shoulders.

We do not have to manufacture church’s future.

We are simply invited to participate in God’s Reign.

To trust.

To follow.

To keep showing up.

To keep making room.

To keep practicing the steadfast love of God.

So let us go and learn.

Let us learn around tables.

Let us learn in gardens.

Let us learn from children.

Let us learn from neighbors.

Let us learn from one another.

And let us trust the God

who met Abraham,

spoke through Hosea,

and sat at table in Jesus Christ.

Let us trust the God of mercy who is still teaching us

who we are and what we are called to do.

For the Reign of God often arrives in ways so ordinary we almost miss them:

a seed in the ground,

a place at the table,

a child’s question,

a neighbor becoming a friend.

And before we know it,

what began as a meal becomes a community,

what began as a seed becomes a garden,

what began as a question becomes a calling,

and what began as hope against hope

becomes new and abundant life.

Amen.