Sunday morning sermon

Once upon a time, forty years ago, I sat in this very church with about a hundred kids--red and white--and listened to a good preacher, the Rev. Jim Lont, hold forth at a youth retreat. It was then the Rehoboth church, Rehoboth, New Mexico, and it was, I'd say, the very heart and soul of my own church's mission efforts in the region, although there were a dozen other outposts.

I don't know that, right then, I needed my own mission effort any more than any of us ever do, but the truth is I hadn't been in a church all that often in recent years before that; but once my wife and I had moved to Phoenix, I'd become a regular again, just as I had been for most of  my life.  I was back in church, at least publicly, back in church enough to prompt the congregation we were attending in Arizona to christen us youth leaders and entrust us with their kids.  That's why were here--at this place.

I don't think I knew anyone other than the rambunctious high school kids we cameup with, and I had but one ancient memory of Rehoboth, having stopped there to visit when I was a boy, maybe ten, on the way back from a California trip with my family.  

The good Reverend Lont held forth on God's sovereignty.  I don't have a memory like some who can recall sermons as if they were life's most precious passages; but I do remember this one, strangely enough, remember it because, at the time, the old skeptic in me wasn't at all sure that the preacher was making any sense, even though I knew the company line he was taking.  It seemed to me to be a stump speech for Calvinism, all about providence and election and the divine way; and what I'll never forget him saying is that each of you kids--I don't think he meant their counselors--were here for a purpose, that God had ordained this whole event, as he ordains everything, and that they should be prepared  for big things because surely the Lord God almighty had them each in his sights (that's my largely inappropriate metaphor, not his) because after all he had a plan for all of their individual lives.

The upshot was, there was a reason they were here.  Okay, I admit it, in my heart I scoffed.  What he was saying wasn't a new line to me, and I'd driven all the way up with a van full of kids who, to say the least, didn't seem intent on experiencing some kind of life-changing event.  What's more, I'd already seen innumerable faces of kids--white and red--who seemed perpetually bored, sick unto death of this whole Christian thing.

He's got a plan for all of you, the preacher said.  Inside my head, I was rolling my eyes.

And just a word about the church. It's not in good shape, not in good shape at all.  Today, I'm told, here are those associated with Rehoboth who would much prefer it to be out of there--gone.  To get that old building up to snuff would cost more than it would to replace the old thing.

But it was for a long,  long time the heart of the ministry's teaching and healing and worshipping soul, and those who have been most appalled by the possibility of its coming down have been the Native people,or so I'm told.  Excuse a little nuance here, but that old church can easily be perceived as the heart and soul of the kind of cultural violence that some Native people claim happened here in this mission effort--just as it did in every mission effort that included regimentation, strict discipline, stiff laws against Native language, rigorous memorization of doctrine, etc.  This church's history isn't 100% redemptive, and some Navajo and Zuni alive today will be more than happy to point that out.

Yet, ironically and oh-so-humanly, lots of Native people wouldn't hear any plans to rip the place down. It stands there like Shiprock in their own religious iconography.

Today, by the way, it's a thrift store, which is, of course, a whole new kind of ministry.

But the reason I tell the story is that just two years ago I finished a book about Rehoboth--that's right, the late 60's skeptic, who thought Lont's sermon something close to far-fetched, who rolled his eyes at the idea that God almighty had a reason to bring every last one of the retreat folks here that weekend, the youth leader who listened to the preacher hold forth in this old building how God had a plan for each of your lives, ends up, three decades later writing a book about the people whose lives are here and also part of a God's own family.  Good night, Lont was right.  God had his reasons.

Lont wasn't wrong.  I'm a witness.  It happened, just like he said, in this old church that just won't come down.

And that itself is a sermon too for this Sunday morning in New Mexico.