Sermon Title: "A Stirring Presence"
Date: April 26, 2009
Minister: Rev. Susan Bjork

Lesson:  Psalm 121

Today’s sermon is going to be a little unusual… 

A couple of weeks ago, Charlie mentioned to me that one of his first sermons at Bay Shore Church was based on a piece of his ordination paper in which he shared the story of his own faith pilgrimage and how he came to understand his call to ministry.  And he suggested that I do the same thing. 

It is our hope that this will help you to get to know me better as your new Associate Minister.

Today’s lesson, Psalm 121, is a favorite of mine.  In fact I chose it to be the text for my ordination service.  This psalm is a poem of reassurance of God’s ongoing help and guidance.  The psalmist speaks of a God whose presence is enduring, active, and stirring throughout the course of our lives.

I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? 

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

I was born in the “hill town” of Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 2, 1980.  As the only child of a physicist and a homemaker/mother/artist/volunteer extraordinaire, I spent 18 years growing up in the same house and attending primary and secondary school in the same small community of Los Alamos. 

In a highly intelligent and often competitive community and school system, I was very fortunate to have parents, close friends, and other adult mentors including teachers and local church pastors who supported me and encouraged me to develop not only my intellect but also to take a more holistic approach to personal development and growth.

Without the support of these people, the very left-brain, scientific environment of Los Alamos might have neglected to encourage my empathetic, relational, and ministerial impulses.

Many of these early formative years of my faith life were spent in a multi-denominational Protestant church.  With denominational ties to the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the American Baptist Church, the Reformed Church in America, and the Moravian Church, it was a beautifully diverse and theologically rich environment in which to grow. 

Thus began my dance with the stirring presence of God.

Since I grew up in a pretty ecumenical environment, I was inclined towards an ecumenical faith which left room for mystery, openness to other cultures and interfaith dialogue, and it was pretty early on that I developed an aspiration to work against the more oppressive consequences of human organizations.

Many people in the church I grew up in encouraged me in this seeking.  And I am grateful for all of those people because they helped me to articulate my questions and theological reflections.  And I feel exceedingly blessed to have parents who always supported me in my seeking and discerning. 

As I grew up in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to a national laboratory that engages in nuclear weapons research, I began to have many questions about war and peace, human power to create and destroy, and humanity’s relationship to the natural world. 

Truthfully, I don’t know if I would have asked so many questions about those things at such a young age had I not grown up in that environment.  These are difficult issues with no simple answers that I continue to grapple with to this day.

One of the key events of my life was the suicide of my mother’s best friend when I was in high school.  Her death greatly impacted my family and was one of the most significant experiences with death and loss in my life thus far.  Her death challenged some of my conceptions of reality and shook up my sense of stability for awhile.  But, I now know that I grew as a person in subsequent years as I dealt with the emotional, spiritual, and relational aftermath of her death.

As a result, this experience, though traumatic, also became a formative spiritual benchmark in my life.  I was very angry at God for letting this happen.  But at the same time, I had a deep sense that I was being held and cared for even in my anger, even my doubt, and especially in my sorrow.  Intellectually, I could not make sense of it all, but nevertheless, I experienced radical and immanent divine compassion and empathy in the midst of the trauma. 

Though I do not think I was ever placated with overly simple answers or absolute, unshakable claims about God or religion, that was a time in my life in which, truthfully, none of the simple answers were acceptable to me.

Essentially, the reality of my lived experience did not mesh with a concrete, black and white, simplistic theology.  My mother’s best friend’s life did not wrap up neatly in a God-planned package, complete with bow.  Rather, it ended up being messy, unraveled, and torn. 

Ultimately, this experience taught me to be open to the mystery of God and to pay attention to the enduring presence of God in all aspects of life, including the brokenness, rather than to try and fit the complexity of the human experience into a small, closed box.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

In 1998 I graduated from high school and began my undergraduate work at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.  The next four years would be some of the most formative and significant in my life.  I established a deep interest in the religious expressions of human beings through a major in religion and began to seriously discern a call to Christian ministry.  I made strong friendships, particularly through an inter-faith group, which I carry forward to this day and I found wonderful professors and mentors who nurtured my intellectual and personal growth during that time.

The community I found at CC was a key to my overall undergraduate experience and I also began to articulate more clearly some of my ministerial interests including issues of peace and justice, ecumenism, and the arts.

My college work opened my eyes to the religious expressions of diverse populations of humans in a new way.  Though academic in focus, my major in religion enticed me to consider my own faith in a deeper way and to learn to articulate my own understanding of being grounded in the Christian tradition while remaining open to dialogue with people of other faith traditions. 

In short, my study deepened my spirituality. 

It was also in college that I began to realize that creative expression through visual art was also a spiritual practice for me and I began to become more interested in the relationship between creativity and spirituality; something that I delved into more deeply in seminary.

My first exposure to First Congregational United Church of Christ of Colorado Springs began during my time at CC as well.  I attended worship services on a regular basis and loved the church’s welcome to all people and openness to theological discussion.  This exposure helped solidify my sense that the UCC was my church home.

When I graduated from college in 2002, I was looking to take a break from the academic world for awhile and spend some time discerning my next steps and investigating possibilities for seminary education.  Thus, a good friend of mine from college and I decided to move into an apartment in Thousand Oaks, California (her hometown) and spend a couple of years working and saving up for the next steps in our lives.  I found an administrative job and spent the next two years working, saving, and enjoying nights and weekends free of homework. 

It was good for me to take a break from school and have a “real job” for a change.  I learned a lot about myself working at a corporate environment including not only that I was pretty good at it and had some marketable skills that could carry me when necessary, but also that I was not called to stay in that position for the long haul. 

During this time, I still had a nagging sense that I was being led into ministry of some form or another and after about a year and a half, this prompted me to seriously investigate seminary.

Discernment of my call to ministry was a slow, unfolding process.  I had inclinations towards ministry in high school, but it wasn’t until college that I began to seriously consider it as a real possibility.  I needed the time after college to pray, to become a part of a new UCC church community in Simi Valley which nurtured me along my path, and to discern further.

I began my seminary education at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in the fall of 2004.  By the time I went to seminary, I was sure that I was in the right place, but a little unsure as to how my particular ministry would unfold and whether or not I should be in the parish or another setting. 

During my field education internship in my second year of seminary, I really began to sense that I had some gifts for parish ministry, though in all honestly I was hesitant to commit.  But the wonderful church community of First Congregational Church of San Rafael where I worked encouraged me in this and supported my sense of call to the parish. 

Seminary was a time of personal discernment, growing ministerial experience, and deep theological reflection for me.  I was so fortunate to have fantastic faculty who taught me and challenged me.  I was also fortunate to have a strong network and community of friends and colleagues who supported each other through the sometimes difficult work of discernment and ministry. 

As many of you know, I also met my husband, Dave, while I was in seminary in Berkeley.  He was a graduate student at another school within the Graduate Theological Union (of which Pacific School of Religion is a part).  Dave is my partner in life, my confidant, a key person in my network of support, my best friend, and the love of my life.  And I’m sure he’s now blushing.

I feel very blessed to have a partner who was willing to move to Colorado with me after we both graduated from our programs so that I could reconnect with my home church and In Care association and complete a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). 

I felt that I needed some time after seminary before seeking a call in a church and was looking to continue my professional and ministerial development through CPE.  I was hopeful that CPE would be a time for further theological reflection, practical application of pastoral skills, and continued discernment.  And it was. 

I am so glad that I took the time to complete this unit of CPE because I learned so much about pastoral care, healthy boundaries, compassionate and active listening, self-care, and how to listen deeply for the voice of God within the human experience. 

I spent my clinical hours working as a chaplain at an assisted living facility where I provided pastoral care to residents of both the assisted living facility and the skilled nursing facility, led art activities, led bible studies, preached at a few worship services, and participated in various other community events.  For me, the way to learn pastoral care was to practice it.  And I, no doubt, will continue to learn about pastoral care throughout my entire ministerial career. 

Though I learned a great deal and had some memorable, wonderful, and challenging moments during my work as a chaplain, I also continued to feel that I was not particularly called to chaplaincy.  I found myself longing to do some of the activities of parish ministry which I was not engaging in.  I continued to have a sense that I was being led in the direction of the parish and that my gifts for ministry could be used best in the local church setting. 

So, here I stand.  After CPE and after getting married last October, I completed the ordination process and my first search and call process within the UCC. 

And, I am immensely grateful to you, Bay Shore Church, for extending a call to me to become your Associate Minister.

So in closing, I want to share with you my “Statement on Ministry” that was included in my ministerial profile.  This basically sums up what I understand ministry to be.

“I believe first and foremost that we are all called to be ministers in the Church and in the broader world, and are called to give expression to this in our daily lives. 

"Part of the spiritual journey in this life is to discern our own call, our own sense of vocation, and to find our path towards a deeper relationship with God and with each other.  That being said, I have a deep sense of call to ordained ministry within the United Church of Christ, particularly in the parish setting.

"Parish ministry to me is largely about leadership (both administrative and spiritual), facilitating the ministry of the church in which we all participate, providing opportunities for meaningful worship and prayer, working with the scriptures through preaching and educational offerings in order to deepen and illuminate our faith and ministry together, offering compassionate care to those in need (including helping find resources for care when the needs are beyond my own capabilities), providing opportunities for the community to grow in its relationships to one another and to our neighbors beyond the church walls, and finally, to aid in communal discernment about a particular community’s sense of call to ministry and mission in the broader world.

"Though on one hand, this list may seem simple, its particular expressions, daily tasks, and acts of spiritual discernment may, in fact, be endless. 

"We are, after all, part of a long tradition of ministry within the Christian Church which began with Jesus’ ministry, that continued through those who followed him and sought to establish communities founded on his ideals, which then developed into new expressions and traditions throughout the centuries and across the globe, and has now been handed down to us in our particular time and place, and which we will hand on to generations that follow. 

"It is as if we each have a chance to dip our toe into the cool water of a mountain stream which has been flowing long before we reached the water’s edge and will continue to flow long after we have left its banks.  To find ways to collect and share this nourishing, holy, living water that is offered to us freely by our loving God is the stuff of ministry.  Let us all strive to be vessels for this living water." 

Amen.