Seasons of Love, Part 1

The next few posts will be from my Laity Day Sermon, based on 2 Timothy 4:1-5:

Many, many….many years ago, I was a youth in this church.  If you’ve been around longer than me, then you remember the summer tour trips the youth would take.  We would work to prepare a musical, and for a week in the summer, we would sing our way from church to church and back home again.  Each evening would be a performance in a different host church, and then we would spend the night with church members, getting up the next morning, loading up the bus to do it again.

I learned a lot on those trips.  I learned about cooperation and teamwork.  I learned about radical hospitality.  I learned what a fernel is, and how heavy they are, and I learned about how God can infiltrate a task, so that the entire week would be filled with wonder and laughter.

My senior year, the trip was changed to include a week long mission project in El Paso, Texas.  We sang our way to Texas, spent the week teaching what I would call a vacation Bible school, and then sang our way back.  I think those two weeks helped to shape my understanding of what Church is.  Church is everyone at home, all of you, supporting what the youth were doing – in effect, going in mission with us by sending us.  Church is working together to plan and prepare worship services for the churches where we would perform and lessons for children we would encounter in Texas.  Church is reaching out beyond our doors to bring the word of Christ to other people.    I was so blessed to have that experience, and to encounter the people I did during those times.  Truthfully, it helped shape my faith and my understanding of God and the Body of Christ.  As a parent, I’m grateful that Joe planned a mission trip for the youth group this past summer, so that Josh could share in that kind of experience.

There were many adults who made our trip in the summer of 1982 possible, and I could spend my whole time this morning listing them all, but I want to highlight one person in particular.  Before we went to Texas, I didn’t know Coe Marsh.  She and her husband John traveled with us, and worked with us during those two weeks.  I never asked her why she and John took their time to do what they did.  I imagine they did it because God called them, and they answered.  The Marshes were members of our church, retired, and I am still amazed that they said yes to being part of a youth trip.  It couldn’t have been easy.  Those trips were fun, but they were not easy.  Leading youth is not easy.

I remember that Chris Wood and I were paired to teach a Bible study class that week in Texas.  We were in the classroom, and we wanted to share Psalm 23 with the kids, but neither one of us had a bible.  (Don’t ask me why: I don’t know).  Coe was able to, from memory, write down the psalm and then to reword it so that children would understand it.  I don’t know if the children we were teaching remember anything about that, but I remember it – I remember that Coe knew the Psalm by heart.  I remember that she gave of her time and gifts to go into mission with us.  She and John made a lasting impact on me and on my faith