“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

• Anais Nin

Rev. Carol Cissel, our guest preacher last Sunday, spoke about the will it takes to visit our church, or any church. She spoke about getting up, getting dressed, checking the website, driving if we drive, parking, walking in…on time. “It is not an accident that our visitors are here.”

Not an accident at all. There is all the effort required to get here on a Sunday morning, but beyond the effort, there is the uncertainty and the fear. A new place. A new community of people with new habits. And those fears that we so rarely acknowledge: Have I dressed right? Will there be other people like me? Will they welcome me? Will this, could this become my place?

Could I find new life in this sanctuary with its beautiful music, its formal worship, its justice commitments? Could I find new life?

Rebirth is traditionally a spring theme in the church. Resurrection. Easter. You expect that. But today, I find myself reflecting on rebirth…not the joy and the hope we celebrate in the spring, but the fear and the resistance we bring most days to this business of living. We often would rather “remain tight in the bud” than blossom.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”

There is a part of me that knows that that is true. I have been “reborn,” have re-created myself several times. And it has been a transformative experience each time.

But I know the fear of transformation, too. I know my own resistance to change. I’m “just fine” the way I am, thank you very much. Even when the way I am has included habits that I knew were hurting me.

I am, we are so very capable of avoiding change. I am, we are so capable of quashing what is trying to be born, burying it in favor of familiar routines.

All of us, or many of us anyway, come to church harboring the slender hope that love might in fact be real and that our naïve faith in its power might be justified…at least a little.

We come hoping that our resistance might be broken through, that our grief might be salved, that our failures might be forgiven, that our sadness might be lifted…

We come in hope that Jesus might be right and that this church might help us, invite us, prod us to bring forth what is within us.

That is how we come. What we need to remember is that the first-time visitor you speak to, the one who is overdressed or underdressed, the one who doesn’t look like you, the one who doesn’t know the hymns or whether to stand for them…

The first-time visitor you speak with is coming with that hope, too.

Perhaps we could ask, “What brought you to church today?” It is not a bad question for any of us.

Blessings,

Bill