11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 8:26-34
June 14, 2007

Dogwood Diary

As some of you know, I have just spent a week serving as chaplain at our presbytery’s camp about 100 miles west of here near beautiful downtown Vernon, Florida. I’ve been doing this for so many years that several of the counselors at Dogwood Acres remember me from the days when they were campers. In fact, I have outlasted three camp directors and four camp dogs, making me the senior chaplain of Dogwood Acres, with all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining.

In accordance with tradition, my sermon this morning will be a kind of journal of the week – highly expurgated, of course – and considerably shortened. I hope you will regard it as a midrash on today’s Gospel reading, wherein Jesus compares the kingdom of God to the planting of seeds and waiting for the harvest. I trust a few of the seeds scattered last week fell on receptive soil. Only God knows for sure.

Day 1 - Sunday

There’s a new Director this year. His name is Kevin Veldhuisen, and he’s a student at Dubuque Theological Seminary. He’s a married man in his 30’s, but with his crew cut and his slim build he could pass for a college-age counselor. What’s more, he’s from Minnesota and has never spent a summer in the piney woods of North Florida. (I’m reasonably sure that Christy Williams, the Chair of the Dogwood Acres Division, did not practice full disclosure when Kevin was hired.)

It’s a small crew for our shakedown week, the first of the summer. Only 17 campers – first through 6^th graders. Never mind. Jesus managed to do quite a bit with only 12, who couldn’t have been more enthusiastic that this lot.

After supper we meet for our first chapel service in the building that is a cross between a Shakespearean theatre and a tribal meeting lodge. Screened-in walls. Concrete floor. A good place for singing, dancing, and giving glory to God.

Our text for the day is the second creation story in Genesis – the story about God getting down and dirty in the adamah – the red clay of earth, and making from it the adam - the earth creature we call Adam. God puts the adam in the garden to tend and keep it, but God decides it’s not good for the adam to be alone. An equal and corresponding partner is required.

God makes new creatures and brings them to the adam to see what he will name them. We play around with some good names that didn’t make the cut. For instance, we speculate that the cow might have started off as a "two-pronged milk squirter." The provisional name for a duck might have been "a flat-billed waddle-quacker." Of all the candidates, none turns out to be an equal and corresponding partner, so God puts the adam to sleep, takes a rib from his side, and makes a new but related creature.

"At last!" cries Adam, "Here is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. I’ll call this one a woman because she was taken from a man." I explain to the campers that in Hebrew ish means "male" and "ishah" means "female." "I’ll call her "ishah" because she came from an "ish." It’s a play on words. Adam has just created the world’s first knock-knock joke.

After chapel we go to Kelly Field and play games, including a night version of "Capture the Flag." This year I sit this one out. I’ve just recovered from last year’s Capture the Flag game.

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Day Two - Monday

After breakfast we have "energizers" and "morning watch," which means we eat breakfast, jump around doing calisthenics to music, and then settle down for an outdoor worship service. The transition from energizers to worship has to be quick, else all is lost. I have the campers lie on their backs and gaze up at the sky through the oaks and pines as I read Psalm 8:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established
what are humans beings that you are mindful of them,
mere mortals that you care for them?

As I read the Psalm, I see out of the corner of my eye Peanut, the camp cat. She’s proudly carrying in her mouth a freshly-slain mouse. I don’t have time to switch to Psalm 145:

The eyes of all wait upon you,
and you give them their food in due season.

To my great relief, Peanut darts under the boardwalk, thus averting a liturgical catastrophe.

At evening chapel we explore the other creation story – the one in Genesis Chapter One. I’m pretty sure I was in college before I realized there where two creation stories in Genesis. These campers have a head start on the life-long task of Biblical interpretation. If they leave camp as Biblical literalists, it won’t be because the chaplain told them so.

And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Day Three – Tuesday

Today is Taco Tuesday. It’s amazing how excited a grown man can get about the lunch menu. And sure enough, Taco Tuesday meets my every expectation. What’s more, it’s also Lake Day – when we spend the whole afternoon on the lake swimming, fishing, and canoeing.

Nothing is quite so entertaining as watching two eight-year-olds figure out the physics of propelling a canoe through the water using paddles. After a while they learn that shouting at your canoe mate does not really help all that much. You have to cooperate. Also, paddling harder in the same direction does not cause the canoe to change its course. These insights will come in handy in adult life.

After chapel we have a campfire, and, of course, eat s’mores. I’m from the "brown-your-marshmallow" school of s’mores. Most everyone else seems to be in the "turn-your-marshmallow-into-a-burnt-offering" school. Whatever. It takes all kinds to make a Christian community.

And it was evening and morning, a third day.

Day Four - Wednesday

Children who come to church camp but never go to church must think that the Bible consists only of two creation stories and the story of Noah and the ark. Rather like adults who think that the only hymns we ever sing are "Away in the Manger" and "Jesus Christ is Risen Today."

Today we have the requisite Ark story, but I take the opportunity to teach the campers a Greek word for sin: "harmatia." It means "missing the mark," "falling short of the target." Archery is a favorite activity at camp. "Harmatia" is an concept easily grasped. More than breaking the rules, sin is falling short of God’s best hopes for us. The bow in the clouds that appears after the flood is the sign that, even when we fall short, God keeps God’s promises.

I’ve got a good collection of Dogwood Acres T-shirts. This morning a camper from First Church asked me, "Why do you change wear a different shirt every day?" It then occurred to me that he was wearing the same shirt I saw him wearing on the first night of camp. That’s going on four days in a row.

"No reason," I told him. "I just like to change my shirt every day."

He looked at me with sincere puzzlement. "Why?"

And there is evening and there is morning, the fourth day.

Day Five – Thursday

Today’s text is Luke’s Parable of the Talents. Funny thing, tonight is the also the Talent Show. Nothing is buried tonight. In fact, some skits that predate the Flood are unearthed. They were corny when I was a camper, and they’re still corny. Traditionalism is the dead skits of the living. Tradition is the living skits of the dead.

Tonight at chapel – before the Talent show – I share with the campers my worry that we might have been giving them the wrong message about the gospel. This week we’ve been stressing environmental responsibility and our call to be "oikomenoi," that is, "stewards" of the God’s creation. I worry that so much emphasis on being good stewards might give the campers the impression the gospel itself is all about being good.

It’s not. It’s about being loved. God loves us first, and because we’re thankful to God, we want to be fulfill God’s best hopes. The stewards in Jesus’ parable invest their talents because they’re afraid. That’s not why we invest our talents. We work for God because we’re grateful, not because we’re afraid. I hope they get the message. After all, it is Good News.

And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Day Six – Friday

At morning watch I tell the campers I won’t be with them for the closing chapel service. I have a wedding rehearsal to conduct back in Tallahassee. They want to know who’s getting married. Kelsey, I tell them. She’s marrying Michael, and then he’s going off to Kosovo to serve in the Army National Guard. The boys like the sound of that. Not so much the girls.

I’m reminded in that moment what a precious time this week has been. Outside the camp gate there are wars and rumors of wars. There is homework to do and FCATs to worry about. Out there people judge you by what you wear or how you talk or by the school you go to. At camp it’s different. At camp you’re safe, and people don’t "dis" you. At camp you can explore new things and make new friends, and there will always be someone you can talk to.

At camp you can spend fifteen minutes watching a spider spin a web, and no one will call you weird. You can get up close and personal with three armadillos named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who aren’t trying to sell you anything. They’re just looking for some worms and bugs to eat. At camp you get to plant some seeds and to have some seeds planted in you.

God willing, those seeds will grow. And when they do, you’ll be a like a tree planted by the waters. Your roots will run deep and you will not be moved.

Some people question the value of operating a camp like Dogwood Acres in the 21^st century, when kids are able to go to space camp, and computer camp, and tennis camp, and get-a-jump-on-the-competition camp. What’s the point, they argue, in running camp that doesn’t provide credentials?

Our "chief end," the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. We Presbyterians tend to put so much emphasis on the first part of that phrase that we neglect the second part. Dogwood Acres is a place to enjoy God. For a change, the end doesn’t justify the means. The means are the end and the end is the means. If you can’t see the value in that, you aren’t looking through the lens of the gospel.

God bless Dogwood Acres, where seeds are planted and lives are pointed toward the kingdom. It’s one of the few places left in children’s lives where enjoying God and one another is the means and the end.

 

If you would like to receive these sermons by e-mail, send a note to brant@oldfirstchurch.org.