A couple of years ago, at my former church, I had an interesting day.  I didn’t come into the office very early because I had an appointment with someone elsewhere.  And before I got to the office, someone called looking for me at about 9:30.  And the church secretary told the caller that I wasn’t in yet.  Could she take a message?  Well the caller didn’t want to leave a message; he said he’d call back.  I did eventually make it into the office, and was there for a little while, but I had an appointment with someone else for lunch, and we went early.  And this same caller calls back at 11:30, and the secretary tells him now that I’m out to lunch, can she take a message?  But the caller doesn’t want to leave a message; he’ll call back, he says.  Well I left early that day, I had a hospital visit and then a meeting up at the Conference Center in Cranberry Township, Butler County.  And so this guy calls back at 3:00, and the secretary now tells him that I’ve left for the day, can she take a message?  Well this time he decides that he is going to leave a message.  He says, “Yes, ask him, ‘Where can I find a place like this where I can work?’” 

Where can I find a place like this?  Where can I find a place?  I think we’re all looking for something in life.  I think we’re all looking.  And the best way I have come up with lately to describe what we’re looking for is to say that I think we are all looking for a place.  What if there were a place?  What if there were a place, for example, where I could bring my sorrows and my worries and cares?  What if there were a place where I could feel nurtured and blessed, despite all the difficulties I face in my life?  What if there were a place where I could find some real direction for my life?  What if there were a place where I knew people really cared about me?  What if there were a place where I could feel hope again, and joy?  What if there were a place where I knew that I could find God?  What if there were a place?           

It reminds me of that song from “West Side Story”, “There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us.  Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.  Hold my hand and I’ll take you there.  Somehow.  Someday.  Somewhere.”  I could sing a verse or two for you, if you’d like?           

What if there were a place?  I was doing some reading, and I came across an interesting theological way of expressing this.  This theologian, Marcus Borg, was talking about finding God, finding the transcendent, finding what you are looking for, in the “thin” places, finding God in the “thin” places of life.  Now I have to confess that I was leery at first of this terminology.  I mean, look at this specimen you see here before you.  It’s hardly likely that I’m going to find much of anything in the “thin” places of life.           

Although we do go to the gym, we go to the gym.  I keep reminding you of this for some reason.  I know it doesn’t look like it.  There was a T-shirt they were selling at the gym at one point, and I almost bought it, I was going to wear it around the church.  It said, “No, I’m not on steroids.  But thanks for asking.”  Anyway, we were at the gym once not all that long ago, and Brenda didn’t want to do the bench press that day.  So I went over by myself to do the bench press, and there was another guy there, thin, fit, muscular, and I asked him if I could work in with him, and he said, “Sure.”  That’s the way we studly lifters do things, we just work in with each other on the weight machines.  Brenda had taken a break, and was sitting over at the counter, and there was another woman there at the counter taking a break, and the two of them got to talking.  Brenda asked this woman if she was there by herself, and the woman said no, she was with her husband.  She said that he was over on the bench press, and then she pointed in the direction of this other guy and me.  She didn’t know that I was Brenda’s husband and so just to clarify for Brenda which of the two of us she was talking about, she said, “He’s the thin one.  Not the fat one.”  So Brenda said, and you’ve got to understand that Brenda is a lot funnier since she met me, Brenda very proudly said, “Oh my husband’s on the bench press too.  He’s the fat one.”           

So I was a little leery at first of this theologian, Marcus Borg, talking about finding God in the “thin” places of life.  But I kept reading and working on this and learned that this term comes out of an old Celtic tradition, Scotland, Ireland.  The “thin” places are those places where the barrier, the dividing line, the veil, between this world and the next, between this temporal world where we are and a more heavenly form of reality, is very “thin”.  It’s almost as if you can reach through this veil and experience something supernatural and divine, you can almost experience God.  Have you ever had one of those moments when you felt lifted up beyond yourself here and into a place where God does seem very real, God does seem very near?           

Some people, I know, seem to be in one of those thin places when they read poetry. 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin [will I] build there, . . .

And I shall have some peace there, . . .

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds

    by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the

    pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core. 

That was Yeats, talking about being homesick for where he grew up in the west of Ireland, and it speaks too of an eternal homesickness, an eternal longing that we all have.  Some people find God in poetry.  Some find God in a beautiful painting, or sitting on top of a mountain.           

I hope at least some of you at least some of the time experience God in church.  I know I find God here.  Not in the sermon probably, but as the scriptures are read, as the organ plays and the choir sings, as prayers are offered, as people stream forward to place their green prayer cards in the baskets, and kneel at the altar, because we have a sense that prayer is important, prayer is real, God hears our prayer, God answers prayer, God speaks to us when we pray.           

There’s an old story about a congregation that decided to build a new church.  They labored and sacrificed, and finally it was finished.  And the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of it.  It was a masterpiece.  But then they went inside and someone asked, “Where is the light?  It’s dark in here?  There’s no chandelier or candelabra?  How will the church be lit?”  And so the architect pointed to some brackets on the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, and said, “Each time you are here, the place where you are will be lit.  And each time you aren’t here, that place will be dark.  This is to remind you that whenever you are not here, some part of God’s house will be dark, it will be empty.”           

This is a good reminder for all of us, I think, because ultimately it’s all about relationships, our relationships with other people, our relationship with God, our relationship with our own soul, with our own self.  I was watching some program on TV, I can’t even recall exactly what it was now, but someone was chastising another person for doing something bad, for potentially being a bad person, and she was trying to prevent this in this other person, so she said, “You’re going to need your soul someday, you’re going to need your soul, and if you’re not careful, you’re not going to have one.”           

It’s fair warning for all of us, I think, if we’re not careful.  I’ve been talking about a place, what if there were a place?  But ultimately it’s about a place in your heart and in your soul, it’s about a place in the heart and soul of your relationship with other people, and with God.  Oh a church can cultivate a sense of this, it can nurture us in the right direction, but ultimately it’s about a place in your own heart and soul, a place in your own deepest self, where you can find God.           

I think this is what Jesus was trying to tell this woman at the well.  He said, Oh sure, you can go up on that mountain to pray, probably referring to Mount Gerizim, where there once had been a temple.  It was a sacred place to the Samaritans.  Or, Jesus said, you can go to Jerusalem to pray.  But the time is coming, he said, the time is coming, indeed it is here already, when those who are really going to find what they’re looking for, will worship God in spirit and in truth, they will worship God and know God and be touched by God at the very deepest part of their beings, at the deepest core of their soul, at the very heart of who they are, and it will be this change at the heart of who we are that will affect and touch and reach out to other people.           

Tony Campolo, a fairly famous author and speaker, tells about the time he went to the wrong funeral.  He showed up at the funeral home, he thought he had the right time and place, for the funeral of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, an older woman he knew as a boy.  She’d been his Sunday School teacher.  But when he got there and looked in the casket, it wasn’t Mrs. Kirkpatrick.  Now sometimes you have to be careful, people don’t always look like themselves at the funeral home, he hadn’t seen her in years, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t Mrs. Kirkpatrick, he was actually very sure it wasn’t her.  For one thing, it was a man in the casket.  And just as he was about to turn around and leave, a woman grabs Tony by the sleeve, and with a trembling voice she says, “You were his friend, weren’t you?”  And it was only then that Tony looked around and realized that there was no one else there, just the minister and this widow with her husband.           

Well Tony just couldn’t say to her, “I’m sorry, I’m here by mistake.  Your husband obviously didn’t have a friend in the world.”  No.  He told her that he was her husband’s friend.  And he stayed with her through the service, he even went out with her in the limousine to the cemetery.  But finally when they got back he said, “I have to tell you something.  I want to be your friend and I can’t be your friend unless I tell you the truth.  I did not know your husband.  I came to the funeral by mistake.”  Tony didn’t know how she would respond, but she said, “You will never, ever, ever know how much your being here with me today has meant to me.”           

You know, there’s a whole world out there, a whole world of people who are hurting, who are in need, and they may have no one, no one to affect their lives in a positive way, to give them a little direction, to touch them in a way that brings healing, there are people out there who may have no one, no one, that is, but you and me.  What if there were a place?  We’re all looking for a place, to find God and to make a difference in the world.  That place is right at the very heart of who we are, where we receive God and are touched by God, and then touch others, we might be that touch of God upon the lives of other people.