University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

Video | Download Video
Audio Player Below | Download Audio

Sermon on Sunday, May 2, 2010
John Rogers- University Presbyterian Church
Acts 11:1-18 and Revelation 21:1-6
“Weaving God’s New Thing”

“David Goldhagen’s sculptural forms and massive hand-blown glass platters are distinguished by his unique style.  His approach to art glass captivates many visitors to his Hayesville, NC studio.

Using traditional glassblowing methods thousands of years old, David Goldhagen creates each piece individually, working with molten glass at temperatures in excess of 2000°F. His pieces capture a palette that moves from subtle to bold by the incorporation of bits of colored glass made from various mixtures of metallic oxides and rare earth elements, such as silver, cobalt, gold, copper, and others.

Each piece begins as a gathering of molten clear glass on the end of a five-foot blowpipe. Colors are then meticulously layered and manipulated on the surface, creating intricate patterns and movement within the sculpture. The design is then encased in another layers of crystal. Each piece is then either mouth blown or hand sculpted.

Goldhagen’s asymmetrical pods require unusual strength and mastery of technique, harnessing the fiery momentum, climaxing as the piece opens and spins out in one continuous movement. Some of these extraordinary pieces are in excess of 40” in diameter. Each sculpture up on completion is then annealed (a gradual cooling process), and hand polished.  After a careful final inspection, the artist signs and dates his work.

His images are viewed as being organic, sensual, fluid and energetic.  He draws his inspiration from his surroundings, and captures, on a platter, the glory of a sunrise over Lake Chatuge, or the blooming of an iris, deep within a sculpture; the movement in each piece mirroring the graceful turn of a dancer...the luminous curves of a seashell...the exaltation of the human spirit.”

Goldhagen is an artist who has mastered his craft of glassblowing. I was able to witness this firsthand 10 years ago when I watched him work a piece of common glass into a beautiful piece of art.

As he turns the long blowpipe he is imagining something beautiful… something remarkable… something new… something that will ultimately have his signature. He works it with his hands and breathes life into the impressionable glass.

The theological symbolism is evident.  

As an artist would take a simple piece of glass and turn it into a fine piece of art, so God will take the pieces of his creation and form them into something beautiful, again… where the “first heaven and the first earth had passed away”, God is making a new heaven and a new earth.

Both of our texts this morning point to a time of transition and God’s promise of new things.

In the Acts text we hear of Peter speaking of what has just taken place in ch. 10- Cornelius… the Gentiles… eating with each other… God has made all things clean…SHOCKER!

And how do those in Jerusalem respond? “When they heard this, they were silenced.                And they praised God saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

 In Revelation we hear these loud words about something new:

…out of the chaos of what is presented in this long debated book, we hear words from the restorer of life the promise of a true city coming out of what appears to be a pile of rubble. Even in the face of persecution and isolation God is working God’s new thing.

The tabernacle (God’s home) will be among mortals

God will dwell/ tabernacle/ make a home with them

            God will be with his peoples

            God will be with them

(Haiti illustration from Anna’s sermon on April 25, 2010)

This time next week many students will be graduating across the street and experiencing one of their “Omega” moments…

They will hear challenging and encouraging words from Chancellor Thorpe, John Grisham, and many others, including their parents. It is as if they have sipped the karmic waters of the Old Well and now they are on their marry way… Hummm, not always that easy or predictable. 

At the moment of what for many of them is their second great transition in life and the first time for most where they will get to live a financial independent life… what will their response be? How will God continue to weave new things into their lives and give them insight into the big questions, “What next?” What is there past the degree? Experience? Then what? Have I reached that point of cosmic clarity?

Not really.

I can’t help but think of the reaction of those gathered in Jerusalem when Peter returned from his eye opening experience. How they thought they would hear predictable words from Peter and those that were sent out. But what they hear is something dramatically different… dramatically new. “And they praised the Lord.” I imagine, yes, they praised the Lord, but why this new thing? Why the door opening up in a way we never expected? Why not get the good news out and Jesus will come back and redeem Jerusalem and there, yes, there, we will have the “new Jerusalem” we have long awaited? Maybe they are starting to be open to the “new thing”?

Our students arrived on campus four years ago to study what they considered a subject matter that was the very reason why they chose Carolina over so many other schools. But now, in the spring of 2010, how many of those plans are still the same? Within their life, then, now, and for eternity, God will be weaving new things and we are left to react and respond.

Henri Nouwen, in his insightful little book, “Can You Drink the Cup?”

…speaks about that it is not about drinking from a uniform “cup.”

On July 21, 1957, when he was being ordained a priest in his homeland of the Netherlands, his uncle Anton, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1922, gave him HIS chalice as an ordination gift.

It was a beautiful chalice, said Nouwen, “made by a famous Dutch goldsmith and adorned with his grandmother’s diamonds. The foot was decorated with a crucifix shaped as a tree of life, from which golden grapes and grape leaves grew to cover the node of the bowl. Around the rim of the foot Latin words were engraved translated meaning, ‘I am the vine you are the branches.”

Nouwen says this was a precious gift and important to him throughout his ministry. But at the end of his ministry living in Toronto at the L’Ache Daybreak Community, Nouwen said it mostly stayed in the sacristy. After 37-years of ministry following his ordination in his words, the chalice “no longer expresses what I am presently living.”

Several large cups made by the glassblower Simon Pearce of Vermont now replaced the ordination gift. “These glass cups speak about a new way of being human.” Nouwen continues, “I am happy with these cups on the altar table today, but without the golden chalice given me by my uncle Anton nearly forty years ago, they would not mean as much to me as they do.”

What Nouwen was doing was honoring where and how God was calling him at this particular place in his life. He had to faithfully exegete his community at the Daybreak Community as much as he had to interpret the students at Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame.

God was weaving God’s new thing within Nouwen’s ministry in Toronto as much as God was in 1957 on the day of his ordination.

In the words of Brian Blount, “God is weaving God’s new thing.” Are we paying attention?

Our God is able to refine and refashion us like a master glass blower. At the end of the 5-foot blowpipe God breathes more creation into our broken and ram shackled lives. Turning, fashioning, with meticulous and attentive detail, God once again says this is good.

Come to this table this morning… Come and listen… Come and watch… Come and smell… Come and hear what God is doing and how God is waiting to weave God’s new thing in you and have you drink from the springs of the water of life. Let us celebrate together.

Thanks be to God!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.