(Sermons: Click on the Links on the bottom of the page for some of Rebecca's sermons.)      
 Footprints      

Wow!  What an exciting past few months I have had.  As you may know, I love to travel and it’s been wonderful being afforded the opportunity to go so many different and interesting places. 

Yesterday, my mother, daughter and I returned from Egypt and it was a broadening experience indeed.  We spent much of our time, of course, viewing ancient Egyptian ruins.  We went to the famous temples at Abu Simbel, erected by Ramses II to show his superiority and military might to the Sudanese across the river.  We viewed the Giza Pyramids up close and personal, as well as enjoyed them out our hotel room windows.  We went to the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens where many pharaohs and their wives and their children were buried.  We saw temples and tombs and mummies, large and small, reminding us of the immensity and power of the ancient Egyptian empire. 

I also enjoyed my own personal mental soundtrack on the tour.  (Don’t you sometimes have a song that gets stuck in your head and you just can’t seem to get rid of it.  Luckily, I like this song, for it was stuck in my head for most the time we were on tour.)  It was a song by the rock/pop star Sting and it goes like this: 

“The teachers told us, the Romans built this place,

They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire Garrison Town

They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods

But the stone gods did not make a sound

And their empire crumbled, 'til all that was left

Were the stones the workmen found

And all this time, the river flowed…

Endlessly, to the sea…” 

In the evening, as the weather cooled down (to 89° or 90° J), we would sit up on the top of the cruise boat and watch the shoreline go by.  The Nile looks exactly as you would think it would: palm trees in the foreground, sand dunes behind them, often nothing more than that.  Sometimes you might see a farmer working in the fields or a donkey pulling a cart.  The river would flow on either side of us and I would think about the vast empires that have crumbled – in Egypt and all over the world – while the river continues on. 

I also thought about the Egyptians praying to their stone gods that remained silent and about us as we pray to our God today.  It seems to me that the “river”, whether it be Nile or Amazon or Hudson or something else, will be flowing long after we are gone and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to leave behind something more than stones for those after me to find. 

So herein lies the questions: what and how?  I believe that we are called as Christians to leave a world behind us that bespeaks Jesus’ presence in it.  His presence, that was not known for “things” like buildings or monuments, but instead for an unconditional acceptance of and love for others.  This “something” is a lot more difficult to build and maintain than the glorious statues that we saw on our trip, but perhaps more important in the long-run, in a world that is desperate for it.  The more love and acceptance we can express to and for others, the more love and acceptance will become a tangible reality, a natural condition of our world, rather than an imagined ideal. 

Ironically enough, even as I write these pretty words, I am aware that nothing can stress your ability to live them out more than traveling.  I wonder whether I truly live them or only intone them, and if it is the latter, how I might better rise to Jesus’ command.  So this is my challenge, to you, to myself, to us, as we leave Eastertide, celebrate Pentecost and reenter Ordinary Time: let us leave a legacy of love, that all who meet and know us are gathered into the light of God’s love. 

- Rev. Rebecca Segers

  Sermons: Click on the following links for Rebecca's sermons.