The paradox is that the path to contentment runs right through the stony ground of struggle. The path that leads to joy runs through places of pain - our own, and that of others. We can work mightily to insulate ourselves from struggle and pain but we will only be locking our hearts away from the light of righteousness and the power of love. Our spirits need righteousness and love as much as our lungs need air. God wants to give us what we need.

We are invited to be present. We are invited to a wedding feast, a celebration prepared by God. The difficulty is that we do not recognize either the invitation or the party because it does not look the way we expect a celebration to look. We do not like the unexpected very much, particularly if it is hard. But true contentment only comes from pursuing righteousness…Loving God and our neighbor is not easy, Saying "yes" to God's invitations can be dangerous, scary, and arduous. But "yes" is the path to celebration. "Yes" is the road to the wedding feast.

I have been out of town for a couple of days. Part of the reason for my traveling is that I responded to an invitation I had received several months ago. The invitation was one of many I receive from organizations and institutions that have some claim on me.

I was busy preparing for Sabbatical when the invitation arrived in the mail, the event was far in the future, and so I had treated the invitation like a new wine with unknown possibilities. I placed it carefully in a cool dark place and allowed it to age while I paid attention to other things.

Then the right time came.

Wednesday evening my son Alex and I drove to the airport for a late afternoon flight. Then we sat, and sat, and sat some more. Our flight was delayed for over two hours. There were travelers around us who were testy. There were others who decided that all the rules of safety and civility did not apply to them. I could hear the complaints of outraged consumers who spent considerable energy bewailing their great misfortunes.

One passenger spent almost twenty minutes bending the ear of the woman next to him about the absolute importance of having an aisle seat. I wondered about the shape of the rest of his life that such small inconveniences could assume such huge proportions. I wondered why I, and so many of us worry, about things over which we cannot have any control.

What does the author of the letter to the Philippians say to impatient air travelers, and to all of us on this extended journey we call life? "Do not worry about anything, but in everything let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

By the time Alex and I arrived in Sewanee we had spent as much time in transit as if we had simply jumped into my car and driven all the way to Tennessee. We were tired and a little travel stressed. But it was still good. I had the company of my son on a shared adventure, and plenty of time to talk with time for comfortable silence in between. In Alex's case, the silence extended for the last hour of the drive from Nashville to Sewanee as the radio kept me company while he slept. I noticed that Nashville now has an NPR station and I had an alternative to Country and Western music. "Again I will say, Rejoice."

We arrived in Sewanee after midnight, went to the police station and picked up the keys to our room at the seminary. We had crossed a time zone in our travels so we had to get up at a time that felt to us an hour earlier than the hour that the clock announced a little too loudly Thursday morning. Alex was off to a school visit, and I went to the first of the Du Bose lecture series on Racial Justice.

Over the next two days I heard stories of struggle, stories of faith, stories of risk, love and hate. I heard how much grace a human being can hold, carrying it like a burden over miles, yearning for freedom, thirsting for equality and having nothing but that grace to sustain them for years.

I heard stories of atrocities visited on others in a moment of anger, and stories of the fierce stronghold that was Birmingham Alabama's social structure in the 50's. Race and class and US Steel defined religion and politics, life and death. Bull Connor used the streets and the courts to make life untenable for people of color and for those whose hearts were color-blind.

Smiling gracious people who did not even see the issue at hand allowed terror and depravation to be an everyday occurrence in their town. Diane McWortier, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Carry me Home" told us of her awakening to the grimmer sides of growing up white in Birmingham. Her stories recalled to me that phrase from Isaiah words, "a shroud that had been cast over all peoples." There was death and tears and disgrace in Birmingham. There was also hope for something better, a willingness to respond. The words of the prophet Isaiah were written in the Middle East but they ring out in resonance with that time in the American south.

The Rev. Shuttlesworth, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and our second lecturer, told us: "When God tells me to jump, I believe I'm supposed to jump, and not worry about where I'm going to land."

Not worry, we have we heard that recently…? "Do not worry about anything, but in everything let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Note that the passage does not promise physical protection or the absence of bodily harm.

Clearly, Shuttlesworth did not understand this admonition to mean that we should simply avoid conflict. He knew that he was being called to stand in the middle of the worst human beings might do. Shuttlesworth knew that the reason he was called to do so was love. He did not hate the people who made life a misery for so many. He loved the idea of freedom and equality and he believed that God had said "jump". So he jumped - into the face of violence, out into the streets of Birmingham.

The Rev. Shuttlesworth has not simply talked the talk. He has walked the walk He has the scars, the stripes to prove it. Yet he bears no visible animosity toward any man. He had in the long hot summer a sense of impish humor that numerous imprisonments, arrest, beatings and threats have not diminished. When a bomb exploded in his church killing four young girls he did not resort to hate, or violence. He took no joy in the death of the man convicted of the crime decades later. But he clearly has been formed by struggle, forged in the heat and light of conviction. He can speak deeply about truth because he has paid mightily for the wisdom he has earned.

All of us have seen Renaissance paintings of saints with a corona of light around them. This is no mere artistic convention. I saw such light emanating from this saintly man. In the Rev. Shuttlesworth I heard and saw a man who has lived and known what the author of the letter to the Philippians wrote: "I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

The Rev. Shuttlesworth say that to be a Christian means to be committed. As he stood at the lectern and spoke his lecture turned into a sermon and his conviction convicted us. We have to act like Christians, Shuttlesworth said. Acting like Christians means that we put our money, our energy, our time talent and hearts into responding to God. Where are the places of pain to which we have refused to be present? Where are the sites of smiling injustice, places where we turn our heads and our hearts so that we cannot see? The invitation to the heavenly wedding feast spoken of in Matthew's Gospel is still extended. But are we listening, or do our business and our farms distract us, like the wedding guests in Matthew's Gospel. Are we making light of the invitation to the feast?

The difficulty is that the feast table might look like a non-violent demonstration. The invitation might sound like an urging within us to address deep wrongs that are invisible to others. When God says jump, we best jump so that we land in the seat at the table that has been prepared for us. Contentment comes from being aligned with the will of God, the love of God, and the vocation to which each of us is called.

The world is still full of injustice and inequality. There is still work to be done in our society and in our own hearts. The invitations have been sent. Some of us have already opened them up. Now is the time of decision. Will we go to the feast? Will we walk in the paths that God has prepared for those who love him? The question is on the table…