09.21.08
This Week’s Sermon – Talking the Walk
Hello, everyone! I hope you all have had a great week. I’m especially praying for my friends and family in the Louisville area who’ve struggled without power since last weekend. I think most everyone is back up and running but the prayers continue. Here is this week’s sermon, a continuation of our series on “Spending the Day with God.” Have a great week!
SCRIPTURE – 1 Peter 3:8-17
Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,
“Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from deceitful speech.
He must turn from evil and do good;
he must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.
SERMON
Spending the Day with God sermon series
#3 – Talking the Walk
Sept. 21, 2008
I want to read this one line from Peter again, because as we move into our conversation today it’s at the heart of what we are called to do as Christians. Peter says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have.” Another translation says, “Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you are living the way you are.”
Wait a second, Peter. I have no problems doing my best to live a Christian life, but to speak up and talk about it? That thought can make us squirm a little. It’s one thing to walk the walk of the Christian life, but to talk the talk? That conjures up images of street-corner preachers and slick-haired TV evangelists. And that’s not us.
Yet, as we move into our day, we are called to take who we are and live that out to the fullest. Last week, when we talked about spending the morning with God, I mentioned that we can use the stillness of the morning to ground ourselves in the understanding that we are first and foremost a child of God, who created us and the day ahead of us. So on days when we are able to start this way, and even on the days when we don’t, we are called to move into the day living as sons and daughters – children – of God.
One of the titles Jesus uses for himself in the gospels is “Son of Man.” If we move past the gender bias inherent there we learn that the title “son of” means “the essence of.” Its modern equivalent is “chip off the old block.” In other words, Jesus is the essence of humanity, the embodiment of the best qualities of humanity. So to use another title for Jesus – Son of God – says that Jesus represented the essence of God during his time on earth. So what am I saying when I say that we are called to move into our day as “sons and daughters of God?”
Are we prepared to take on that kind of responsibility? It sounds kind of heavy. “Go forth and be the essence of God in this world.” I’m just lucky if my socks match. And yet, God calls us to be witnesses to what we have seen and heard and experienced, to live out what we have been trained to do.
Wait! What training? You mean you didn’t hear about the weekly seminar on how to live out your faith? This time IS the training. In his book “Testimony,” Tom Long says, “Worship is the language school of life, where we learn the vocabulary to talk about God.” In other words, we learn on Sunday what to say on Monday, things like “forgiveness” and “peace” and “grace” and “hospitality.”
Sunday is not just one more day in a string of days. Its relationship to the other days is not just chronological. It is the day that makes all the other days make sense and we carry what we learn here into each day. We are called to worship as people who have real lives and to live as people who worship.
Does that mean we have to significantly change how we go about our days? Should we start wearing white robes or pepper our conversations with a lot of “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord!” Go ahead if you want but you may not find a lot of people who want to talk to you. I don’t believe we are being called to do anything differently than what we do now in our lives. The Christian life is just an ordinary way of life – eating, conversing, running errands, cooking, relating – refracted through the lens of the power of Christ in our lives.
That doesn’t mean our mouths should drool with Jesus talk. I’m a firm believer that Jesus’ name is taken in vain all the time by people trying to push an agenda or a gospel of wealth or an all-expenses-paid guilt trip. Brian McLaren argues that based on the state of Christianity in our country today, he wonders if Jesus would be a Christian. What is missing in this world is not God talk – we have plenty of that. What is missing is authentic God talk. There are a lot of falsities out there about who Jesus is and how God works in our lives. What is most often missing is one simple thing: the truth, as we have experienced it in our own lives.
If we are going to tell the truth about our lives, God has to be part of the conversation, because we simply would not be where we are right now if not for God. God didn’t bring us to this point in our lives so we could hide our light under a basket. But telling the truth puts us in a bind. How do we talk about Jesus without sounding like we’re Bible-thumping crazies? Sometimes we feel like comedian Flip Wilson, who said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Bystander. They wanted me to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but I didn’t want to get involved.”
As we move into our day, we ARE called to get involved, to get involved in God’s work in this world, to be another pair of hands and feet that work to sow the seeds of the kingdom of God. That doesn’t mean we have to wear our religion on our sleeves. Instead, we’re called to weave it into the very fabric of our everyday garments.
That can be quite a challenge. Sometimes the commands of Jesus and the demands of life are in conflict with each other. Do we stand up for what we believe is right or sit down to save our reputation? Do we speak up for those who don’t have a voice or stay quiet for fear of being silenced? Do we dare say, “I believe” and risk being given a cross to bear? When the Bible says, “Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you are living the way you are,” it assumes we are living our days the way we have been called to live. If we choose to walk a walk that doesn’t tell the truth about what we believe, then Jesus Christ isn’t our Lord, he’s just our Mascot.
Maybe what scares us about fully claiming our faith is that we don’t know for sure if we’ve got it right or not. How do we know for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what we believe is true? Enough good people die every day to disprove every word we say here on Sunday morning. I’m a lot more reluctant to tell someone else about my beliefs if I’m not so sure about them myself.
We are not called to convert anyone. That’s God’s job. We’re not even called to prove anything, because we don’t have any proof. All we have is our testimony, our story. As we live through our day, through the words we use and the choices we make we are called to simply say, “Here’s what I have experienced. I am not claiming that it is perfect or enough or even very good, but I believe that it has led me to a very good thing.”
Those are simple words but they have the power to transform our world. When we worship, when we speak to God and listen to God speak to us, we are armed with an incredibly powerful weapon that has always been seen as a threat in our world. The early Christians didn’t worship in underground catacombs because they liked the cool air. They were hiding because the Roman authorities recognized the transformative power of the words they were speaking.
Isn’t our world in need of those kinds of words? So many words are spoken each day that wound, tear down, and devastate. Words have such destructive power. But the opposite is also true. Remember, God said, “Let there be light.” Words have the power to create, to heal, to illuminate, to give hope. These are the words of truth we are called to speak, words mixed in with the cups of coffee we share with a friend or the coupons we share with the grocery clerk or the smile we share with our neighbors. A healing word. A hopeful word.
Peter says we have to be prepared to share these words, because if we walk the walk, people are going to take notice. People are going to see that we have something they don’t. Tom Long says, “The world is full of stories searching for the One True Story that helps all other stories make sense, the story of a God who loves us.” We’ve heard that story. We love that story. And we are called to tell that story with our actions and our words.
We hear a lot of words every Sunday. Some of them have a deep meaning for us, some of them are more difficult for us to understand. Can any of us fully grasp the meaning of communion or forgiveness or love? I know I can’t. But I do know one word that, when spoken to me, changed everything about my life. I didn’t understand the word when I first heard it. In fact, I’m not sure I completely understand it now. It’s that kind of word. But I know that people who’ve heard the word have been changed. And I know there are so many more people out there who desperately need to hear this word. It’s just one word. You can speak it with your mouth or with your arms or with your heart. No matter how you speak it, it needs to be spoken.
The word is “Jesus.”
09.15.08
This Week’s Sermon – Oh What A Beautiful Morning
Good day, everyone! This is the second sermon in my series called “Spending the Day with God.” I wrote on my Facebook page that there’s something ironic about a night owl preaching on the joy of the morning. I pray you have a great week!
SCRIPTURE - Mark 1:35-39
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
SERMON
Spending the Day with God sermon series
#2 – Oh What a Beautiful Morning!
Sept. 14, 2008
I’m not a morning person. I’m a tried-and-true night owl. In fact, when I was younger, I didn’t realize the sun came up before 9 a.m. I figured it got up when I did. I swore coming out of seminary that I would not go to a church that had an early morning service. I guess God had other plans.
But I still struggle with mornings. In my freshman year in college I actually failed a geography course because it met at 8 a.m. and I simply stopped going because that was too early to try and learn something. I deliberately chose my first job at a newspaper because my hours started at 4 p.m., which gave me just enough time to get up, shower and eat breakfast before I had to be at work.
But as I’ve aged I’ve been forced to reckon with the fact that the day does start before 9 a.m. and that there may actually be some benefit to being awake for it. We have to get Sydney up early for school each day and as much as I grumble about that – I’ve nicknamed our alarm clock “Satan” – there is a joy that comes from greeting the day at the beginning instead of in the middle.
We continue our sermon series on spending the day with God by looking at our mornings. I have a feeling a lot of the biblical writers were morning people. In fact, I sense a bit of a bias against us night owls, like when Psalm 30 says, “Sing to the LORD, you saints of his; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” I know some people who rejoice quite heavily in the night and then weep in the morning, but I don’t think that’s what the psalmist was talking about here.
This Psalm touches on an important biblical theme here when it comes to mornings, and that is the sense of renewal, the idea that every morning brings with it a new day. It’s more than just another 24 hours. It’s more than what the bumper sticker says: “Same stuff, different day.” I edited that for church use. Instead, each day is something totally new. The hymn “Morning Has Broken” ends by saying, “Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s re-creation of the new day.” In other words, each day is a re-creation of the new day, the first day when God created this world.
And if we carry that metaphor forward, then not only is the day re-created, but so are we. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” There are a lot of mornings when I wake up with aches and pains that are a reminder of the outwardly wasting away, but how many mornings do I remember Paul’s words about this daily renewal?
Each day when we wake up God is calling us forth once again into the day God has created for us. Darkness was upon the face of the earth, and God said, “Let there be light.” Darkness surrounds me as I sleep and God says, “Let there be Kory.” And there is Kory. Maybe a bit groggy, maybe with sleep in his eyes, but there is Kory, standing as a new creation at the threshold of this new day.
Of course, that may be a bit Pollyanna-ish of me. Maybe each day really is just another day. Sure, each day is a chance for renewal but it’s also another chance for failure. You know how the morning prayer goes: “Dear God, I think you’d be proud of me! So far today I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, lusted, lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or overindulgent. I’m very thankful for that. In a few minutes, though, I’m going to get out of bed. From then on I’m probably going to need a LOT of help.”
I have to admit that I don’t always wake up and claim the renewal Paul talked about. In fact, usually my first thoughts in the morning are much more mundane and task-oriented. Many times my waking thoughts are not about God or creation or anything spiritual. Instead, the first thing I think of is my to-do list. What’s on the agenda for today? What’s in that square on my calendar? The weight of the day starts to bear down on us even before we rise.
That’s why I really like the Mark passage we read today. Mark tells us that very early in the morning, so early it was still dark (which must mean it was before 9 a.m.), Jesus goes off by himself to pray. While he’s praying, enjoying his solitude, a few disciples come to him and say, “Everyone is looking for you!” So much for solitude and prayer and time with God.
I can’t begin to count how many mornings I’ve been awoke by the thump-thump-thump of my girls’ pajama feet running into our room, “Daddy, when are you going to get up and make pancakes?” Or the ring of the phone. Or my own to-do list flashing like a neon sign in my head. It’s not really very peaceful to wake up with a sense of urgency about the day. “Everyone is looking for you!”
The problem is that if we start our day by trying to respond to that statement, we can easily forget who we are. We are not just a parent or child or consumer or pancake-maker or chauffeur or employee or square filler. We are a child of God. And if we don’t start our day with that reminder, we may forget it. We are going to be overwhelmed with messages during the day about our worth and how it is calculated. We’ll be told over and over that we are either too important because everyone is looking for us or not important enough because we don’t own the right things or look the right way or run with the right crowd.
But our value is not determined by what others think or say about us. Our value starts with our Creator, the one who called us forth and said, “Let there be Kory!” Our value as human beings comes simply from the fact that God values us and has created this day for us. Each morning is a resurrection, a return from the darkness of sleep into the light of God’s love. Each day is a new day with great potential if we choose to start it that way, if we choose to make God part of our morning routine.
There was a rabbinic tradition in Jesus’ day that a devout Jew would bless God at least one hundred times a day. It would start with waking up: “Blessed art Thou, O Sovereign of the Universe, that you have delivered me from darkness and opened my eyes.”
That’s an amazing routine to have. We all have our morning routines, but probably nothing like that. You know, it’s a bit peculiar to me how much we do to take care of our bodies each morning. We brush our teeth, we shower, we exercise, we put on deodorant, we eat food for nourishment. And yet, do we give our faith the same attention? To paraphrase Jesus, what good is it to have a well-toned, well-fed, cleaning-smelling body and yet forfeit your soul?
I couldn’t imagine going a week without brushing my teeth or taking a shower or eating. And yet many times we’ll go a week or longer without doing something in the morning to nourish our faith and our relationship with God. Just as we need physical energy for the day, we need spiritual energy to face the challenges and opportunities that await us.
More than anything, I believe morning is the best time to truly experience God’s presence before the urgency sets in and everyone starts looking for you. As we take in the early light, the stillness, the genesis of the day, God is there. I remember one particular morning when this was true for me. I was in high school and was on vacation with my dad and his family down in Florida. We were staying in a condo that sat on a water channel to the ocean and we spent our day fishing the channel. The weather was sticky, the current was swift and the bait was really stinky, but it was still vacation. One morning my dad, who is an obnoxiously early riser, came into my room and woke me up to come out fishing with him. I was tempted to remind Dad that I could just as easily fish in the afternoon, but something in his voice made me get up.
When I got out to the dock, I could see why Dad wanted to share the morning. The weather was perfect, the channel was as still as a lake and even the bait didn’t smell as bad. I don’t remember if we caught anything that morning, but I will never forget standing beside my father, just him and me, enjoying the beginning of another day.
Every day will bring with it its joys and its challenges, its triumphs and its failures. No two days are the same, which is all the more reason we need to ground ourselves in the stability and dependability of God’s love and presence with us. We don’t know what this day brings, but each morning we have the opportunity to pause, to give thanks, and to invite God with us into it. You know, we can try to go it alone, to start the day as if we’re in charge. But, with God on our side, why would we?
09.11.08
Call Waiting?
If I were to ask you want your calling was, how would you answer? What do you believe you have been called to do in your life?
I think would we choose to answer that question differently based on our understanding of what the word “calling” means. Some of us might answer that our job is our calling. Others may say they are called to serve a particular way or work with a particular organization. Still others might say they were called to be parents or gardeners. What does it meant to be “called” to do something?
We speak a lot in the ministry about a “calling.” I can’t imagine anyone entering in the Lord’s service without being called to do so. “Yeah, I was reading through the want ads and saw a job opening for a pastor, so I thought I’d give it a try.” For those of us in the ministry, it just doesn’t work that way! We feel called to do what we are doing.
That’s not to say we’re the only people who are called to serve God. I believe everyone is. As a minister, I have the unique opportunity to merge my call (how I serve God) with my job (how I support my family). For some people, their job gives them the resources to live out their call; for others, their job is their calling.
There’s no right way to define your calling. If you feel you are serving God through what you are doing (be it through work or church or volunteering or family) then you are answering a call. In fact, the only wrong way to define your calling is to say you don’t have one! God’s kingdom is big enough for each one of us to have a role. You have a call.
So how do you identify your call? First of all, a call is never self-serving. God never calls us to do something that stops with us. When we answer our call, we’re taking the gifts God gave us and multiplying them to share with other people. We know we are answering God’s call in our life when other people are being blessed through it.
Secondly, being called doesn’t necessarily mean adding something to your plate. I believe a lot of people spend their lives looking for their call without realizing that sometimes God calls us to keep doing exactly what we’re doing! For example, I look at parenting as a call. Leigh and I are called to raise our girls to know God and have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Whether or not we are successful remains to be seen! But that is one of the calls God has put in our heart.
Thirdly, a true call from God brings God glory. Every call is important, whether it draws a lot of attention or goes unnoticed. Some people are called to serve in more public ways; others are called to serve in ways that don’t get much attention. We serve, not to please ourselves or others, but to please God. And God sees it all!
Finally, a call from God is one that you can’t do alone. If your response to God’s call is, “That’s a snap!” it’s probably not God doing the calling. I know many minister, myself included, who heard God’s call and said, “You want me to do WHAT?” A call from God is one that can only be answered with God’s help.
I encourage you to stay open to God’s leading in your life and to answering the call God places before you. You may be called to do something you never imagined or something with which you are intimately familiar. Most of all, I pray that God blesses you through your call just as I know you will be a blessing to others when you answer it.
09.09.08
This Week’s Sermon – The Gift of 24 Hours
Hi everyone! This Sunday I started a new sermon series called “Spending the Day with God.” We’re going to look at how we can include God in our day as we move from morning to evening. This opening sermon looked at the gift of each day and how we can acknowledge and thank the Giver. On that note, have a great day!
SCRIPTURE – Psalm 118:24
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
SERMON
A Day with God sermon series
Sermon #1 – The Gift of 24 Hours
Sept. 7, 2008
Have you ever had one of those days? You know what I’m talking about. The kind of day when you feel like the whole world woke up and decided to make your life miserable. Like everyone else was warned that things were going to go wrong and you didn’t get the memo. Leigh and I had one of those days recently. Leigh had to deal with unhelpful sales clerks, a flat tire and leaving her purse at home while I had to fix a bunch of mistakes, like inadvertently erasing the entire church homepage on the web and then accidentally destroying a piece of furniture I was putting together. That someone was me. Other than that, though, it was a great day!
Judith Viorst wrote about one of those days. Her book is called, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” From the moment he wakes up with gum in his hair, things just do not go Alexander’s way. At breakfast, Alexander’s brothers Nick and Anthony reach into their cereal boxes and pull out amazing prizes, while all Alexander gets when he reaches in his box is…cereal. His teacher doesn’t like his drawing of an invisible castle, he loses his yo-yo, there is no dessert in his lunch, the dentist tells him he has a cavity, there is kissing on TV, and he has to wear his railroad train pajamas – and he hates his railroad train pajamas. After deciding he wants to move to Australia, the book ends with Alexander’s mother assuring him that everyone has bad days, even people who live in Australia.
We’ve all had bad days and days much worse than those I’ve just described. We’ve had days that started out healthy and ended with a bad diagnosis. Days where we started with a job and ended unemployed. Days that started filled with love but ended filled with grief. We all have had those days.
But have you ever had a really good day, the kind of day that sticks out in your mind? My wedding day is like that for me, as well as the days on which my children were born. My ordination day. October 20, 1923, the day the Reese’s Cup was invented. When I think about those days, and then I think about those other days, I’m amazed at the scope of all that can happen in the span of 24 hours. How can we have such amazing days and then such terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days
We’re starting a sermon series today called “Spending the Day with God.” Today we’ll look at the value of 24 hours and then in the next few weeks work through the day –morning, daytime, and night – to see how we might better be able to be aware of God’s presence in our day and how such an awareness can make a difference in how we live beyond Sunday and into the rest of the week.
But let’s start with a day. In the very, very beginning of the Bible, the story tells us that God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Then God separated the light from the darkness, creating day and night. By doing this, God gave us a way to tell time. Before God made light, there was no way of knowing what time it was and existence must have just gone on and on and on, like that movie “Titanic” or a bad sermon. But God created light and gave us the concept of a day, as a separate entity from the night.
The psalmists understood that this creation of the day was an amazing thing to be celebrated. Psalm 84 says to God, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” Psalm 90 asks, “Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And then there is the passage we heard from Psalm 119: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
That’s an interesting little phrase. We know it, we say it, we sing it. But can we live it? Some days are easy to rejoice in – marriage days, ordination days, Reese’s Cup days – but what about flat-tire, gum-in-your-hair, purse-forgetting, no-prize-in-the-cereal days? Surely we’re not supposed to rejoice in those, are we?
I wish this verse read a bit differently. But as Christian author Max Lucado points out, this verse says, “Let us rejoice and be glad IN it,” not “after it” or “in spite of it.” That would make life a lot easier. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad when it’s over.” But no, says Lucado. This verse means rejoice in every day. Divorce days, final-exam days, surgery days, tax days. Every day is worthy of our joy.
The paradox is that those no good days are the days when we need God most, yet when God seems furthest away. Or is it that we are furthest away from God? If we don’t make it a practice of spending time with God and thanking God on all the days, then we may struggle to feel God’s presence when we need it most.
In his book, “When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box,” John Ortberg quotes Lewis Smedes, who said, “Every square on the calendar is a frame for one episode of my life.” Ortberg says we are all square fillers. I actually keep my yearly calendars, and when I look back through them I’m amazed at how I’ve filled up all the squares with things to do. It makes me feel important, you know? “Look at how busy I am. Look at how much I’m needed.” But I’m not sure I left any room for God in there.
We know sharing our day with God is something we should do, but why don’t we do it? I guess you could blame our increasing busyness. Joan Ryan said we are a nation that shouts at the microwave to hurry up. Time is our most precious commodity and we’re hesitant to give any of it away, even to the Creator of Time. Ortberg makes the point another way when he says, “It’s ironic that the early followers of Jesus could not be stopped by persecution, poverty, prison, or martyrdom. But we’re stunted by something as trivial as too much to do.”
If we’re not careful, we’re going to look up one day and realize just how many days have passed. I’m on day number 13,754. That’s a lot of squares that have been filled up and then Xed out. And what have I done with them? If God were to ask me for an accounting of those squares, would I be able to say to God that I used them wisely and faithfully, not only to serve but to give thanks? How would you account for how you used your days?
Seminary professor Thomas Long says spending a day with God may sound scary or difficult to pull off. But think of not doing it. Imagine reaching the age of seventy, having received more than 25,000 days as a gift from God, and not having given a single one back to him because we’re “too busy.”
I don’t have to tell you each day is a gift. I didn’t understand that when I was younger. I thought my days were unlimited, that they would never end. But I know that’s not true. As we age, as we watch our loved ones age, we realized we have been given a finite amount of time. We’re reminded of that way too often. Each day we live is one less day we have, and it’s up to use how to use it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics website has a chart for the average hours per day we spend on certain activities. For example, Americans spend an average of 8.5 hours sleeping, 1.2 hours eating and drinking, 2.6 hours watching television and 3.4 hours working (they must have surveyed a lot pastors!). The chart is broken down into all ages and ethnicities and geographical locations. But you know the one number that is consistent across the board? When you add up all the numbers in all the columns, you get 24 hours. No more, no less. That’s what we’ve each been given regardless of the size of our house or the model of our car or the way we make a living. No matter how many times we say, “I wish there were more hours in a day!” there’s not.
So if we know the time in each day is fixed and we know the number of days we have is limited, what’s keeping us from making God more a part of each day? What would happen if in one of our squares we wrote “time with God?” Prayer time or scripture reading or serving somewhere or taking a walk in nature. We’ll talk more in the next few weeks about how we can make room for God in each part of our day, but today I simply want to ask: “Have you been glad that you have today? Have you thanked God for it and invited God to spend it with you?”
We are all going to have bad days, days with long lines and bird droppings on our newly washed car. And we’ll all have good days, days when we can almost feel the promises of God’s peace and wholeness like a soft comforter around us. But no day starts out either way. Each day is a blank square, a gift, and it deserves a chance to be a good day. We no longer have yesterday. We do not yet have tomorrow. What we do have is today, a day that was created for and loaned to us, but that ultimately belongs to God. A day spent with God, regardless of what happens, is a good day. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
09.01.08
This Week’s Sermon – Turning Aside to God
Happy Labor Day, everyone! Unfortunately, there are no good Labor Day hymns. “We Wish You a Merry Labor Day?” “Silent Labor Day?” Not at our house! Anyway, I hope it’s a good day for you. Here’s this Sunday’s sermon, in which Moses was called away from his labors to work for God.
SCRIPTURE – Exodus 3:1-15
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
SERMON
Turning Aside to God
Exodus 3:1-15
August 31, 2008
School started on Wednesday for our daughter Sydney, which means the return of the daily routine. Wake up, go in and wake Sydney up, brush my teeth, go back in and wake Sydney up again, go downstairs and fix Sydney’s breakfast, go back upstairs to threaten Sydney with walking to school if she stays in bed and misses the bus. There’s a comfortable familiarity in the routine, isn’t there?
At the beginning of our story today Moses had settled into a nice routine. This day he probably got up early, put on some coffee and fetched his copy of the Midian Daily Gazette. He got his kids up for school and threatened to make them walk if they missed their camel. Then he kissed his wife goodbye and headed out to the sheep for a day of tending the flock. Nothing new here, just another day. At breakfast time, Moses was responsible for keeping the sheep safe. By dinner, he’d be responsible for freeing a whole nation of people from slavery.
On this workday like any other, on his umteenth trip up Mt. Horeb, probably chasing a pesky runaway sheep, Moses catches a glimpse of a strange sight, goes to investigate, and has his life changed forever by God. It’s interesting that God would choose to come to Moses, because from all we know, Moses wasn’t a particularly religious man at this point. In fact, there’s no sign up to this point that Moses worships God; after all, he grew up bowing to golden Egyptian idols.
Moses’ lack of familiarity with God may explain some of Moses’ reluctance to jump at this opportunity. A call from God isn’t necessarily like winning the divine lottery, as Moses points out when he responds, “Who am I, that I should go to the Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Or, as it’s translated in the Living Bible, “But I’m not the person for a job like that!” Moses is saying, “Me? God, you couldn’t be suggesting that I go, could you? I mean, I’m a worker not a leader. I’m one of the behind-the-scenes people, not the frontline person. “
Have you ever responded to God like that? I know I have in the past. As soon as I heard a call to serve God, the Excuse Machine would start churning: “You don’t want me! I’m not a trained spiritual professional. Still can’t find the book of Hosea in the Bible without looking in the table of contents. Slept in one morning last month and didn’t make it to the worship service. I’ve spent a Sunday or two on the green instead of in the pew. You see? You don’t want me, God. I’m a little under-qualified.”
Here’s a news flash: We’re ALL under-qualified to do God’s work. In fact, I would argue that we’re all a little under-qualified to live our lives because we all face things that are simply overwhelming for us. Moses made excuses because he felt inadequate to do this alone. Well, he WAS inadequate, but he wouldn’t be alone. God tells him, “Don’t worry, Moses, I’m not sending you out alone. I will be with you. I would never ask you to do something by yourself. You couldn’t do it without me, anyway. But with me, you can do anything.”
God’s giving him the hard sell, but Moses isn’t ready to give in that easy. “Well…well…What if they won’t listen to me? What if I tell them I’ve come to save them and just glare and cross their arms and ask, ‘Who sent you?’ What do I tell them?” In other words Moses is saying, “Not only do I not think I can do this, but nobody else does, either.”
And God does something never done before: God gives a name: “I am who I am.” Later, in the Gospel of John, when Jesus uses all his “I am” sayings – “I am the bread of life, I am the way, the truth and the life” – he is drawing directly on this statement to show his divinity: “I am who I am.”
For Moses and for us, that name means both comfort and mystery. It is comforting because it reminds us of the rock-solid stability of God. In a world where absolutely nothing is stable – jobs, governments, economies, our own bodies – God stays God. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses is our God today, and we can put our trust in God just as much as those people did thousands of years ago. God is the great “I AM.”
But there’s mystery in that name as well. “I am who I am” – what does that mean, anyway? OK, you are who you are, but who are you? When we’re faced with our own crossroads or tough decisions or crises of faith, what does that mean to us? Who ARE you, God?
I believe we each have to answer that for ourselves. Another translation of God’s name to Moses is, “I will be who I will be.” In other words, “I am God, and what that means for you will depend upon how you life your live.” Who is God in our lives? For Moses, God may have been “I am with you.” For others, God may be “I am patient” or “I am forgiving” or “I am loving.” For me, God is “I am your Lord.” Who is God for you? That’s both the power and the mystery of God in our lives. “I am who I am.”
So after a little more hemming and hawing from Moses, he finally agrees to God’s plan, and the rest is not only history, but epic movie material for Cecil B. DeMille. Moses’ journey to Egypt is the most important event in the history of our faith, at least until that night in the manger with shepherds and the angels and that bright star.
But did you know it almost never happened? We almost never had any of this story. No Great Plagues, no Ten Commandments, no Charleton Heston in the cool beard. But one thing, one split-second action, made the difference in this story and in the whole history of God’s relationship to his people. One teeny tiny little thing saved all those slaves, and ultimately saved us as well.
Moses is doing his job, living his life, tending his sheep, when he sees the Burning Bush. And the Bible says, “So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that Moses had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush.
He turned aside. That’s the thing. That’s what gets the whole ball rolling. Instead of keeping his head down, or ignoring this strange sight, or just plodding through is day, or going and telling someone else, he goes over and looks. And then God calls to him.
Moses could have said, “Wow, that bush is burning and it’s not being consumed! I should probably check that out! But, you know, I’ve got a job to do, and the wife is making meatloaf for dinner, and I’ve already taken a break from work this morning. I should probably just ignore it.” It was certainly his choice. His attention was his to give or not to give. And by giving it, his life was forever changed and enriched by God.
Often times the circumstances of our life and the evil that operates in the world around us keeps us from focusing on God’s presence in our lives. God is right there, in the midst of the storm, in the center of the chaos, but we are so distracted that we don’t even look. In your life, what keeps you from looking? What distracts you from seeing God’s presence around you?
We complete our routine day after day, we tend our sheep and pay our bills and do our best to be good family people and good citizens and even good churchgoers. We fight the good fight and try to keep a smile on even when it feels like there’s not much to smile about. But maybe, just maybe, God’s calling us to something greater, something peaceful, something more. Maybe there’s a burning bush in our lives, waiting for us to turn aside from our hectic pace and frantic lives, to take our noses off the grindstone and our hands off the panic button and look. And when we look, maybe, just maybe, God’s waiting to speak to us and call us to something far greater than we can ever imagine.
Moses turned aside to see a bush that was burning but not consumed. Today, God may work differently, but no less powerfully. My burning bush was a conversation in a parking lot with the minister’s wife, who said half-jokingly that I should go to seminary. Your burning bush may be a crisis in your life, or an empty nest, a job change, or a simple invitation from someone you know, maybe someone in this church, to serve or to teach or to lead. God speaks to you through those kinds of situations. And it’s your choice, your attention to give. Do you turn aside and look and give your attention to God, or do you ignore it because you think you are inadequate or under-qualified or not ready?
You woke up today, maybe had some coffee, maybe read the paper. When you woke up, maybe you were responsible for doing your job or providing for your family or taking care of your children or just making it through the day with your sanity and your hope intact. Sometimes that’s all we can do. But there’s a call out there. Maybe you haven’t heard it yet. Maybe you’ve already heard it, but don’t know how to respond. What would happen if you turned aside and said to God, “Here I am,” if you invited God to do something extraordinary in your life? Who would you be when you woke up tomorrow?
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
