Sermon for August 26th, 2018

Readings:

Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69

The first five books in our Bible, as many of you know, are known as the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (they are also known as the Torah or the Pentateuch). Although Leviticus and Numbers can be something of a tough read, I’m willing to bet that most of you have some familiarity with the stories in Genesis and Exodus. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, and of course Moses leading the Children of Israel out of slavery and into the Promised Land; these stories are a familiar part of our faith and even our Western culture. Movies, musicals and countless works of priceless art have been crafted around these stories.

 

The Book of Joshua, which we read today, is a continuation of the story after the death of Moses. It details the events that happened to the Children of Israel once they arrived in the Promised Land. It is the “now what?” book, if you will. In other words: now that you have witnessed God’s salvation, now that you have been delivered from slavery and death, now that you have reached the promised land…now what? How are you going to live from this point forward? That is really the question that Joshua wants to ask the assembly in the part that we just heard this morning that comes from the very end of the Book of Joshua.

 

And just before Joshua asks this all-important question (in the part of the story that we didn’t read today), Joshua retells almost the entire story of the Children of Israel’s deliverance. Beginning the Abraham, Joshua reminds them how every step of the way God was with them. Joshua reminds them of how God sent Moses and Aaron and the plagues, and how he had delivered them from the Egyptians, through the Red Sea, fed them in the desert, led them through the Jordan, and allowed them to take possession of the Promised Land. Joshua reminds them of what God had done for them, and then he asks them: whom are you going to serve?

 

Well of course the people say: we will serve the Lord! How could we not?! They were just reminded of what God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had done for them; how could they possibly even consider serving any other gods? Well this sounds great; They made a good good decision; now on to living a blessed life in the Promised Land, right? Public affirmation of faith made, now on with their lives.

 

Well Joshua was smart, because after the whole community promised that they would follow the God of Israel and no other, after they promised that they would serve the Lord, he not only wrote it down, he also set up a large stone in that place as an ongoing reminder, or memorial, of the promise they had made. Joshua was justifiably a bit skeptical of how capable these people were going to be of keeping and remembering this promise. No doubt, because Joshua remembered just how easy it was for the Children of Israel to forget what God had done for them. Think back to the Exodus story for a moment. How many wonders had the Hebrews seen by the time they reached the Red Sea? And still the Children of Israel complained against Moses and wanted to turn back. Then after they had been led safely to the other shore, been miraculously fed in the desert, and made it to the foot of Mount Sinai, how long did it take them to grow impatient, forget the miracles they had just witnessed and turn to worshipping other Gods? Not very long. Joshua knew that these people would need to be reminded, and reminded frequently, of what God had done for them, because he knew that the temptation to turn to other gods is always present. And we are always liable to succumb to it. At some point we are bound to, and we will always be in need of something to draw us back to the worship of the true God.

 

I don’t think human nature has really changed one bit since Joshua’s time. We are still always being tempted to serve other gods. We still forget what our God has done for us; we grow impatient and before we know it we start looking to other gods for answers; we start serving other gods. It’s easy for us to do too, because we don’t call our gods by proper names anymore, we don’t even think of them as gods, so we don’t realize that we are worshipping or serving an idol; we don’t think that we have turned away from our God, we might even convince ourselves that we are serving the true God when we serve one of these idols, but I wonder sometimes, I really do.

 

Think of all the –isms in our world that people are attached to (or have been attached to): nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, liberalism, conservatism, capitalism…some of these start out as great ideas or good things, but once they move from being an idea to an ideology; once they become something we are devoted to; when they are no longer a means to an end but the end itself…that is when they become a false idol. They become another god that we are serving. We gradually forget the true God. We forget what he has done for us. We forget the promises that were made. We all do it. All the time. These other gods have a very sneaky way of distracting us, dividing us, and drawing us further and further away from the God that actually has the power to save us.

 

We humans are weak. Our God is a jealous God; he wants us to love and serve him only; but he knows that we are weak. He knows that we are constantly being tempted to forget his mercies and strength; we are constantly being tempted to serve other gods. So time and time again, God establishes rituals and prayers and he sends leaders and prophets like Joshua to remind the community and to build physical reminders of God’s presence in our midst. There is a reason why Jesus in his Last Supper commanded his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me.” It is because God knows how easy it is for us to forget. He knows that we need constant, daily reminders of what he has done. That is why the creed is so important, and the scriptures are so important; That is why many of our prayers, including the prayers we say at the altar, don’t just ask God to do things, but also retell the story of what he has already done; We need these reminders. We need them because each and every day we are faced with the same question that Joshua put to the Children of Israel; each day, each moment we have to decide whom we shall serve.

Sermon for August 19th, 2018

Readings:

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

There is a great quote that I love from Dr. Maya Angelou where she says: “If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

 

What she meant, I think, was that people (intentionally or unintentionally) people reveal themselves to you. People show you their character; sometimes people own up to their own personality flaws, but in different ways, people show you who they are. You should believe them. You should believe them the first time they show you.

 

How many times have we gotten a glimpse of someone’s character and said to ourselves: “Oh, No! This person can’t really be that way. I must have just caught them on a bad day. She can’t really be that negative; He can’t really be abusive?” How many times do we try to justify someone else’s behavior, just so that we don’t have to believe what they have just shown us? We try to convince ourselves that this little character flaw was just an anomaly. How many times have people told us something about themselves and we just dismissed it, thinking that we know them better than they do?

 

Dr. Angelou’s advice is: don’t do that. You don’t have to figure everything out the hard way. Some things are revealed to you from the beginning. You don’t have to suffer or struggle for the information, it’s right there. You just have to decide to believe it, or not. You just have to decide what you are going to do with that piece of knowledge. It doesn’t mean that you are unforgiving to people, or that you head for the door the first time you see something in someone’s character that you don’t like. What it means is that you keep your eyes open. It means that you do not ignore or forget the information that has been revealed to you.

 

That, I think, is wisdom. I’m willing to bet that it was wisdom she learned the hard way, but it’s wisdom nonetheless. I am grateful to her for sharing that bit of wisdom with the world, because for those who have the power to receive it, and to believe it, that little piece of wisdom could spare them a lot of grief and heartache. That’s what wisdom does: wisdom wants to help us; to save us from suffering and pain and from making the same mistakes over and over again. Wisdom wants to bless our lives by giving us directions and insights. They can be simple, mundane things, or they can be incredibly profound. Wisdom is all around us, but how often do we ignore it?

 

How many times do we say to ourselves: that can’t be right…I think I know better? Why is it that we insist on going through life learning things the hard way?

 

Our Old Testament passage today comes from the Book of Proverbs. We don’t get readings from Proverbs all that often in our Sunday Lectionary and it’s a shame really, because Proverbs is full of wisdom. In fact, in our passage today, wisdom is personified very creatively as a woman. What kind of woman is she, you may ask? Well she is the kind of woman that after doing all the work herself: building her house, slaughtering her animals, making her wine and cooking her meal, she is the kind of woman that after doing all of that says to the simple people outside: “come.” She says: “Come in here and rest. Sit here and eat and drink, because I’ve already done all the work for you.” She doesn’t say: “No! This is mine. I worked for this and you can’t have it!” She says: “Don’t toil and struggle to do it all yourself: look! My table is already set, you just have to stop trying to do it your own way, and you can dine with me.” That is what kind of woman wisdom is. She wants others to benefit from the work that she has done.

 

And yet, people still reject her offer. People don’t like believing or trusting in things that are revealed to them. For some reason, it’s like we want to learn things the hard way or not at all. We seem to think that the only truths that are really true are the ones that we have discovered, or fought for, or suffered to find out ourselves. But here right in the middle of our Bible is this image of God, divine wisdom saying: “this doesn’t have to be as hard as you are making it. Let me tell you some things about life, and now that you’re listening, let me tell you some things about myself.”

 

It occurs to me that just as we are inclined to ignore the bad things that people reveal to us, we are also inclined to ignore the good things that God reveals to us. We don’t believe people when they show us who they are, that is why Maya Angelou’s advice is so important: because we should. But I also think that many times we don’t believe God, when he has shown us who he is. We think the only things worth believing are the things we found out ourselves, but that’s not wisdom.

 

Do you remember the Greek myth about Prometheus? He was the great hero of humanity that had to sneak up to Mount Olympus to steal fire from the Gods, and was punished severely for taking this divine light and bringing it down to mankind. He suffered but was celebrated as the great hero, because he had done it, he had found the precious fire of the Gods and brought it down to Man. That was the Greek myth.

 

Now look at what our scriptures are saying: our God, the true God, he’s not coveting, our hiding his fire; he’s not keeping his divine light away from humanity; he’s giving it to us…freely. We don’t have to climb up the mountain, he has already come down to us, and what he brought us, it wasn’t just light, or fire, or insight or wisdom…he brought us his own life and offers it to us. That’s a very different story.

 

We Christians are people who believe in revelation. Our God reveals himself to us; we don’t have to find him. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in every generation. We don’t have to discover God on our own, because he has been revealing himself since the beginning of time. He reveals himself in the wonders of nature, and in miracles that defy nature; he reveals himself in the prophets and sages that were inspired to write and compile our scriptures; he reveals himself in tradition; he reveals himself most supremely and fully in the life of Jesus Christ; a life that was first revealed to a little Jewish girl saying her prayers; a life that we all partake in when he again reveals himself in the breaking of bread, and in our prayers.

 

We do not have to find God. He has already found us. His wisdom is inviting us into her house. Are we prepared to take Dr. Angelou’s advice to the next level?

 

When God shows us who he is, will we believe him?

Sermon for August 12th, 2018

Readings:

1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

Elijah was one of the greatest prophets that the Israelites had ever known. Throughout the ages he has been revered by the Jewish people. Even today if you attend a Jewish Seder on Passover, you will likely find a chair and a cup reserved for Elijah. Elijah was so famous and important in Jesus’s day, that many people thought that Jesus was Elijah come again; some others thought that John the Baptist was Elijah come again. On the mountain of the Transfiguration, when Jesus’s appearance miraculously changes before the eye of Peter, James and John, It is Moses and Elijah that appear on either side of our Lord. So I don’t think that we can underestimate how important Elijah is to the history of our faith.

 

In the first Book of Kings, Elijah bursts onto the scene. We know very little about where he comes from or his background. What we know is that at that time the Kingdom of David had been split into two rival kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel in the North, where Elijah is working, and the Kingdom of Judah in the South. And the Kingdom of Israel, where Elijah is, was being led by a King named Ahab. Ahab had married a foreign princess named Jezebel, and instead of being faithful to his own God, the God of Israel, he had started to worship her God Baal. The prophets and priests of Baal were brought into the kingdom. Altars and shrines to Baal were setup, and the people began turning away from the God of Israel.

 

This troubles Elijah greatly, so he challenges the prophets of Baal to a public duel. He invites them to make a sacrifice to their God, Baal, to lay an animal on a pile of wood, but not to set fire to it. They should then call upon their God to ignite the offering. Elijah would do the same with his God, the God of Israel. The God that was able to send fire down upon the offering would indeed be the true God. Just to make sure there was no accusation of trickery, Elijah had water poured all over his sacrifice. The prophets of Baal tried their hardest, but alas, nothing happened to their offering. Elijah then cried out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, and his sacrifice burst into flames. His God was proven to be the true God. The people were amazed and the prophets of Baal were put to death.

 

You could say that Elijah was amazingly successful. He had done a great thing for his God. He had made a name for himself as well, but his success would be short lived. Because Elijah had also made for himself a very powerful enemy. The Queen Jezebel did not take kindly to her prophets being bested and killed. She vowed to have Elijah killed. So Elijah has to go on the run. And this is where we find him in our reading this morning.

 

After a day’s journey in the wilderness, Elijah, who had just experienced a powerful miracle; saw the power of his God; had his ministry publicly affirmed, this same Elijah succumbs to one of the most painful human emotions: despair. Elijah is experiencing a setback. He had been victorious, now he is on the run. Perhaps he thought that his victory over the prophets of Baal would move him up the corporate ladder. Perhaps he thought that King Ahab would be grateful for his correction and would promote him to chief prophet. Perhaps he thought that once people witnessed the power of the God of Israel that they would be unlikely to backslide again. But now all of these dreams of Elijah came crashing down around him. His brief moment of victory had turned into a failure. He wants to die.

 

He says to God: “take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Think about what Elijah is really saying there: “Take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” In order for life to have meaning for Elijah, he needs to be better, or better off, than those that came before him; Elijah wants to be making continual, uninterrupted progress in his life. He wants to see his fame, and his ministry, and his 401k grow. He should be moving up the ladder, not running for his life. He shouldn’t be worse off than his ancestors. Elijah sees God’s blessing in progress. If he is not progressing, then he just doesn’t want to go on. God might as well take away his life.

 

And then an angel visits him, touches him and simply says: “Get up and eat.” And there was food. Elijah ate and went back to sleep. The angel touched him again: “Get up and eat. You are going to need food for this journey.” So Elijah eats again. And the food gives him the strength to keep wandering in the desert for forty days. And eventually Elijah comes to Mount Horeb, the mount of God, and he hears God speak to him: “What are you doing here Elijah?”

 

And Elijah says to God: “I have tried to serve you, but I have failed. The people just won’t listen, and now they are seeking my life.” And God says to him: “Go, stand on the mountain, and wait for me to pass by.” And Elijah goes and stands on the mountain. First there comes a great wind, but God was not in the wind. Then there was a great earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then there came a great fire, but God was not in the fire. Then after the fire, a still small voice, almost like a profound silence. And Elijah knew that God was in that small voice, that silence, and he covered his face. And God asked him again: What are you doing here Elijah?”

 

And Elijah again said: “I have failed. I have tried to get your people to serve you, but they won’t listen and now they want to kill me.” And God says to him: “Go. Go back to the work you have been called to do, and on your way you are going to anoint new kings, and you are going to anoint a prophet to take your place when your time is over. I will take care of the rest.”

 

So Elijah goes back to his ministry, and back to calling people to faithfulness to the God of Israel, until the day that the Lord takes him home in glory. Then his junior Prophet, Elisha, picks up his mantle and carries on his work.

 

I have so much sympathy for Elijah sitting under that broom tree. It is so easy to get caught up in the idea of progress. It’s a great idea: if we work hard and do the right things that our lives will just get better and better. For some people that is what hope is all about: things just getting continually better.

 

The 20^thcentury loved the idea of progress. One of the most popular pavilions at the 1964 World’s Fair was Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, where you go from one decade to the next in the 20^thcentury and see how much better things kept getting. In between each scene they sing the song: “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow.” I admit I love that ride, it’s still at Disney World and it is a classic, but I would be lying if I told you that I thought that’s what the world is like: things just getting better all the time. Perhaps that ride would be better suited to Fantasyland than Tomorrowland. No one can look at the 20^thcentury and claim that it was a time of continual and uninterrupted progress, and I doubt that many of us could look at our own lives that way either. Life comes with ups and downs; it comes with successes and failures; progress is often followed by setback. If we think that God is only present in progress, then we are setting ourselves up for despair. Where was God when Elijah was running for his life? He was there feeding him in the desert; giving him the strength to endure his temporary exile. When Elijah’s efforts resulted in failure, what did God instruct him to do? Start over and make arrangements for the work to go on when your time is through.

 

Elijah’s ministry began with a tremendous success, and God showing himself in a spectacular public display of fire, but Elijah quickly learned afterwards that God is also present in the still, small voice, in the silence that can be found in the desert of despair.

 

Our hope as people of faith; our hope as Christians, is not that things are just going to keep getting better all the time; our hope is that even when times are bad, that God will feed us and sustain us; our hope is that even when we feel like we have failed, God will give us the grace to start again.

Sermon for August 5th, 2018

Readings:

Exodus 16:2-4,9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

Food. Bread. Eating your fill. Hunger

 

The Gospel readings over the last couple weeks have been largely focused on Jesus feeding people and today we heard again about food, bread, eating your fill, and hunger, not just from the Gospel, but also from the Book of Exodus and the Psalm. It has not escaped my attention that while the scriptures have wanted to talk about God feeding people over these last few weeks, my life outside of the pulpit has been largely concerned and preoccupied with finding a way to feed my husband.

 

For those of you that don’t know, Keith had a procedure done in June, and one of the unintended consequences was that a tiny little hole opened up in his esophagus, allowing fluids to get into his lungs. If you have ever had something go down the wrong pipe, you have an idea of what that feels like. Well it has been a solid month of doctors and hospitals and procedures trying to locate and repair, and repair again, and regrouping and rethinking what to do, to make it so that he can eat again. The doctors are now pretty confident that his body will heal itself (as our bodies are miraculously capable of doing), but it must be allowed to rest, so for the next month he will have to take his food as a liquid through a tube directly into his stomach. I do want thank you all for your prayers and concern; it has meant a lot to both of us. Hopefully after a month, his throat will heal and he can gradually go back to eating normally again.

 

I can tell you from personal experience, that your relationship with food changes when you are no longer able to just bite into whatever you want. If you diet is in some way limited, it’s like your other senses get heightened. You start to notice every single thing people on television are eating. You can smell a slice of pizza from miles away. Every crunch of a potato chip rings through the air like church bells on Easter Sunday morning. When you can’t have food, you start to think about it a whole lot more. At one point this month, Keith, who was watching ads about food while unable to eat, made a comment about how food obsessed our culture is and I have been reflecting on that a lot these past few days. I do think we are obsessed as a society, but not really with food…we are obsessed with consumption, and there’s a big difference.

 

We don’t really want to talk about or think about all that food is in all it’s glory and mystery; what we want to do is to focus all our desire and attention on the shortest (and what I would argue is really the most meaningless) part of the whole food exchange: the act of eating itself; consumption, or more specifically, taste. All we really want food to be is a cure for hunger and a pleasurable sensation; We care a whole lot about the couple of seconds that the food is in our mouths, we care about filling our bellies a few times a day, but do we really think much about what our food means to us apart from that? I don’t think we do. We want food to be good to eat, but we don’t really want to think about everything else that it is. I think that is the original human sin.

 

If you think back to Genesis, the serpent convinced Eve that the forbidden fruit was one thing, and one thing only: good to eat. He convinced her to overlook what eating it would mean to her relationship with God. He wants her to ignore where the food comes from, or who gave it to her; he doesn’t want her to think that eating it will have any consequences. He tells her: “surely you will not die. In fact, you will become wise like God.” The devil convinces Eve to disconnect her food from the one who gives it. The devil doesn’t want us to realize that our bellies belong to God too, perhaps because he knows how easy it is to lead people by their stomachs.

 

Hunger is a powerful force. Hunger will lead you to do and say things that you never thought you would do or say. Hunger can turn you away from God; Hunger can turn you against your neighbor, if you let it.

 

That is what the Israelites realized in the desert. They were complaining to Moses and Aaron and they were saying that they would rather have faced the Eqyptians, than face hunger. That is one scary enemy, hunger. To think that people would rather be slaves than be hungry. They had disconnected their food from God; Food, or rather the consumption of food, filling their bellies, had become another idol drawing people away from living in relationship with the one true God. What the Israelites were forced to reckon with during their sojourn in the desert is the idea that food comes from God. God made it abundantly clear to them through the miracle of the manna that he was feeding them; the fine, flaky bread was a product and a symbol of their relationship with Him; seeing this manna made them realize that all food comes from God. Eating is about so much more than just a few seconds of pleasant taste. It is a life-giving act; you cannot separate your food from the one who gives it, because food is about relationship as much as it is about nutrition. All the food the Israelites had ever eaten, all the food that they would ever eat, it all came from God. Food is about so much more than just taste and consumption. Food is about life and our relationship with the one who gives life. If you ever wonder why the Bible is so concerned about food all the time, I think it is because the Israelites learned a valuable lesson in the desert: food can either draw us closer to God and to each other, or it can drive us apart. Undoubtedly this is why fasting is such an important spiritual practice: it keeps the devil from using hunger as a tool to enslave us.

 

If we only think of food as something good to eat, if we don’t think about where it comes from or the relationships it represents, then it becomes an idol, just like any other. We cannot disconnect our food from the one who gives it. If I have a choice between being in relationship with a farmer or being in relationship with a head of lettuce, I am going to be in relationship with the farmer. The lettuce may feed me for a day or two, but eventually it will wither and rot. It is having a relationship with the farmer that will continue to feed me from one season to the next.

 

So it is with God. We cannot worship the bread without giving honor to the one who makes the wheat grow. Jesus doesn’t want us to follow him for a piece of bread; he wants us to have a living relationship with the one who makes the wheat grow. Food is not just about having a full belly; it is about so much more. Food is about life and giving honor and praise to the one who gives life. We dare not separate the two.

 

What if we stopped looking at food as just something to be consumed and started seeing it for all that it really is? What if we really appreciated how our food connects us to God and to each other? I wonder if the world might look a lot different than it does today.

 

What if this meal, this little piece of bread and this little sip of wine, which we are about to take, forced us to stop and think about all the other meals we take for granted? We know that this meal at the altar connects us to God in a very special way; but what if it can also remind us of how every other meal connects us to God, and to each other?

 

Maybe this meal isn’t meant to fill our bellies as much as it is meant to fill our lives with gratitude for the fact that all food, whether it come from the dollar menu at the local drive thru or whether it comes from the pharmacy in a bottle, all food comes from God. If we really appreciated where our food comes from and how it shapes our lives and our relationships, then no meal should ever be taken for granted.

 

Every meal would begin with the simple recognition that these are the gifts of God for the people of God.