[Editor's Note: This is my concluding sermon in "The Waverly Pulpit" series. I am retiring after serving the Waverly church for 30 years and a total of 41 years of active ministry, including being part-time state clerk/treasurer for the Presbytery of Scioto Valley for the last ten years. I thank you for your comments and support over the years. May God richly bless you through the words about the "Word made flesh" who lived among us.]
Genesis 28:10-22; Matthew 20:1-6; Romans 8:26-39
Did you ever wonder, “Why am I here?” Not the existential question, but why here, in this place. When I was in elementary school, my family would take day trips. My mother would navigate using a map. We would follow state and federal routes, but sometimes the routes would take us through some areas that no longer had much luster to them. You could tell that they were something once, but not any more. She would say, “I’ll be glad to get out of here.” It wasn’t as strong a complaint as the that of the Israelites in the wilderness, but it was the same sort of thought.
When I got the call to my first church, I was just glad to be any place where they would pay me to do what I had begun learning to do. It didn’t matter that the land was as flat at the dining room table or that most of it was acres of wheat, soybeans, and corn. After five years I thought that I should begin looking for the next call. I had a few inquiries. I was runner up for one church.
But after five more years, I was still in Rockford. Then I found out why. The church suffered a fire that destroyed the interior of the sanctuary and overflow area. The reason I was still there was to use those ten years of presence and experience to lead the people through the remodeling effort.
I left off seeking a call for nine months. As the end of the remodeling was coming into sight, three women representing a congregation in southern Ohio insisted on talking with me at a church and pastor search event. They insisted that I come visit and preach in a neutral pulpit, and then insisted that I was the one for their church.
It was a whirlwind but after leading the Rockford people back into their new sanctuary, I was whisked off to Waverly, like Philip ending up in Azotus after he had baptized the Ethiopian eunuch on the road between Jerusalem to Gaza.
Why was I here? I had not intended to go to southern Ohio. I had once turned down an inquiry from a church in this part of the world. It became evident after several years why I was meant to be here. The trustees started talking about the challenges of the existing buildings and the options of renovation, partial razing and reconstruction, or relocation. By the time my mental timetable for thinking about finding a new call arrived, we were up to our eyeballs in construction planning and details. And that, by the grace of God, was why I was here.
I am sure that Jacob was turning over in his mind why he was where he was. He had been a trickster since before birth, grappling with his fraternal but not identical twin Esau for the right to come out of the womb first. He lost that, but years later for the price of a meal of bread and lentil stew he bought the rights of the first son from Esau. And still later, he cheated Esau out of the patriarchal death-bed blessing. For his own safety his mother Rebekah sent him into exile with her extended family. Today’s reading happens when he is on his way to Haran and the family homestead of Laban.
On the way he camped out one night and through a dream received his – the third generation – blessing from God who renewed the promise first given to grandfather Abraham that his descendants will flourish and will one day possess the land on which he was sleeping. The restatement of the promise concludes with God saying that “Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. I am with you everywhere you go.”
I am sure Jacob wondered where he was going and what he would encounter. Because we know the end of the story, we know that he found Laban, fell in love with Rachel, married Leah on a bait and switch done by Laban, then married Rachel, and their female servants. Jacob cheated his father-in-law out of the best animals in the herds, and stole the family’s household gods. He had to leave Haran and his only option was to return to his homeland. He dreaded having to meet Esau. It turned out that Esau welcomed him. Jacob’s family prospered. The next generation went to Egypt under the care of Joseph, and the Israelites hunkered down to wait in toil for God to send Moses. So God did protect Jacob and his descendants.
His descendants include each of us.
And while God’s promised protection is an important take-away from this passage, I want to suggest that an even more important piece of the passage is Jacob’s response to the dream. He thought, “This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven.” What that means is that God was there and in fact God is there – in the present, not the past or the future tense. Jacob’s realization is that “God is here.”
“Here” is a movable place, because God said to Jacob, “I will protect you everywhere you go.” This was Jacob’s first direct encounter with God. It was Jacob’s call from God, his being drafted into the promise first given to his grandparents Abraham and Sarah. He had been only an heir to the promise; now the promise was laid upon him. God had opened his house to Jacob.
The Hebrew scripture, our Old Testament, is filled with stories of individuals going after gods which are not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What those seekers didn’t understand is that we don’t have to seek after God; God seeks after us and finds us. That was mostly because they thought God was somewhere else, anywhere else but here.
When several of your congregational ancestors first came to this piece of ground, they sensed that God is in this place. There was a special vibe. Some spoke of it, others reacted in ways that indicated that they knew this was holy ground. That isn’t to say that God wasn’t at 122 East North Street. God was, and had been. Witness the building of the original church, its earliest expansion 40 years later, the expansion and rebuilding nearly 70 years ago, and its renovation 20 years after that. In the sojourn of ministry, God led people of faith from that house of God to this piece of holy ground. God is here.
God is here in the all the people that have come through these doors, spent time with us and moved on in ministry in other locations or were transferred to the great cloud of witnesses the Hebrews letter writer extols. I have met God here in people who have been quiet and unassuming as well as in people who have been outspoken or towering presences. You, too, have met God in these people. I have met God here in visitors and in those who show up every time the doors are opened. You have met God in these people. I have met God in the quietness of the space and in the wondrous singing of a full congregation. I am sure that you have too.
I want you to take Jacob’s “aha” moment there at Bethel and make it your own, make this place your Bethel. I want you to understand that, in spite of our human foibles, our innate tendencies to sin, or our varied world viewpoints, God is here and is at work in what you do here — worshiping, praying, singing hymns, studying scripture, watering plants, folding bulletins, moving chairs, eating donuts.
God is not leaving the building. The person who has been the pastor for the last thirty is leaving, but God is not. The same God who brought me into your midst will be with Paula and me as we settle into a new life. The same God who brought you to this congregation, two years or two decades ago, remains here. The same God who brought me here, who brought Bob Getty and Charlotte O’Neil here, will bring your next pastor, whether that person stays a short time or a long time. God is not leaving the building.
God is here for the duration. God is here even as I speak and you listen. God is here in the silences between our words. God is here in anthem and antiphon. God is here in scripture and sermon. God is here in font and table. God is here. God has not left the building. God is not leaving the building. God will not leave the building.
You are here. God is here.
Alleluia! Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Follow Jesus
Psalm 119:33-40; Matthew 18:15-20; Ezekiel 33:7-11
Do you have stress? I do. And it’s mounting. Will we get all the boxes packed before the movers arrive? Will I get all the tasks done in time for the church or for the Presbytery? Will we get everything to the right places: packed, recycled, Goodwill-ed, thrown out?
I know you are stressed. Three Sundays from now this familiar face and presence will be gone. There will be things that don’t happen any more. There will be lots of questions about how this is done and how that is supposed to happen. It will be all right.
I remember coming here and having very few clues about how things were done. Mistakes were made, toes were stepped on, things happened or didn’t happen. We survived and flourished in new and unexpected ways.
Those of you who have been here only a few years know very few of the changes that have happened over the years. Announcements were once upon a time in the middle of the service, disrupting the worship flow. We now have worship leaders to share the reading and prayers at the beginning of the service. Rather than “Prayers of the People” there was only a pastoral prayer. We now have some hymns written in the 1980s and 90s rather than the 1880s and 90s. There is a more informal feel to worship. Just look at how few ties are worn by the men. And we get to see the faces of other worshipers rather than the backs of everyone’s heads.
Church isn’t the only place where stress happens. According to recent reports, Stress levels are higher than ever. According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, stress increased 18 percent for women and 24 percent for men between the years 1983 and 2009. Hit especially hard were people with lower incomes and less education. Overall, most of us are feeling more stress today because of economic pressures and the difficulty of protecting ourselves from the world and its constant flow of information. I guess that the sages of old were right, ignorance is bliss.
One of the wonders of the English language is that if you spell “stressed” backwards you have the word “desserts.” Unfortunately nutrition or calories raise some people’s stress rather than lowering it.
But there is some good news, according to USA Today: Stress decreases as you age. Yes, that's right. If you can stay alive and keep aging, eventually you’ll feel less stress. I’m looking forward to testing that hypothesis.
So what are people doing to deal with their stress? Adult coloring books are huge right now. Some are advertising “stress relieving patterns.” The mandala pattern is adapted from a Buddhist view of the universe. For coloring it is a kind of labyrinth walk. The Washington Post reports that about 12 million adult coloring books were sold in the United States in 2015. Whatever happened to the stress of keeping within the lines?
Or if you are an aural person, you can get a number of apps for your smart phone that provide guided meditation. A mellifluous voice quietly speaks, talking away stress and inducing calm. For me, I like to tune in a music app with reflective music that soothes. If I need livened up, I can turn to bombastic symphonies or heavy metal rock.
Or there are apps that guide you through the discipline of journaling, allowing your pen a chance to vent your stress and relax and focus beyond the immediate.
Long before coloring books and smart phones, the psalmist suggested some ways in which God’s people could de-stress. In the eight verses of Psalm 119's fifth stanza, the psalmist offers a simple, yet stress-relieving program designed to bring peace to the soul.
The first step is to get in touch with God’s ways.
“Lord, teach me what your statutes are about, and I will guard every part of them. Help me understand so I can guard your Instruction and keep it with all my heart. Lead me on the trail of your commandments because that is what I want.” (vv. 33-35).
The psalm writer wants to learn God’s statutes, laws and commandments – not because there’s value in memorizing a list of rules and regulations, but because these guidelines contain the way to life and peace.
Think of the Ten Commandments; you probably had occasion to memorize them. Every one of them is designed to help us, not hurt us. They are challenging to follow, but they are intended to be life-enhancing and to give us a positive framework for our words and actions. The first four commandments offer guidance for our relationship with God, while the last six explain what it means to have healthy relationships with each other (Exodus 20:1-17).
Our Protestant reformer faith ancestor John Calvin noted that God divided his law into two parts. The first part dealt with the worship of God’s majesty, and the second part dealt with “the duties of love” that have to do with people. The two are equally life-enhancing, and equally important for inner peace. No doubt Jesus had this approach in mind when he said that the greatest commandment challenged us both to “love the Lord your God” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40).
Two centuries later Methodism’s founder John Wesley saw two responses to God’s grace. He called the first response “Works of Piety” which included the individual practices of reading and studying the Scriptures, prayer, fasting, regularly attending worship, healthy living, sharing the faith with others, and the communal practice of holding other believers accountable, which comes directly from today’s gospel reading.
Wesley’s second response to grace was “Works of Mercy,” such things as individaully doing good works, visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others and communally seeking justice and ending oppression and discrimination.
Calvin and Wesley were pointing at the same dynamic relationships between the believer and God and with other human beings. The end result is that nothing can be more calming, more stress-relieving, than the knowledge that we are right with God and right with our neighbors, walking in God’s ways.
The psalmist gives us a second step helps us to avoid the ways of the stressful world around us.
“Turn my heart to your laws, not to greedy gain. Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. Make me live by your way” (vv. 36-37).
Instead of, or in addition to, focusing on a soothing soundtrack, the psalm advises us to turn our attention to God’s laws and “not to greedy gain.” The psalmist invites us to avert our eyes from worthless things and receive life in God’s ways.
Unfortunately, so much of our stressful world is focused on vanity and greed. Even our state governments are in the business of dangling riches in front of us through lottery ads for Power Ball and Mega-Millions, forming false dreams and harsh realities for many of the winners of the biggest pots.
This psalm, then, advises us to walk toward God and away from the ways of the stressful world around us. The psalm’s author may have written the psalm during or just after the Babylonian exile. The language of the entire psalm shows a knowledge of the wording and ethos of Deuteronomy, which likely dates from that period. The author wasn’t a contemporary of Jesus, but his work surely points toward the Jesus whom the gospels describe as turning away from temptation, worshiping the Father very deeply, and showing compassion, mercy, and grace to everyone he met, even those outside the Jewish tradition. Jesus is the living free and unexpected promise from God described by the psalm-writer:
“Confirm your promise to your servant—the promise that is for all those who honor you. Remove the insults that I dread because your rules are good. Look how I desire your precepts! Make me live by your righteousness” (vv. 38-40).
Although we can’t perfectly keep the commandments, we can seek to live in right relationship with God and with the people around us. Right relationship is what the word righteousness really means. This is the key to relieving stress and achieving peace.
Exchanging right relationships for righteousness, think about what Jesus was saying in his Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst or right relationships, for they will be filled....Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of right relationships, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven....Unless your right relationships exceed those of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:6, 10, 20 NRSV).
Following Jesus is all about right relationships. It is the key to experiencing inner calm. It puts us in touch with God’s ways and helps us to avoid the ways of the stressful world around us. Grow into a right relationship with Jesus and you can receive God’s promise of life. This is a righteous life – a life of right relationships – and it is the beginning of stress reduction and inner peace.
God promises to give life to those who respect God and walk in his ways. This is a life of right relationship with God, one which includes God's commandments but is not based on perfect adherence to them. That is beyond our ability, which Jesus himself realized when he said, “No one is good except the one God” (Mark 10:18). May we follow Jesus in the way that lead to a right relationship with him and less stress in our spirit.
General Resource: Homiletics, February 19, 2017.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Do you have stress? I do. And it’s mounting. Will we get all the boxes packed before the movers arrive? Will I get all the tasks done in time for the church or for the Presbytery? Will we get everything to the right places: packed, recycled, Goodwill-ed, thrown out?
I know you are stressed. Three Sundays from now this familiar face and presence will be gone. There will be things that don’t happen any more. There will be lots of questions about how this is done and how that is supposed to happen. It will be all right.
I remember coming here and having very few clues about how things were done. Mistakes were made, toes were stepped on, things happened or didn’t happen. We survived and flourished in new and unexpected ways.
Those of you who have been here only a few years know very few of the changes that have happened over the years. Announcements were once upon a time in the middle of the service, disrupting the worship flow. We now have worship leaders to share the reading and prayers at the beginning of the service. Rather than “Prayers of the People” there was only a pastoral prayer. We now have some hymns written in the 1980s and 90s rather than the 1880s and 90s. There is a more informal feel to worship. Just look at how few ties are worn by the men. And we get to see the faces of other worshipers rather than the backs of everyone’s heads.
Church isn’t the only place where stress happens. According to recent reports, Stress levels are higher than ever. According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, stress increased 18 percent for women and 24 percent for men between the years 1983 and 2009. Hit especially hard were people with lower incomes and less education. Overall, most of us are feeling more stress today because of economic pressures and the difficulty of protecting ourselves from the world and its constant flow of information. I guess that the sages of old were right, ignorance is bliss.
One of the wonders of the English language is that if you spell “stressed” backwards you have the word “desserts.” Unfortunately nutrition or calories raise some people’s stress rather than lowering it.
But there is some good news, according to USA Today: Stress decreases as you age. Yes, that's right. If you can stay alive and keep aging, eventually you’ll feel less stress. I’m looking forward to testing that hypothesis.
So what are people doing to deal with their stress? Adult coloring books are huge right now. Some are advertising “stress relieving patterns.” The mandala pattern is adapted from a Buddhist view of the universe. For coloring it is a kind of labyrinth walk. The Washington Post reports that about 12 million adult coloring books were sold in the United States in 2015. Whatever happened to the stress of keeping within the lines?
Or if you are an aural person, you can get a number of apps for your smart phone that provide guided meditation. A mellifluous voice quietly speaks, talking away stress and inducing calm. For me, I like to tune in a music app with reflective music that soothes. If I need livened up, I can turn to bombastic symphonies or heavy metal rock.
Or there are apps that guide you through the discipline of journaling, allowing your pen a chance to vent your stress and relax and focus beyond the immediate.
Long before coloring books and smart phones, the psalmist suggested some ways in which God’s people could de-stress. In the eight verses of Psalm 119's fifth stanza, the psalmist offers a simple, yet stress-relieving program designed to bring peace to the soul.
The first step is to get in touch with God’s ways.
“Lord, teach me what your statutes are about, and I will guard every part of them. Help me understand so I can guard your Instruction and keep it with all my heart. Lead me on the trail of your commandments because that is what I want.” (vv. 33-35).
The psalm writer wants to learn God’s statutes, laws and commandments – not because there’s value in memorizing a list of rules and regulations, but because these guidelines contain the way to life and peace.
Think of the Ten Commandments; you probably had occasion to memorize them. Every one of them is designed to help us, not hurt us. They are challenging to follow, but they are intended to be life-enhancing and to give us a positive framework for our words and actions. The first four commandments offer guidance for our relationship with God, while the last six explain what it means to have healthy relationships with each other (Exodus 20:1-17).
Our Protestant reformer faith ancestor John Calvin noted that God divided his law into two parts. The first part dealt with the worship of God’s majesty, and the second part dealt with “the duties of love” that have to do with people. The two are equally life-enhancing, and equally important for inner peace. No doubt Jesus had this approach in mind when he said that the greatest commandment challenged us both to “love the Lord your God” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40).
Two centuries later Methodism’s founder John Wesley saw two responses to God’s grace. He called the first response “Works of Piety” which included the individual practices of reading and studying the Scriptures, prayer, fasting, regularly attending worship, healthy living, sharing the faith with others, and the communal practice of holding other believers accountable, which comes directly from today’s gospel reading.
Wesley’s second response to grace was “Works of Mercy,” such things as individaully doing good works, visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others and communally seeking justice and ending oppression and discrimination.
Calvin and Wesley were pointing at the same dynamic relationships between the believer and God and with other human beings. The end result is that nothing can be more calming, more stress-relieving, than the knowledge that we are right with God and right with our neighbors, walking in God’s ways.
The psalmist gives us a second step helps us to avoid the ways of the stressful world around us.
“Turn my heart to your laws, not to greedy gain. Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. Make me live by your way” (vv. 36-37).
Instead of, or in addition to, focusing on a soothing soundtrack, the psalm advises us to turn our attention to God’s laws and “not to greedy gain.” The psalmist invites us to avert our eyes from worthless things and receive life in God’s ways.
Unfortunately, so much of our stressful world is focused on vanity and greed. Even our state governments are in the business of dangling riches in front of us through lottery ads for Power Ball and Mega-Millions, forming false dreams and harsh realities for many of the winners of the biggest pots.
This psalm, then, advises us to walk toward God and away from the ways of the stressful world around us. The psalm’s author may have written the psalm during or just after the Babylonian exile. The language of the entire psalm shows a knowledge of the wording and ethos of Deuteronomy, which likely dates from that period. The author wasn’t a contemporary of Jesus, but his work surely points toward the Jesus whom the gospels describe as turning away from temptation, worshiping the Father very deeply, and showing compassion, mercy, and grace to everyone he met, even those outside the Jewish tradition. Jesus is the living free and unexpected promise from God described by the psalm-writer:
“Confirm your promise to your servant—the promise that is for all those who honor you. Remove the insults that I dread because your rules are good. Look how I desire your precepts! Make me live by your righteousness” (vv. 38-40).
Although we can’t perfectly keep the commandments, we can seek to live in right relationship with God and with the people around us. Right relationship is what the word righteousness really means. This is the key to relieving stress and achieving peace.
Exchanging right relationships for righteousness, think about what Jesus was saying in his Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst or right relationships, for they will be filled....Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of right relationships, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven....Unless your right relationships exceed those of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:6, 10, 20 NRSV).
Following Jesus is all about right relationships. It is the key to experiencing inner calm. It puts us in touch with God’s ways and helps us to avoid the ways of the stressful world around us. Grow into a right relationship with Jesus and you can receive God’s promise of life. This is a righteous life – a life of right relationships – and it is the beginning of stress reduction and inner peace.
God promises to give life to those who respect God and walk in his ways. This is a life of right relationship with God, one which includes God's commandments but is not based on perfect adherence to them. That is beyond our ability, which Jesus himself realized when he said, “No one is good except the one God” (Mark 10:18). May we follow Jesus in the way that lead to a right relationship with him and less stress in our spirit.
General Resource: Homiletics, February 19, 2017.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Back to the Future
Isaiah 51:1-6; Matthew 16:13-20; Romans 12:1-8
Part of who I am is a statistician. It began in high school and continues to this day. So let me throw some statistics at you about this passage from Isaiah. This is particularly for you grammarians.
There are three kinds of verbs: imperatives, past tense, and future tense.
The imperative is used seven times: listen (twice), look (three times), pay attention, gaze. These imperatives are all directed at the people to whom the prophet addressed these words. More on them later.
The past tense is used six times: were cut, were dug, gave birth, were also, blessed, and made many.
The future tense is 13 times: will comfort (twice), will make, will be found, will go out, will bring, hope, wait, will disappear, will wear out, will die, will endure, will be unbroken.
The prophet enjoins his listeners, which now includes later readers, and at this very moment each of us, not just to remember the past, but more decidedly to imagine the future. The prophet speaks words which Americans need to hear to day. He calls you and me look beyond the good and bad wonders of the past to a future which will endure forever and a righteousness which will be unbroken. The prophet calls all-right and alt-left, fascists and antifas to go beyond the myopic narrowness of their world views and to imagine right relationships with God and with each other, and through imagining to welcome God to create the future.
Our God is a creative and creating God who through prophets and evangelists, through gospel and prayer calls each of us to participate in imagining what God desires the fulfilled and final creation to look like. Imagining together is shared creating. The community of God’s people are invited to act in a good way like a committee, not finding the least common denominator, but in sharing and evolving together so that the dignity, the humanity, the imprinted image of God is visible and available to all.
It is easy for us to slough off the prophet’s words and claim that they apply to those people out there. They do, but they also apply to us, if not exactly in the current larger context, then most certainly in our own more local context.
The prophet spoke these words originally to “you who look for righteousness, you who seek the Lord.” Who were these people? They were the persecuted remnant of the exiles returning from Babylon who still believed in the goodness of God and the power of God to do good in the world. They believed this in spite of the rubble of Jerusalem that they tramped through and in spite of the jaded secular-leaning, done-with-God attitude prevalent in so many of the returning exiles. For so many, God had failed to uphold what they thought God had promised, God had failed to protect Jerusalem, God had turned his back and forgotten his own people. They looked down on those who still believed in God. Had it existed, they would have tweeted all manner of scorn and derision against them.
Isaiah spoke to the despairing believers to encourage them in the midst of the rubble of Jerusalem, their trashed past glory, and their dashed hopes and dreams. They are in shock and can’t imagine how they will ever be able to rebuild all that was destroyed, replant all that was laid to waste, and restore all that was lost. To them the prophet says, Remember what God has done and know that God can and will do it again.
This is a message for today for the church in North America and other places where dying communities, aging congregations, dwindling budgets, and increasing costs run up against the hope that the church will survive long enough to bury each of us before turning the lights out and locking the door. And all this is set against a backdrop of culture shifts that have moved the Christian Church and most other religious organizations from the center of life to the corners, like so many shy introverts at a school year opening dance.
Despite those generalities, every congregation is unique and goes through its own equivalent to destruction, exile, and return. You are in the throes of that now. The calm idyllic life of Sunday worship with few demands for involvement and the comforting knowledge that things are well run and won’t get out of hand has been shattered by the reality of a significant change. The one who has worked to keep things steady for so many years while trying to move things toward a wider visibility and greater viability in a changing community is leaving. Not in anger, not in despair; just because it is time to move on.
The walls are crashing down around us, the core of our being is being shaken, the certainty of steadiness is dissolving. It is as if the eclipse happened, but the sun didn’t return.
The prophet doesn’t wallow in despair about how bad things are. Verbally he grabs the listeners by the shoulders and says, “Wake up. Have you forgotten what God has done at a variety of times in your history? If God did it then, God will do again.”
In our own situation, there are still two people in the congregation that remember when the expansion project on the back of 1842 building on North Street got into the sand backfill from the old canal bed and the rear wall of the building collapsed destroying the organ and exposing the sanctuary. Your ancestors in faith were devastated, but they moved forward every Friday evening serving home cooked meals to atomic plant construction workers to pay off the initial project expense and all the extra needed to rebuild the sanctuary wall.
Only eight of you were here when Pastor Roger Kelsey died in 1968 following a lengthy debilitating disease. The congregation, your faith forebears, sorrowed with Carol Kelsey, supported her, and moved on to call a new pastor to lead them.
There are less than 20 people in the congregation who were around in 1986 when Pastor Jack Pursell was encouraged to leave. This happened about the same time the atomic plant started its decline towards ultimate closure. Some congregants left because of the plant reduction, others left because of the internal struggle. But those that remained united and faced the future. The pastor nominating committee called a pastor with eleven years experience working in a small, non-urban church.
Forty percent of the current congregation weren’t here during the years leading up to the building of this building and making the journey from the old building to the new one sixteen years ago today. But many people from all walks of life and avenues of experienced envisioned what the future could be without steps and with amenities like parking, adequate comfort facilities, and an welcoming, hospitable atmosphere. People like Dick Craumer, Louise Jamison, John Hamlin, Maryanna Cassady, Clarence Monroe led countless others to make this place happen. The note I got with the check from Clarence Monroe’s estate to pay off the mortgage said it all: “Money is for mission, not mortgages.”
Now we are in 2017. It’s a new time, a new challenge, a new opportunity. Yes, the past has been glorious, and God did lead your predecessors well and wisely. So, who is going to say that God won’t do it again? The last thirty years have seen challenges, disappointments, more funerals than baptisms, confirmations, and marriages combined, tremendous Spirit presence in our midst, and more blessings than we can shake a Bible at. So, who is going to say that God won’t continue to hold us in the palm of the divine hand?
That’s the question Isaiah asks. That’s the affirmation that Isaiah makes.
Listen to me, you who look for righteousness, you who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
and to the quarry where you were dug. . . .
Pay attention to me, my people;
listen to me, my nation,
for teaching will go out from me,
my justice, as a light to the nations.
I will quickly bring my victory.
My salvation is on its way, . . .
[T]he earth will wear out like clothing,
and its inhabitants will die like gnats.
But my salvation will endure forever,
and my righteousness will be unbroken.
Isaiah does say that this world will evaporate, but he also says that those whom God delivers will not. The garden of joy, gladness, thanksgiving, and song that has been prepared for the redeemed will endure. Let your vital faith in God overrule your fears so that with God you can press forward through what may look like a barren, wasted land to the future which God has already prepared for you. There you will find strength and peace in the temporary gardens God planted in the deserts of our forebears, but even more in the expansive horizon of the garden that will finally, unshakably, perennially thrive.
The future will always be with us. Let’s not go back to the past but let us go back to the future with the God who will provide.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Part of who I am is a statistician. It began in high school and continues to this day. So let me throw some statistics at you about this passage from Isaiah. This is particularly for you grammarians.
There are three kinds of verbs: imperatives, past tense, and future tense.
The imperative is used seven times: listen (twice), look (three times), pay attention, gaze. These imperatives are all directed at the people to whom the prophet addressed these words. More on them later.
The past tense is used six times: were cut, were dug, gave birth, were also, blessed, and made many.
The future tense is 13 times: will comfort (twice), will make, will be found, will go out, will bring, hope, wait, will disappear, will wear out, will die, will endure, will be unbroken.
The prophet enjoins his listeners, which now includes later readers, and at this very moment each of us, not just to remember the past, but more decidedly to imagine the future. The prophet speaks words which Americans need to hear to day. He calls you and me look beyond the good and bad wonders of the past to a future which will endure forever and a righteousness which will be unbroken. The prophet calls all-right and alt-left, fascists and antifas to go beyond the myopic narrowness of their world views and to imagine right relationships with God and with each other, and through imagining to welcome God to create the future.
Our God is a creative and creating God who through prophets and evangelists, through gospel and prayer calls each of us to participate in imagining what God desires the fulfilled and final creation to look like. Imagining together is shared creating. The community of God’s people are invited to act in a good way like a committee, not finding the least common denominator, but in sharing and evolving together so that the dignity, the humanity, the imprinted image of God is visible and available to all.
It is easy for us to slough off the prophet’s words and claim that they apply to those people out there. They do, but they also apply to us, if not exactly in the current larger context, then most certainly in our own more local context.
The prophet spoke these words originally to “you who look for righteousness, you who seek the Lord.” Who were these people? They were the persecuted remnant of the exiles returning from Babylon who still believed in the goodness of God and the power of God to do good in the world. They believed this in spite of the rubble of Jerusalem that they tramped through and in spite of the jaded secular-leaning, done-with-God attitude prevalent in so many of the returning exiles. For so many, God had failed to uphold what they thought God had promised, God had failed to protect Jerusalem, God had turned his back and forgotten his own people. They looked down on those who still believed in God. Had it existed, they would have tweeted all manner of scorn and derision against them.
Isaiah spoke to the despairing believers to encourage them in the midst of the rubble of Jerusalem, their trashed past glory, and their dashed hopes and dreams. They are in shock and can’t imagine how they will ever be able to rebuild all that was destroyed, replant all that was laid to waste, and restore all that was lost. To them the prophet says, Remember what God has done and know that God can and will do it again.
This is a message for today for the church in North America and other places where dying communities, aging congregations, dwindling budgets, and increasing costs run up against the hope that the church will survive long enough to bury each of us before turning the lights out and locking the door. And all this is set against a backdrop of culture shifts that have moved the Christian Church and most other religious organizations from the center of life to the corners, like so many shy introverts at a school year opening dance.
Despite those generalities, every congregation is unique and goes through its own equivalent to destruction, exile, and return. You are in the throes of that now. The calm idyllic life of Sunday worship with few demands for involvement and the comforting knowledge that things are well run and won’t get out of hand has been shattered by the reality of a significant change. The one who has worked to keep things steady for so many years while trying to move things toward a wider visibility and greater viability in a changing community is leaving. Not in anger, not in despair; just because it is time to move on.
The walls are crashing down around us, the core of our being is being shaken, the certainty of steadiness is dissolving. It is as if the eclipse happened, but the sun didn’t return.
The prophet doesn’t wallow in despair about how bad things are. Verbally he grabs the listeners by the shoulders and says, “Wake up. Have you forgotten what God has done at a variety of times in your history? If God did it then, God will do again.”
In our own situation, there are still two people in the congregation that remember when the expansion project on the back of 1842 building on North Street got into the sand backfill from the old canal bed and the rear wall of the building collapsed destroying the organ and exposing the sanctuary. Your ancestors in faith were devastated, but they moved forward every Friday evening serving home cooked meals to atomic plant construction workers to pay off the initial project expense and all the extra needed to rebuild the sanctuary wall.
Only eight of you were here when Pastor Roger Kelsey died in 1968 following a lengthy debilitating disease. The congregation, your faith forebears, sorrowed with Carol Kelsey, supported her, and moved on to call a new pastor to lead them.
There are less than 20 people in the congregation who were around in 1986 when Pastor Jack Pursell was encouraged to leave. This happened about the same time the atomic plant started its decline towards ultimate closure. Some congregants left because of the plant reduction, others left because of the internal struggle. But those that remained united and faced the future. The pastor nominating committee called a pastor with eleven years experience working in a small, non-urban church.
Forty percent of the current congregation weren’t here during the years leading up to the building of this building and making the journey from the old building to the new one sixteen years ago today. But many people from all walks of life and avenues of experienced envisioned what the future could be without steps and with amenities like parking, adequate comfort facilities, and an welcoming, hospitable atmosphere. People like Dick Craumer, Louise Jamison, John Hamlin, Maryanna Cassady, Clarence Monroe led countless others to make this place happen. The note I got with the check from Clarence Monroe’s estate to pay off the mortgage said it all: “Money is for mission, not mortgages.”
Now we are in 2017. It’s a new time, a new challenge, a new opportunity. Yes, the past has been glorious, and God did lead your predecessors well and wisely. So, who is going to say that God won’t do it again? The last thirty years have seen challenges, disappointments, more funerals than baptisms, confirmations, and marriages combined, tremendous Spirit presence in our midst, and more blessings than we can shake a Bible at. So, who is going to say that God won’t continue to hold us in the palm of the divine hand?
That’s the question Isaiah asks. That’s the affirmation that Isaiah makes.
Listen to me, you who look for righteousness, you who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
and to the quarry where you were dug. . . .
Pay attention to me, my people;
listen to me, my nation,
for teaching will go out from me,
my justice, as a light to the nations.
I will quickly bring my victory.
My salvation is on its way, . . .
[T]he earth will wear out like clothing,
and its inhabitants will die like gnats.
But my salvation will endure forever,
and my righteousness will be unbroken.
Isaiah does say that this world will evaporate, but he also says that those whom God delivers will not. The garden of joy, gladness, thanksgiving, and song that has been prepared for the redeemed will endure. Let your vital faith in God overrule your fears so that with God you can press forward through what may look like a barren, wasted land to the future which God has already prepared for you. There you will find strength and peace in the temporary gardens God planted in the deserts of our forebears, but even more in the expansive horizon of the garden that will finally, unshakably, perennially thrive.
The future will always be with us. Let’s not go back to the past but let us go back to the future with the God who will provide.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Pray Before the Storm
Matthew 14:22-33; 1 Kings 19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13
We all know the basics of the story of Jesus walking on the water. It’s a story that sticks in our minds, especially if we learned it early in our church training. It is a highly visual story and gives way easily to the imagination.
Often, however, we only visualize the roiling sea, the buffeted boat, and the eerie presence on the waters. We forget to take into account the opening scene. Jesus has sent the disciples on their way to cross the lake. He then retreats into the surrounding hills to be alone for prayer.
Jae Won Lee, a New Testament professor at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, says that this episode is parallel to the preceding one when Jesus fed the 5,000. The feeding happened in a isolated and deserted place. The mountain prayer retreat of Jesus is also an isolated place. According to Lee, Jesus' isolation on a mountain makes for an alternative to the rampant unbelief in his homeland and to the brutal imperial world of Herod Antipas who held sway over the Galilean region.(1) The air of the day was as rife with anxiety as our local air is heavy with humidity.
The contrast and the tension is quickly evident in the way the passage is put together. Jesus is alone on the mountain. At the same time, the disciples are in a boat on rough waters, separated from Jesus. Jesus comes to them walking on the lake’s surface. Jesus’ sea-walking leads to the question of Jesus' identity, which then prompts Peter's unsuccessful attempt to walk on the water. This necessitates Peter’s rescue by Jesus to save him. This is followed by an exhortation by Jesus to trust. The storm abates, the sea becomes calm, and the other disciples, perhaps Peter, too, declare that Jesus must be God’s Son.
When Jesus sent the disciples out in the boat, did he know that the storm was going to come up and cause them great distress? We can’t say for sure. But we can make some general assumptions, which are: storms happen; storms happen when we least expect them; storms always cause anxiety.
As is so often quipped, life is what happens when we are busy making other plans. Can’t you hear the conversation that the disciples might have been having as they started sailing across the lake. They were thinking of a home-cooked breakfast, a chance to catch some shut-eye, and perhaps a lull in the nearly relentless ministry which Jesus had led them on. They wanted a different kind of calm than what Jesus was experiencing in the emptiness of the isolated hills. They want relaxation, entertainment, and no responsibilities. They thought that if Jesus stayed away a while, they could fall back into the carefree groove of their former lives. At least the attending anxieties were familiar.
Then something happened. That nasty storm came up. The headwinds were driving them if not backward, then certainly far from the port they had intended to put into. Storms happen. When we least want or need them.
The curious thing about this story is that it isn’t the storm which scares the disciples. Some of them were seasoned sailors. What scares the disciples, what causes them to scream, is Jesus. The presence of Jesus heightens their anxiety.
We live in an anxious world. Our blood pressure goes up with each succeeding newscast. Or when the doctor’s office calls after routine tests. Or when a family member calls on an unexpected day. Or when we see the list on BVTV of a new admission to the Bristol Health Center or a new death.
We want the calm we have known in times past. We don’t want the weight of life on our shoulders. We want safe harbor. We don’t want more anxiety.
But we got it. Last January one very calm portion of our lives went on storm watch, and as the days pass by the storm gets closer and closer. Our anxiety grows because the solid sailing of our life as a congregation started becoming unmoored. Pastor Rick is leaving and taking the boat with him.
The lake of congregational life is day by day getting more and more roiled with anxiety:
• Who is going to preach?
• Who is going to do my memorial service?
• Who is going to unlock and lock the building?
• Who is going to know who to call when the air conditioning goes out?
• Who is going to explain how the copier works?
• Who is going to have the nifty ideas of how to celebrate Advent?
• Who is going to know what to do if we make a mistake with the accounting system?
And on and on and on.
Together we have lived on the boat of the ministry of one individual for many years. It’s been a solid boat for the most part, nothing that an occasional week in dry dock couldn’t help, a pat on gunwale, or a new oar every now and then. We never expected the kind of storm we got when the boat decided to stop sailing altogether.
Cliff Kirkpatrick, former stated clerk of the General Assembly, tells of attending an ecumenical gathering at which Ernest Campbell, then the pastor of Riverside Church in New York, addressed a group of pastors on the crisis in churches. Campbell asserted that the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are not doing anything that requires it. Kirkpatrick thought Campbell was right. The key to faith and fullness of life in Christ is to follow Peter’s example and be willing to step out of the comfort and security of the boat and head into the troubled waters of the world to proclaim the love, mercy, and justice of God that we find in Jesus Christ. Being a disciple is a risky and exciting business, but that is exactly what God calls us to do and to be, and God assures us that if we get out of the boat, we can count on the accompaniment of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.(2)
Who prompts Peter to get of the boat in the midst of the storm? Jesus. Jesus says, “Come.”
Where do we see Jesus in the midst of the storm?
We don’t see Jesus in the throes of our anxiety. Nor do we see Jesus by denying that we are anxious.
We don’t see Jesus in the dream that the next pastor will be the magic bullet for Waverly First Presbyterian Church, a super-pastor who will be all things to all people and who will bring in the masses (who will be just like us, of course).
We don’t see Jesus in desiring a new boat that is the exact replica of the one we have had.
We don’t see Jesus in focusing inward and thinking only of ourselves and our personal needs.
We don’t see Jesus in thinking that if we could only turn the clock back to 1980, 1974, 1963, to the good old days when nothing went wrong. Only those weren’t good days. 1980 – Iran hostage crisis; 1974 – President Nixon’s resignation; 1963 – President Kennedy’s assassination.
Where do we see Jesus in the midst of our roiling life together?
We see Jesus at prayer. The gospel doesn’t tell us what Jesus was praying for in the mountain retreat. It doesn’t need to. As Jae Won Lee pointed out, Jesus was praying for belief by those whom God had called to be his in the midst of cultural and institutional unbelief. The boat doesn’t matter. The lake doesn’t matter. Jesus matters.
The disciples screamed when they saw Jesus. Were they afraid of Jesus? Were they scared of Jesus? Were they ashamed of Jesus? Were they like children who were caught with their hands in the cookie jar? Did they suspect that Jesus knew that their belief was weak?
William H. Willimon, Duke Divinity School theologian and United Methodist Church bishop, may have put it best in a sermon entitled, “How Will You Know If It's Jesus?”:
Pray before the storm.
(1) Jae Won Lee, "Matthew 14:22-33 – Exegetical Perspective," Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 333.
(2) Clifton Kirkpatrick, "Matthew 14:22-33 – Pastoral Perspective," Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 334, 336.
(3) William H. Willimon, "How Will You Know If It’s Jesus," August 7, 2005, http://day1.org/950_how_will_you_know_if_its_jesus.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
We all know the basics of the story of Jesus walking on the water. It’s a story that sticks in our minds, especially if we learned it early in our church training. It is a highly visual story and gives way easily to the imagination.
Often, however, we only visualize the roiling sea, the buffeted boat, and the eerie presence on the waters. We forget to take into account the opening scene. Jesus has sent the disciples on their way to cross the lake. He then retreats into the surrounding hills to be alone for prayer.
Jae Won Lee, a New Testament professor at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, says that this episode is parallel to the preceding one when Jesus fed the 5,000. The feeding happened in a isolated and deserted place. The mountain prayer retreat of Jesus is also an isolated place. According to Lee, Jesus' isolation on a mountain makes for an alternative to the rampant unbelief in his homeland and to the brutal imperial world of Herod Antipas who held sway over the Galilean region.(1) The air of the day was as rife with anxiety as our local air is heavy with humidity.
The contrast and the tension is quickly evident in the way the passage is put together. Jesus is alone on the mountain. At the same time, the disciples are in a boat on rough waters, separated from Jesus. Jesus comes to them walking on the lake’s surface. Jesus’ sea-walking leads to the question of Jesus' identity, which then prompts Peter's unsuccessful attempt to walk on the water. This necessitates Peter’s rescue by Jesus to save him. This is followed by an exhortation by Jesus to trust. The storm abates, the sea becomes calm, and the other disciples, perhaps Peter, too, declare that Jesus must be God’s Son.
When Jesus sent the disciples out in the boat, did he know that the storm was going to come up and cause them great distress? We can’t say for sure. But we can make some general assumptions, which are: storms happen; storms happen when we least expect them; storms always cause anxiety.
As is so often quipped, life is what happens when we are busy making other plans. Can’t you hear the conversation that the disciples might have been having as they started sailing across the lake. They were thinking of a home-cooked breakfast, a chance to catch some shut-eye, and perhaps a lull in the nearly relentless ministry which Jesus had led them on. They wanted a different kind of calm than what Jesus was experiencing in the emptiness of the isolated hills. They want relaxation, entertainment, and no responsibilities. They thought that if Jesus stayed away a while, they could fall back into the carefree groove of their former lives. At least the attending anxieties were familiar.
Then something happened. That nasty storm came up. The headwinds were driving them if not backward, then certainly far from the port they had intended to put into. Storms happen. When we least want or need them.
The curious thing about this story is that it isn’t the storm which scares the disciples. Some of them were seasoned sailors. What scares the disciples, what causes them to scream, is Jesus. The presence of Jesus heightens their anxiety.
We live in an anxious world. Our blood pressure goes up with each succeeding newscast. Or when the doctor’s office calls after routine tests. Or when a family member calls on an unexpected day. Or when we see the list on BVTV of a new admission to the Bristol Health Center or a new death.
We want the calm we have known in times past. We don’t want the weight of life on our shoulders. We want safe harbor. We don’t want more anxiety.
But we got it. Last January one very calm portion of our lives went on storm watch, and as the days pass by the storm gets closer and closer. Our anxiety grows because the solid sailing of our life as a congregation started becoming unmoored. Pastor Rick is leaving and taking the boat with him.
The lake of congregational life is day by day getting more and more roiled with anxiety:
• Who is going to preach?
• Who is going to do my memorial service?
• Who is going to unlock and lock the building?
• Who is going to know who to call when the air conditioning goes out?
• Who is going to explain how the copier works?
• Who is going to have the nifty ideas of how to celebrate Advent?
• Who is going to know what to do if we make a mistake with the accounting system?
And on and on and on.
Together we have lived on the boat of the ministry of one individual for many years. It’s been a solid boat for the most part, nothing that an occasional week in dry dock couldn’t help, a pat on gunwale, or a new oar every now and then. We never expected the kind of storm we got when the boat decided to stop sailing altogether.
Cliff Kirkpatrick, former stated clerk of the General Assembly, tells of attending an ecumenical gathering at which Ernest Campbell, then the pastor of Riverside Church in New York, addressed a group of pastors on the crisis in churches. Campbell asserted that the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are not doing anything that requires it. Kirkpatrick thought Campbell was right. The key to faith and fullness of life in Christ is to follow Peter’s example and be willing to step out of the comfort and security of the boat and head into the troubled waters of the world to proclaim the love, mercy, and justice of God that we find in Jesus Christ. Being a disciple is a risky and exciting business, but that is exactly what God calls us to do and to be, and God assures us that if we get out of the boat, we can count on the accompaniment of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.(2)
Who prompts Peter to get of the boat in the midst of the storm? Jesus. Jesus says, “Come.”
Where do we see Jesus in the midst of the storm?
We don’t see Jesus in the throes of our anxiety. Nor do we see Jesus by denying that we are anxious.
We don’t see Jesus in the dream that the next pastor will be the magic bullet for Waverly First Presbyterian Church, a super-pastor who will be all things to all people and who will bring in the masses (who will be just like us, of course).
We don’t see Jesus in desiring a new boat that is the exact replica of the one we have had.
We don’t see Jesus in focusing inward and thinking only of ourselves and our personal needs.
We don’t see Jesus in thinking that if we could only turn the clock back to 1980, 1974, 1963, to the good old days when nothing went wrong. Only those weren’t good days. 1980 – Iran hostage crisis; 1974 – President Nixon’s resignation; 1963 – President Kennedy’s assassination.
Where do we see Jesus in the midst of our roiling life together?
We see Jesus at prayer. The gospel doesn’t tell us what Jesus was praying for in the mountain retreat. It doesn’t need to. As Jae Won Lee pointed out, Jesus was praying for belief by those whom God had called to be his in the midst of cultural and institutional unbelief. The boat doesn’t matter. The lake doesn’t matter. Jesus matters.
The disciples screamed when they saw Jesus. Were they afraid of Jesus? Were they scared of Jesus? Were they ashamed of Jesus? Were they like children who were caught with their hands in the cookie jar? Did they suspect that Jesus knew that their belief was weak?
William H. Willimon, Duke Divinity School theologian and United Methodist Church bishop, may have put it best in a sermon entitled, “How Will You Know If It's Jesus?”:
If Peter had not ventured forth, had not obeyed the call to walk on the water, then Peter would never have had this great opportunity for recognition of Jesus and rescue by Jesus. I wonder if too many of us are merely splashing about in the safe shallows and therefore have too few opportunities to test and deepen our faith. The story today implies if you want to be close to Jesus, you have to venture forth out on the sea, you have to prove his promises through trusting his promises, through risk and venture.(3)Getting out of the boat with Jesus is the most risky, most exciting, and most fulfilling way to live life to the fullest. The storm you are dreading will be a wonderful opportunity to get out of the boat and into faith.
Pray before the storm.
(1) Jae Won Lee, "Matthew 14:22-33 – Exegetical Perspective," Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 333.
(2) Clifton Kirkpatrick, "Matthew 14:22-33 – Pastoral Perspective," Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 334, 336.
(3) William H. Willimon, "How Will You Know If It’s Jesus," August 7, 2005, http://day1.org/950_how_will_you_know_if_its_jesus.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Each and Every
Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21; Isaiah 55:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21
Everyone has a favorite psalm. I would guess that many church people are very familiar with about 10 to 15 percent of the psalms. Everyone knows Psalm 23. Other well-known ones may be Psalms 1, 19, 24, 27, 42, 51, 100, 119, 150. Devotionally I read through all 150 of them on a cycle of eight weeks. I am not sure that I could say that I have a favorite psalm. Each one hits me differently every time I read it, usually depending on what is going on in my life.
Years ago I was at a conference on personal spiritual disciplines. The leader was a Presbyterian pastor from Michigan named Fred Cunningham. Fred was a pioneer among Presbyterian pastors studying Reformed spirituality. He suggested that people ought to claim a particular psalm as their own psalm. His was Psalm 16. He learned it in the Revised Standard Version and the verse which resonated most for him was verse 6: “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6, rsv).
If I had to pick a personal psalm, I might go for Psalm 67. The verse which sticks out for me in it reads, “Let the people thank you, God! Let all the people thank you!” (Psalm 67:3 and 5, ceb). In the New Revised Standard Version, the word ‘thank’ is ‘praise.’ I think that I like praise better. Translators seem to be split on which word to use.
Psalm 145 is one of a number of acrostic psalms. In the original Hebrew, the psalm consists of 21 poetic couplets each of which begin with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first verse begins with aleph, the second with beth, and so forth until verse 21 which begins with the last letter, tav. If you read along in the Sanctuary Bibles, you would have noticed the Hebrew letters in the margin before each verse. Acrostic psalms were both a stylistic formula for writing and a means of remembering the psalm.
The whole of Psalm 145 is an prayer of praise for all that God has done, is doing, and will do. The gathered people of ancient Israel prayed this psalm by heart, possibly accompanied by musical instruments. The structure of the psalm enabled people to learn their faith. As the people prayed, so they believed. Some ancient manuscripts include a congregational refrain that could have been sung after each verse, “Blessed be YHWH, and blessed be his name forever!” The 1887 Psalter Hymnal of the United Presbyterian Church of North America had five different musical settings for portions of the psalm. Our Glory to God hymnal has three settings, one of which we will sing shortly.
This psalm is the only one of the 150 that has the superscript calling it a psalm of praise. James L. Mays calls Psalm 145 “the overture to the final movement of the Psalter,” because it sets the tone for the last five psalms of the Psalter, all of which begin with “Praise the Lord!”(1) (Hallelu-yah in Hebrew). The Talmud, an ancient rabbinic commentary on Hebrew Scripture, instructs worshipers to repeat this psalm three times every day. Faith was formed through praying praise.
Psalm 145 is well constructed. There is balance between extolling the greatness of God (“My mouth will proclaim the Lord’s praise”) and declaring the graciousness of God (“The Lord supports all who fall down”), God’s greatness and God’s graciousness are not polarities; they are not extremes of a pendulum swing. They are intertwined realities of who God is.
The psalmist declares that God’s greatness is unlimited and comprehensive. The result of that is that praise is equally unlimited and all-inclusive. We can see this in the number of times the words “every” or “all” or their equivalents are used. For example, in verse 9, God is “good to everyone,” and his compassion extends “to all his handiwork.” In verse 14, the Lord “supports all” and “straightens up all.” The next verse says that “all eyes” look to God. Verse 16 confesses that God satisfies the desire of “every living thing.” That is followed with a statement that God is “righteous in all his ways” and “faithful in all his deeds.” The emphasis is kept up as the psalm closes. Verses 18-21 affirm that the Lord is “close to everyone,” that God “protects all,” that “every wicked person” will be destroyed by God’s judgment, and finally that “every living thing will bless” God’s holy name.
Nicholas Wolterstorff specializes in Christian philosophy and theology. He asserts that the Christian faith has what he calls the “each and every principle.” This principle states that God is concerned with each and every living being. It is a vision of the faith that is both expansive (the every) and particular (the each). Psalm 145 clearly expresses in poetic form this “each and every principle.” God “is good to everyone,” says verse 9, expressing God’s providence in expansive form. God also “supports all who fall down, straightens all who are bent low,” in verse 14, expressing God’s particular attention to individuals who struggle, who fail, who mourn.
We need to keep these two aspects of God’s being, the expansive “every” and the particular “each” in close tension. Our Christian faith will be seriously constricted if God’s care for the individual or the particular is the only note sounded. Some expressions of our common faith in Christ are so focused on the salvation of the individual that the communal nature of gospel is lost. Some churches seem to peddle the gospel as a product to “meet your needs.” This theology gives way to this tendency.
Some churches preach a prosperity gospel that claims that God desires to make people wealthy. Yet verses in scripture that use the word ‘prosper’ point not to material wealth but to spiritual wealth, wholeness, and a close relationship with God. Psalm 145 holds together the dual affirmations of God’s expansive care for everyone and God’s particular care of each one.
Christian faith will be just as seriously constricted if the prevailing emphasis falls only in the communal aspect of the faith. There can be no doubt that God is the God of all creation, of all creatures, of all cosmic forces. If focusing only on the individual is like not seeing the forest for the trees, then focusing only on the communal aspect of God’s care is like seeing the forest and not seeing the particular trees that make up the forest. It is incredibly important to affirm God’s very particular care. When a believer is sick or lonely, frightened or spiritually diminished, the thrust of our faith is that God attends not only to the grand scheme of the universe, but also to all the ups and downs and the smallest details of an individual life.
Although Psalm 145 was likely used as a hymn in ancient Israel’s community worship, its words and phrases bring comfort to anyone who needs to hear that “the Lord is close to all who call out to him sincerely” (v. 18).
What Psalm 145 tells us is that God is the God of all things great and small. God can deal with those of us who are big sky dreamers, who see things from a 30,000 foot perspective, and God can deal with those of us who are into micro-managing the nano-dimensions of everyday living lest the slightest detail gets overlooked.
God supports and undergirds. God governs. God also is faithful in all that God does and shows favor to those who honor him. That is to say, God pays attention; God notices. God does not govern from afar with broad brush strokes of creative genius. God maintains a deep connection with creation by keeping track of all the details. God knows the details, cares about them, and includes them in all divine actions and intentions. Our God is not too small to deal with the every of creation. Nor is our God too big to deal with the each of creation. Our God is God of both the each and the every.
Thanks be to God!
General Resource: Leanne Van Dyk, “Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 296-300
(1) James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation series (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1994), 439.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Everyone has a favorite psalm. I would guess that many church people are very familiar with about 10 to 15 percent of the psalms. Everyone knows Psalm 23. Other well-known ones may be Psalms 1, 19, 24, 27, 42, 51, 100, 119, 150. Devotionally I read through all 150 of them on a cycle of eight weeks. I am not sure that I could say that I have a favorite psalm. Each one hits me differently every time I read it, usually depending on what is going on in my life.
Years ago I was at a conference on personal spiritual disciplines. The leader was a Presbyterian pastor from Michigan named Fred Cunningham. Fred was a pioneer among Presbyterian pastors studying Reformed spirituality. He suggested that people ought to claim a particular psalm as their own psalm. His was Psalm 16. He learned it in the Revised Standard Version and the verse which resonated most for him was verse 6: “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6, rsv).
If I had to pick a personal psalm, I might go for Psalm 67. The verse which sticks out for me in it reads, “Let the people thank you, God! Let all the people thank you!” (Psalm 67:3 and 5, ceb). In the New Revised Standard Version, the word ‘thank’ is ‘praise.’ I think that I like praise better. Translators seem to be split on which word to use.
Psalm 145 is one of a number of acrostic psalms. In the original Hebrew, the psalm consists of 21 poetic couplets each of which begin with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first verse begins with aleph, the second with beth, and so forth until verse 21 which begins with the last letter, tav. If you read along in the Sanctuary Bibles, you would have noticed the Hebrew letters in the margin before each verse. Acrostic psalms were both a stylistic formula for writing and a means of remembering the psalm.
The whole of Psalm 145 is an prayer of praise for all that God has done, is doing, and will do. The gathered people of ancient Israel prayed this psalm by heart, possibly accompanied by musical instruments. The structure of the psalm enabled people to learn their faith. As the people prayed, so they believed. Some ancient manuscripts include a congregational refrain that could have been sung after each verse, “Blessed be YHWH, and blessed be his name forever!” The 1887 Psalter Hymnal of the United Presbyterian Church of North America had five different musical settings for portions of the psalm. Our Glory to God hymnal has three settings, one of which we will sing shortly.
This psalm is the only one of the 150 that has the superscript calling it a psalm of praise. James L. Mays calls Psalm 145 “the overture to the final movement of the Psalter,” because it sets the tone for the last five psalms of the Psalter, all of which begin with “Praise the Lord!”(1) (Hallelu-yah in Hebrew). The Talmud, an ancient rabbinic commentary on Hebrew Scripture, instructs worshipers to repeat this psalm three times every day. Faith was formed through praying praise.
Psalm 145 is well constructed. There is balance between extolling the greatness of God (“My mouth will proclaim the Lord’s praise”) and declaring the graciousness of God (“The Lord supports all who fall down”), God’s greatness and God’s graciousness are not polarities; they are not extremes of a pendulum swing. They are intertwined realities of who God is.
The psalmist declares that God’s greatness is unlimited and comprehensive. The result of that is that praise is equally unlimited and all-inclusive. We can see this in the number of times the words “every” or “all” or their equivalents are used. For example, in verse 9, God is “good to everyone,” and his compassion extends “to all his handiwork.” In verse 14, the Lord “supports all” and “straightens up all.” The next verse says that “all eyes” look to God. Verse 16 confesses that God satisfies the desire of “every living thing.” That is followed with a statement that God is “righteous in all his ways” and “faithful in all his deeds.” The emphasis is kept up as the psalm closes. Verses 18-21 affirm that the Lord is “close to everyone,” that God “protects all,” that “every wicked person” will be destroyed by God’s judgment, and finally that “every living thing will bless” God’s holy name.
Nicholas Wolterstorff specializes in Christian philosophy and theology. He asserts that the Christian faith has what he calls the “each and every principle.” This principle states that God is concerned with each and every living being. It is a vision of the faith that is both expansive (the every) and particular (the each). Psalm 145 clearly expresses in poetic form this “each and every principle.” God “is good to everyone,” says verse 9, expressing God’s providence in expansive form. God also “supports all who fall down, straightens all who are bent low,” in verse 14, expressing God’s particular attention to individuals who struggle, who fail, who mourn.
We need to keep these two aspects of God’s being, the expansive “every” and the particular “each” in close tension. Our Christian faith will be seriously constricted if God’s care for the individual or the particular is the only note sounded. Some expressions of our common faith in Christ are so focused on the salvation of the individual that the communal nature of gospel is lost. Some churches seem to peddle the gospel as a product to “meet your needs.” This theology gives way to this tendency.
Some churches preach a prosperity gospel that claims that God desires to make people wealthy. Yet verses in scripture that use the word ‘prosper’ point not to material wealth but to spiritual wealth, wholeness, and a close relationship with God. Psalm 145 holds together the dual affirmations of God’s expansive care for everyone and God’s particular care of each one.
Christian faith will be just as seriously constricted if the prevailing emphasis falls only in the communal aspect of the faith. There can be no doubt that God is the God of all creation, of all creatures, of all cosmic forces. If focusing only on the individual is like not seeing the forest for the trees, then focusing only on the communal aspect of God’s care is like seeing the forest and not seeing the particular trees that make up the forest. It is incredibly important to affirm God’s very particular care. When a believer is sick or lonely, frightened or spiritually diminished, the thrust of our faith is that God attends not only to the grand scheme of the universe, but also to all the ups and downs and the smallest details of an individual life.
Although Psalm 145 was likely used as a hymn in ancient Israel’s community worship, its words and phrases bring comfort to anyone who needs to hear that “the Lord is close to all who call out to him sincerely” (v. 18).
What Psalm 145 tells us is that God is the God of all things great and small. God can deal with those of us who are big sky dreamers, who see things from a 30,000 foot perspective, and God can deal with those of us who are into micro-managing the nano-dimensions of everyday living lest the slightest detail gets overlooked.
God supports and undergirds. God governs. God also is faithful in all that God does and shows favor to those who honor him. That is to say, God pays attention; God notices. God does not govern from afar with broad brush strokes of creative genius. God maintains a deep connection with creation by keeping track of all the details. God knows the details, cares about them, and includes them in all divine actions and intentions. Our God is not too small to deal with the every of creation. Nor is our God too big to deal with the each of creation. Our God is God of both the each and the every.
Thanks be to God!
General Resource: Leanne Van Dyk, “Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 3, 296-300
(1) James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation series (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1994), 439.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
To Whom Is Our Obligation
Romans 8:12-25; Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 86:11-17
Listen to the Sermon
In the sentence before our reading begins, Paul has told the Roman believers that
So then, Paul begins his next thought: “So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.” “We are debtors.” That’s not exactly something we want to hear. Our monthly credit card bills, car or house payments all too enthusiastically remind us of that. We dislike having that frequent reminder. It lowers our self-estimation, and that’s a real downer. Worse than that, being told we are debtors when all our IOUs are cleared and the bill collector has no reason to pound on our door is a real drag. We would resent that implication. After all, we tend to agree with Polonius in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, when he counseled his son Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” This concept is a good ideal, but it’s not practical.
Having told his readers that they are debtors, Paul then goes on to explain. As Eugene Peterson paraphrases the apostle, “We don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.” That is, we are not debtors to our flesh, we don’t owe anything to our selfish ways of living.
There is not a thing we could have done saving ourselves. God has done everything we needed to be done. Therefore, we have an obligation to respond, not to ourselves, not to our human nature wracked with sin, but to God. That’s something more than our mother whispering in our ear, “Say ‘Thank you,’ Rick.” Because of all that Christ has done and is going to do for us, we are obligated to live in the power and control of the Holy Spirit.
The way that Paul puts this is that we are to refuse the drives and desires of our still attractive but crucified sinful nature. We are to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions. Paul says that redeemed life in Christ is a call to live “sensible, ethical, and godly lives right now” (Titus 2:12). The old, sinful nature may present its demands, based upon the past but we have no obligation to cooperate. It is like having fraud protection on our credit cards. We aren’t required to pay for something fraudulently charged to our account. Jesus has cancelled the debt to sin.
I suppose that we could look at this as refinancing our debt. We no longer owe a debt of death to sin. The debt we now owe is a debt of life and it is owed to God. Why is that? Because “all who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters....[Y]ou received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children.”
The true children of God are everyone who are led by the Spirit of God. The Spirit-led life stands out. It can’t be hid. Believers not only have the Spirit, they are also led by the Spirit.
Paul uses adoption to illustrate the believer’s new relationship with God and his or her privileges as part of God’s family. In Roman culture familiar to both Paul and his readers, the adopted person lost all the rights which came from the old family and gained all the rights of a legitimate child in the new family. The adoptee became a full heir to all the rights, privileges, responsibilities, and assets and debts of the new family.
That’s why Paul uses the image about becoming a Christian. When a person comes to Christ, he or she gets everything that goes with being a child in God’s family. One of the outstanding privileges of family of God membership is being led by the Spirit. What a gift the new family relationship provides!
Former American poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about a boy making a lanyard at summer camp. With the help of his counselor he wove the plastic strands into a lanyard which he gave to his mother. Collins writes:
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied.
Collins concludes the poem,
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift – not the worn truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.(1)
We are like that boy giving the lanyard to his mother. There is nothing that we can give to God that is equivalent to all that God has done for us in Christ. There is no way to place a human value on the inheritance we receive with Christ through the Spirit.
Paul’s Jewish co-religionists understood themselves to heirs of God in terms of being the possessors of the “Promised Land.” They had lost it completely once, and gotten it back (by dint of God’s activity). Now it was overrun by foreign overlords. Paul told Jews and Gentiles about a different inheritance that God had prepared in Christ, not geographical land but God’s spiritual kingdom, the realm of God’s rule. Too often that gets interpreted as something in the future. But Paul’s emphasis about the Spirit being in believers suggests that the realm of God’s rule is a present reality when the Spirit is fully dwelling in the hearts of believers.
Many Christians are conditioned to think of atonement as Christ’s cross paying the debt owed to the law, or the devil, or even to God. That would mean that sinners have a debt defined by the law. But Christians are debt free, due to Christ's payment in the crucifixion. This would mean that at one time each of us was in debt to the law; but now, with Christ, we don’t owe the law a thing.
Just as we are about to breathe a sigh of relief, Paul makes the astounding claim that we are still debtors. But for Paul everything depends upon to whom the debt is owed. He says that the debt we owe is owed to the Spirit. As he said, the now-cancelled debt to sin gave death. The debt we now owe gives life. What a strange debt this is!
If you talk to your accountant, you know that debt is a liability. When your CPA puts your balance sheet together, liabilities – debts – are subtracted from assets to determine net worth. That’s the accounting law. Debt reduces assets. However, the Spirit doesn’t do accounting according to human principles. Debt owed to the Spirit increases your net spiritual worth; it doesn’t take away from it. Spirit debt is not what must be repaid, but what is paid to you. Christ said it this way: “Everyone who has will be given more” (Luke 19:26). In other words, whoever has the Spirit of Christ will receive more as the person grows and matures in Christ-like faith.
Debt is not our basic problem; it is to whom we owe the debt that matters. The more we seek to have the Spirit power our faith, the more we try to live the kind of life Christ modeled for us, the more we hand over our lives to God, the more we add to our debt to the Spirit. The more we owe the Spirit, the greater our total worth is as an heir with Christ to the glory of God’s holy rule. That’s a debt everyone of us needs to take on. That’s the debt we owe, and we owe it to the Spirit.
(1) Billy Collins, Lanyard, 2007.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Listen to the Sermon
In the sentence before our reading begins, Paul has told the Roman believers that
“If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.” (Romans 8:11)If we parse what Paul has said here in his usual dense style, we will realize that this is an affirmation of the Trinity. It speaks of the Spirit, the one who raise Jesus, and Christ. All three are connected, intertwined, and responsible to each other in the greater work of fulfilling God’s purpose.
So then, Paul begins his next thought: “So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.” “We are debtors.” That’s not exactly something we want to hear. Our monthly credit card bills, car or house payments all too enthusiastically remind us of that. We dislike having that frequent reminder. It lowers our self-estimation, and that’s a real downer. Worse than that, being told we are debtors when all our IOUs are cleared and the bill collector has no reason to pound on our door is a real drag. We would resent that implication. After all, we tend to agree with Polonius in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, when he counseled his son Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” This concept is a good ideal, but it’s not practical.
Having told his readers that they are debtors, Paul then goes on to explain. As Eugene Peterson paraphrases the apostle, “We don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.” That is, we are not debtors to our flesh, we don’t owe anything to our selfish ways of living.
There is not a thing we could have done saving ourselves. God has done everything we needed to be done. Therefore, we have an obligation to respond, not to ourselves, not to our human nature wracked with sin, but to God. That’s something more than our mother whispering in our ear, “Say ‘Thank you,’ Rick.” Because of all that Christ has done and is going to do for us, we are obligated to live in the power and control of the Holy Spirit.
The way that Paul puts this is that we are to refuse the drives and desires of our still attractive but crucified sinful nature. We are to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions. Paul says that redeemed life in Christ is a call to live “sensible, ethical, and godly lives right now” (Titus 2:12). The old, sinful nature may present its demands, based upon the past but we have no obligation to cooperate. It is like having fraud protection on our credit cards. We aren’t required to pay for something fraudulently charged to our account. Jesus has cancelled the debt to sin.
I suppose that we could look at this as refinancing our debt. We no longer owe a debt of death to sin. The debt we now owe is a debt of life and it is owed to God. Why is that? Because “all who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters....[Y]ou received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children.”
The true children of God are everyone who are led by the Spirit of God. The Spirit-led life stands out. It can’t be hid. Believers not only have the Spirit, they are also led by the Spirit.
Paul uses adoption to illustrate the believer’s new relationship with God and his or her privileges as part of God’s family. In Roman culture familiar to both Paul and his readers, the adopted person lost all the rights which came from the old family and gained all the rights of a legitimate child in the new family. The adoptee became a full heir to all the rights, privileges, responsibilities, and assets and debts of the new family.
That’s why Paul uses the image about becoming a Christian. When a person comes to Christ, he or she gets everything that goes with being a child in God’s family. One of the outstanding privileges of family of God membership is being led by the Spirit. What a gift the new family relationship provides!
Former American poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about a boy making a lanyard at summer camp. With the help of his counselor he wove the plastic strands into a lanyard which he gave to his mother. Collins writes:
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied.
Collins concludes the poem,
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift – not the worn truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.(1)
We are like that boy giving the lanyard to his mother. There is nothing that we can give to God that is equivalent to all that God has done for us in Christ. There is no way to place a human value on the inheritance we receive with Christ through the Spirit.
Paul’s Jewish co-religionists understood themselves to heirs of God in terms of being the possessors of the “Promised Land.” They had lost it completely once, and gotten it back (by dint of God’s activity). Now it was overrun by foreign overlords. Paul told Jews and Gentiles about a different inheritance that God had prepared in Christ, not geographical land but God’s spiritual kingdom, the realm of God’s rule. Too often that gets interpreted as something in the future. But Paul’s emphasis about the Spirit being in believers suggests that the realm of God’s rule is a present reality when the Spirit is fully dwelling in the hearts of believers.
Many Christians are conditioned to think of atonement as Christ’s cross paying the debt owed to the law, or the devil, or even to God. That would mean that sinners have a debt defined by the law. But Christians are debt free, due to Christ's payment in the crucifixion. This would mean that at one time each of us was in debt to the law; but now, with Christ, we don’t owe the law a thing.
Just as we are about to breathe a sigh of relief, Paul makes the astounding claim that we are still debtors. But for Paul everything depends upon to whom the debt is owed. He says that the debt we owe is owed to the Spirit. As he said, the now-cancelled debt to sin gave death. The debt we now owe gives life. What a strange debt this is!
If you talk to your accountant, you know that debt is a liability. When your CPA puts your balance sheet together, liabilities – debts – are subtracted from assets to determine net worth. That’s the accounting law. Debt reduces assets. However, the Spirit doesn’t do accounting according to human principles. Debt owed to the Spirit increases your net spiritual worth; it doesn’t take away from it. Spirit debt is not what must be repaid, but what is paid to you. Christ said it this way: “Everyone who has will be given more” (Luke 19:26). In other words, whoever has the Spirit of Christ will receive more as the person grows and matures in Christ-like faith.
Debt is not our basic problem; it is to whom we owe the debt that matters. The more we seek to have the Spirit power our faith, the more we try to live the kind of life Christ modeled for us, the more we hand over our lives to God, the more we add to our debt to the Spirit. The more we owe the Spirit, the greater our total worth is as an heir with Christ to the glory of God’s holy rule. That’s a debt everyone of us needs to take on. That’s the debt we owe, and we owe it to the Spirit.
(1) Billy Collins, Lanyard, 2007.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
God Always Bats Last
Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65:9-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Listen to the sermon
Major League Baseball has started the second half of the season. Last Tuesday’s All Star Game was the 88th. It took 10 innings, but the American League continued their recent dominance of All Star Games. For those of us more supportive of the National League, the last two decades have been dismal.
I grew up listening to baseball on the radio. It was always exciting. I don’t know if the games went faster then, but the announcer’s chatter between pitches and hits provided the color that watching the game live without announcing doesn’t have. And it seemed like there were fewer commercials then. You know how memory works, so that probably isn’t so.
One thing about baseball is that the home team always has the last chance to bat. If they are ahead they won’t need it. If they are behind, they have a chance to win, or at least tie and take the game into extra innings.
There is a play on words which attributes the creation of baseball not to Abner Doubleday but to God. If a person misreads the first verse of Genesis, it could say, “In the big inning....” Be that as it may, if God were to be involved with baseball, God would always be the home team, God would always bat last. That’s the gist of the verses we have before us today from the prophet Isaiah. God has the last word. It goes out and doesn’t return to go empty. God wins.
All of Isaiah 55 is memorable. The opening verses are used on a Lenten Sunday in one of the lectionary years.
Isaiah 55 opens as an invitation to a banquet. The reading comes at the end of the section often referred to as Second Isaiah and the writer is looking to the day of Israel’s return to Jerusalem and Judea, the rebuilding of the Temple, the reestablishment of lineage of the Davidic kings, and birth of the New Jerusalem symbolizing the dawn of God’s universal reign of righteous compassion. That will indeed be something worth celebrating.
Whenever with think about celebrations and festivals in the biblical context, we can’t help but think of the parable which Jesus told about the wedding feast (Matthew 22:1–10). When the announcement was delivered that the feast was ready, all the invited guests had more important business to attend to. So the invitation list was revised: “Go to the roads on the edge of town and invite everyone you find to the wedding party.”
There it is, stated plainly and simply: The most precious gift of all — the gift of life in God’s presence — is free. The only thing that can invalidate the gift is your insistence that there are places you would rather be and things you would rather do. Why anyone would ever opt for their choice over God’s is impossible to fathom. What are the possibilities? You want to determine the menu. You aren’t an afternoon person. You want to be in control of the company you keep. After all, someone you can’t stand might be there. But God will be there. Yeah, didn’t the host say that anyone could attend? But Jesus may join the wedding feast! Wouldn’t it be better to be in God’s presence, sitting with Jesus, that worrying about who else might be there?
The morale of Israel in exile was pretty bleak. After the defeat of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, God’s approval rating plummeted to an all-time low. How could God allow God’s people to be defeated? How could God lose? The prophet Jeremiah dealt with the same issues. He took a British approach with the exiles in Babylon. “Keep a stiff upper lip. Keep calm and carry on. Dig into the local community and improve it. Don’t just survive, thrive. Look at me, I bought property in suburban Anathoth.”
Isaiah uses the image of the feast to seal the promise of God’s activity. Second Isaiah had started out in chapter 40 with two questions: Was God able to save Israel? And was God willing to save Israel? Isaiah saw that the problem wasn’t with God but with the people. He tells the people,
You can hear Second Isaiah audibly sigh. He patiently but firmly lays out his argument about God’s wrath being a necessary response to the persistence of sin and God’s judgment being ultimately overruled by God’s mercy. He has said it before but it always seems to be lost on the people still straining to maintain their pride.
It is at that point that the prophet refocuses the people’s thinking:
Second Isaiah wants to leave that message with the Israelites as he closes out his prophetic work.
This Isaiah earnestly believes that only God’s word was the sure and certain basis for the reconstruction of their spiritual, personal, and corporate lives. “It does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend.”
The prophet concludes his final thought by announcing that there will be a festive procession of the freed exiles when they return to their home in joy and in peace. What a conclusion! What an affirmation of faith! Salvation is God’s ultimate accomplishment. The only things which human beings need to bring to the celebration are open hearts effervescing with joy and voices bubbling in song. Creation is seen as being whole again, for in the festive celebration, humanity is joined by nature. Everything in creation will be brought to wholeness by the Redeemer. The transformation into glory of all that the Lord has created provides the proper ballpark for the abiding presence of the God of glory. God always bats last, and God always wins.
Where is the despair in your life that needs Isaiah’s confident word? What is the exile that you are suffering through? Where are you contending against God by trying to run your own life? These are the places where you can receive the prophet’s word of assurance: God’s word doesn’t return empty. God’s word accomplishes what it sets out to do. God always bats last. God always wins.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Listen to the sermon
Major League Baseball has started the second half of the season. Last Tuesday’s All Star Game was the 88th. It took 10 innings, but the American League continued their recent dominance of All Star Games. For those of us more supportive of the National League, the last two decades have been dismal.
I grew up listening to baseball on the radio. It was always exciting. I don’t know if the games went faster then, but the announcer’s chatter between pitches and hits provided the color that watching the game live without announcing doesn’t have. And it seemed like there were fewer commercials then. You know how memory works, so that probably isn’t so.
One thing about baseball is that the home team always has the last chance to bat. If they are ahead they won’t need it. If they are behind, they have a chance to win, or at least tie and take the game into extra innings.
There is a play on words which attributes the creation of baseball not to Abner Doubleday but to God. If a person misreads the first verse of Genesis, it could say, “In the big inning....” Be that as it may, if God were to be involved with baseball, God would always be the home team, God would always bat last. That’s the gist of the verses we have before us today from the prophet Isaiah. God has the last word. It goes out and doesn’t return to go empty. God wins.
All of Isaiah 55 is memorable. The opening verses are used on a Lenten Sunday in one of the lectionary years.
All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat! Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk! Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?The first five verses will be the Old Testament lesson in three weeks and are coupled with the story from Matthew of the feeding of the 5,000.
Isaiah 55 opens as an invitation to a banquet. The reading comes at the end of the section often referred to as Second Isaiah and the writer is looking to the day of Israel’s return to Jerusalem and Judea, the rebuilding of the Temple, the reestablishment of lineage of the Davidic kings, and birth of the New Jerusalem symbolizing the dawn of God’s universal reign of righteous compassion. That will indeed be something worth celebrating.
Whenever with think about celebrations and festivals in the biblical context, we can’t help but think of the parable which Jesus told about the wedding feast (Matthew 22:1–10). When the announcement was delivered that the feast was ready, all the invited guests had more important business to attend to. So the invitation list was revised: “Go to the roads on the edge of town and invite everyone you find to the wedding party.”
There it is, stated plainly and simply: The most precious gift of all — the gift of life in God’s presence — is free. The only thing that can invalidate the gift is your insistence that there are places you would rather be and things you would rather do. Why anyone would ever opt for their choice over God’s is impossible to fathom. What are the possibilities? You want to determine the menu. You aren’t an afternoon person. You want to be in control of the company you keep. After all, someone you can’t stand might be there. But God will be there. Yeah, didn’t the host say that anyone could attend? But Jesus may join the wedding feast! Wouldn’t it be better to be in God’s presence, sitting with Jesus, that worrying about who else might be there?
The morale of Israel in exile was pretty bleak. After the defeat of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, God’s approval rating plummeted to an all-time low. How could God allow God’s people to be defeated? How could God lose? The prophet Jeremiah dealt with the same issues. He took a British approach with the exiles in Babylon. “Keep a stiff upper lip. Keep calm and carry on. Dig into the local community and improve it. Don’t just survive, thrive. Look at me, I bought property in suburban Anathoth.”
Isaiah uses the image of the feast to seal the promise of God’s activity. Second Isaiah had started out in chapter 40 with two questions: Was God able to save Israel? And was God willing to save Israel? Isaiah saw that the problem wasn’t with God but with the people. He tells the people,
“Seek the Lord when he can still be found; call him while he is yet near. Let the wicked abandon their ways and the sinful their schemes. Return to the Lord so that he may have mercy on them, to our God, because he is generous with forgiveness.”We live our spiritual lives no differently than we do our personal lives. We are loathe to admit that any fault lies on our side of the relationship. It is a habitual comfort to blame the other person, to blame someone else, to blame God. So we rationalize with fake logic. That’s what the Israelites did: If God possessed sufficient power and concern, Jerusalem would not have been destroyed by pagans and we would not be exiles in a foreign land.
You can hear Second Isaiah audibly sigh. He patiently but firmly lays out his argument about God’s wrath being a necessary response to the persistence of sin and God’s judgment being ultimately overruled by God’s mercy. He has said it before but it always seems to be lost on the people still straining to maintain their pride.
It is at that point that the prophet refocuses the people’s thinking:
“My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”The human foible is that we are always trying to tell God what to do. To bring back the baseball image, it’s as if we believe that we are the field manager and God is the ace reliever in the bullpen, waiting to be called up to close a nasty inning. In reality, we are the opponents and God is the home team. God always bats last. And God always wins.
Second Isaiah wants to leave that message with the Israelites as he closes out his prophetic work.
“[M]y word that comes from my mouth; it does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend.”The prophet’s image teems with quiet confidence in the triumph of God’s righteousness and the trustworthiness of God’s promises. He echoes the statement that he made as wrestled with God’s call to him in chapter 40: “The grass dries up; the flower withers, but our God’s word will exist forever.”
This Isaiah earnestly believes that only God’s word was the sure and certain basis for the reconstruction of their spiritual, personal, and corporate lives. “It does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend.”
The prophet concludes his final thought by announcing that there will be a festive procession of the freed exiles when they return to their home in joy and in peace. What a conclusion! What an affirmation of faith! Salvation is God’s ultimate accomplishment. The only things which human beings need to bring to the celebration are open hearts effervescing with joy and voices bubbling in song. Creation is seen as being whole again, for in the festive celebration, humanity is joined by nature. Everything in creation will be brought to wholeness by the Redeemer. The transformation into glory of all that the Lord has created provides the proper ballpark for the abiding presence of the God of glory. God always bats last, and God always wins.
Where is the despair in your life that needs Isaiah’s confident word? What is the exile that you are suffering through? Where are you contending against God by trying to run your own life? These are the places where you can receive the prophet’s word of assurance: God’s word doesn’t return empty. God’s word accomplishes what it sets out to do. God always bats last. God always wins.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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