[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.
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