Sunday, January 25, 2015

The Day God's Mind Changed

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January 25, 2015
Jonah 3:1-10
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Sermon: The Day God’s Mind Changed

Once upon a time, God was all there was.  Then God made all we see, and even those infinitesimal specks of creation we don’t.  And it was good.  And God made human beings, freely giving them a garden in which to live and all of creation with which to survive.  And it was very good.  But one day, the people changed.

A temptation within them we name a serpent but might as easily name pride or power or sin grew, telling them they could be greater than this Creator.  And so the people changed. 

This change grieved God, but God covered their shame with clothing anyway.  God knew that no longer could this people be satisfied with the simple garden, and so they were sent out to go, to explore, to hopefully be changed for the better some day.

But things did not get better.  The first people had two sons and one murdered the other.  God watched humanity change into a jealous, bitter distortion of what God had made, and wept.

The people on Earth multiplied, and with them, so did their prejudice.  The blood feud of brothers became the bloodshed of mighty armies, and there was much wickedness.  One day, God couldn’t take it anymore.  God looked at the hearts of all the earth and God was sorry to have ever made them.  It was a dark day.  In anger, God decided to destroy them. 

Well, not quite all of them.  God spared a man named Noah and his family.  The rain came, and the waters rose, and Noah, having built a big boat was spared, along with many animals.  But that was all – the rest, every man, woman and child, every other creature, perished.  And God’s tears salted the oceans as the water covered the face of all the earth.  We will never understand how the Creator could do such a thing.

But eventually, the sun came out.  The waters dried up and those few survivors wandered onto dry land.  God broken with grief, then made a promise: “Never again.” God said.  “Never again will I punish all the earth for human sinfulness.” 

Once again the people multiplied as did the animals, and the earth was filled.  Sometimes, those people did what was right by God.  Often, they did not.  Nations arose from estranged siblings and God protected the most vulnerable among them, a tiny wandering group of Israelites.  God guided them, saved them from slavery and continued to care for them.  Because that’s who God had decided to be after that great flood.

But God didn’t just think of that small band of wanderers.  God also thought of other tribes and nations.  God saw that people were once again giving themselves over to wickedness, changing for the worse, and God did grieve.  One particular people – the Ninevites of Assyria – were persistent in their wickedness. 

And so God sent a man having the same letters in his Hebrew name as Noah, a man named Jonah.  Jonah was part of that wandering tribe, but was sent to his enemies the Ninevites to call them to change.  But Jonah didn’t really believe that people could change.  And so he decided not to waste his time.  He ran from God – something those first two humans had tried to do in that garden so long ago.  But running from God is like trying to run from your own breath. 

God found Jonah on a boat (a much smaller boat than Noah’s, mind you) and caused the sea to churn and turn until Jonah was willingly thrown overboard.  Unwilling to let people drown for their sinfulness again, God made a large fish swallow Jonah.  In the belly of that fish, Jonah tried to change.  He told God he was sorry and that deliverance belonged to God and, whether Jonah really meant it or not, God saved him, setting his feet right back on the dry land that would lead to Nineveh.

Jonah begrudgingly told that city, “40 days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.”  Perhaps 40 days was somewhere deep in his mind after being raised on the stories of his namesake, Noah.  There was no grace in his message, though.  Just judgment.  Like I said, he didn’t really believe people could change.

But this story isn’t about people changing, though they did do just that.  The people covered every single thing – every child, every grandmother, every king, every camel, even!—in the sackcloth of repentance.  It was like a massively grand gesture proving to God they could change.  You see, God always believes people can change.   But again, this story isn’t about people changing.  When God saw the repentance of those wicked Ninevites, scripture tells us God changed God’s mind.  GOD CHANGED.

Actually the word in the language of those people in that time would be that God “was sorry.”  The same word used when God was sorry to have made those people in Noah’s day.  But this time, God wasn’t sorry to have made them.  This time, God was sorry to have nearly brought great destruction upon them – the destruction God had promised Noah and his children God would never do again. 

Those Ninevites – animals and all – lived, because God’s mind changed.  You can be sure Jonah wasn’t happy about it at all.  You see, in the end his belief that people can’t change only led him to prove that he couldn’t.

The story went on and on, and I don’t have time to go into all of that, but let me just say that, in holding the tales of Noah and Jonah together – as so many things indicate that we should from those same letters in their names, to the number 40, to the language of God being sorry, to a life boat, to a watery repentance – we learn such an essential truth, a truth perhaps we’re afraid to even say, in fear it might threaten our pre-conceived ideas about the constancy of God. 

That truth is this:  God can change.  God can do anything God pleases, in fact.  But when God does change, these stories show us that it is a change from judgment to grace, from giving up on us to giving us another chance, from destruction to salvation.

Jonah was wrong.  People can change, just like God can.  In fact, people can’t help but change.  It’s just that often we get the changing wrong: where God changes for the better, we often change for the worse, as we let our prejudice and fear and anger get the better of us, just as humankind has always done.  But even then, there is hope. 

We can always drape our lives in sackcloth, though these days we might call that the words, “I’m sorry.”  We can always be changed for the better. 

We are changing, no matter what.  Let it be away from hate and towards love, away from prejudice and towards acceptance, away from retaliation and towards forgiveness.

If God can change, as this story tells us God can, then so can we.  We can change from living smaller lives than God made us to live, to living with bravery and boldness.

We can change from letting money or status or safety guide our actions, to being guided by vision and trust in God.  We can change from perpetuating cycles of “us-and-them” and “me first” to thinking of our own needs only after we’ve tended to the needs of those we would call enemies.

We can change…because when God made us once upon a time, God called us very good, and though we sinned, we never totally lost that goodness.  We can rediscover it…we can change for the better.


Thanks be to our gracefully changing God, to the Son who showed us that change can mean resurrection, and to the Spirit who stirs within us the courage to change, every day of our lives, every moment, amen.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

It Takes Two to Listen

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January 18, 2015
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Samuel served the Lord by helping Eli the priest, who was by that time almost blind. The Word of the Lord was rare in those days.
But one night, Eli was asleep in his room, and Samuel was sleeping on a mat near the ark of God in the Lord’s house. They had not been asleep very long when the Lord called out Samuel’s name.
Here I am!” Samuel answered. Then he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”  “I didn’t call you,” Eli answered. “Go back to bed.”  Samuel went back.
Again the Lord called out Samuel’s name. Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “What do you want?”
Eli told him, “Son, I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.” The Lord had not spoken to Samuel before, and Samuel did not recognize the voice. When the Lord called out his name for the third time, Samuel went to Eli again and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”
Eli finally realized that it was the Lord who was speaking to Samuel. So he said, “Go back and lie down! If someone speaks to you again, answer, ‘I’m listening, Lord. What do you want me to do?’”
Once again Samuel went back and lay down. The Lord then stood beside Samuel and called out as he had done before,
 “Samuel! Samuel!”
 “I’m listening,” Samuel answered. “What do you want me to do?”  The Lord said:
Samuel, I am going to do something in Israel that will shock everyone who hears about it! 12 I will punish Eli and his family, just as I promised. 13 He knew that his sons refused to respect me, and he let them get away with it, even though I said I would punish his family forever. 14 I warned Eli that sacrifices or offerings could never make things right! His family has done too many terrible things.
The next morning, Samuel got up and opened the doors to the Lord’s house. He was afraid to tell Eli what the Lord had said. 16 But Eli told him, “Samuel, my boy, come here!”
 “Here I am,” Samuel answered.
Eli said, “What did God say to you? Tell me everything. I pray that God will punish you terribly if you don’t tell me every word he said!”
Samuel told Eli everything. Then Eli said, “He is the Lord, and he will do what’s right.”
As Samuel grew up, the Lord helped him and made everything Samuel said come true. 20 From the town of Dan in the north to the town of Beersheba in the south, everyone in the country knew that Samuel was truly the Lord’s prophet.

Sermon: "It Takes Two to Listen"

Have you ever heard God speaking?  Really, I’m asking!  I realize for some it might be troubling to admit that you’re hearing voices, but let’s just lay aside that fear.  When have you heard God speak to you?

Some of you have heard God speak to you.  And some of you have been sitting in a pew all your life and you’ve never really heard God say anything.  We could say, in the face of secularism and loss of faith in the institution of religion that the Word of the Lord is rare in our days.  Many people talk about God.  But a Word from God seems lost in the racket of our frantic time.

That was also true of Samuel’s time.  There were corrupt politicians and more corrupt religious leaders.  There was senseless murder and precarious finances. There was a disorganized group of people who wanted to be like the great powers of their day, to have a King.  Because a King would change it all.  That would make everything better.

You see, these people of Israel didn’t really expect for any greater power to intervene.  Certainly not God.  A King was the best they could hope for.  The Word of the Lord was rare in those days.

But, for reasons we’ll never understand, God decided to get chatty one night, with a boy named Samuel and his mentor, Eli.

Eli was a minister, but he didn’t hear God speak any more than anyone else.  He watched his sons abuse their priestly power to take advantage of the most vulnerable in the name of God.  He saw his people Israel turn from faithfulness to greed and lust under such leadership.  His eyesight was failing him and so were his children.  He’d pretty much given up on a divine intervention when Samuel came in the middle of the night, asking why he’d been called.

It’s important to realize it took Eli three of these interruptions to recognize that it was actually God calling Samuel.  The Word of the Lord was rare in those days. 

But on that particular night, the cold ember of faith within that old priest Eli began to tingle with warmth, and he instructed his protégé with perhaps the most important words he would ever hear, “Go, lie down, and if God calls you say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” 

Note that Eli said, “if”.  Even those other three calls weren’t enough to prove to him that God might actually call again.  He’d had enough experience of the silence of God to put too much stock in God speaking.

But God wasn’t done with this wake-up call: Samuel was called again, and said what Eli told him to, and then God spoke a word that Samuel didn’t particularly want to hear, and certainly Eli didn’t.  God was calling out Eli for his sons’ blaspheming and power-hungry ways.  Eli wasn’t restraining them from such sins, and so he was as guilty as they were. 

The trembling boy Samuel, with sleep still in his eyes, reluctantly told his teacher all these troubling things God had said.  And that old man Eli was almost relieved that even punishment meant at least God was doing something, and said, “God is God.  Let him do what seems good to him.”

We hear that Samuel went on to become a trustworthy prophet of the Lord, that he did give Israel the king they wanted, though Saul turned out to be about the sorriest sort of king there was.  Samuel seems like the main character in this story.  But I think the courageous person in our story is actually Eli.

You see, Eli knew God wasn’t pleased with him, in the way of that guilty tingle we all get when we buy something far too extravagant, or drive by a homeless person, or perpetuate gossip, or keep things the same just for the sake of it.  Eli knew that tingle of guilt, he’d known it for many years.  And so, when Samuel thought Eli was calling him, I think that old priest knew what was happening after all.

I think he knew that seemingly-silent God was finally speaking.  And I think he knew it wouldn’t be good news.  The self-preserving choice would’ve been to, of course, lie, and tell Samuel that he did call him, asking him to trim the candles, or pray his prayers, or sweep the floor, or some other arbitrary task.

Eli was possibly tempted to do this, because it took him three times to get it right.  But finally he did.  He listened, not with his ears, but with his heart.  His guilt-tingling heart.  He told Samuel the truth: that God was calling.  And he received the judgment he knew was due to him, similar judgment he’d heard from God before. 
Scripture tells us the tragic ending of Eli’s tale, that after the Philistines killed his sons and captured the ark of the covenant in battle, Eli fell over with despair and died at age 98, blind and afraid.  His life was mostly a case of getting it wrong.  But just once, he did get it right.

He got it very right.  That old man had the courage to help a young, sleepy protégé hear God speaking to him, even if those words would bring his own sins to light.

Who wants to hear that sort of Word?  Eli certainly didn’t, especially from someone younger and less experienced than him, but he listened anyway.  And because he listened, Samuel was able to hear God’s voice, too. 

This passage begins by telling us that the Word of the Lord was rare in those days.  But what if it wasn’t?

What if it was just that this Word wasn’t particularly what the people wanted to hear: that corruption and sin, greed and injustice had to stop?  That worshipping power and privilege at the expense of the most vulnerable had to stop. 

If the Word of the Lord is rare in our days, maybe it’s for the same reason.  Maybe it’s because it makes us tingle with guilt like Eli.  Maybe we prefer God’s silence to God’s judgment.  But we should be sure that, if the word of the Lord is rare, it is not because we’re afraid of it.

God might not always bring a Word we want to hear, but God will tell us what we need to hear.  And if we are brave and humble enough, as Eli was, we might just find that God has been speaking in the middle of the night every night of our lives, in the midst of imperfect community each time we gather together, and will never stop speaking. 

But we can’t hear God’s Word alone.  Samuel needed old, feeble Eli to listen.  Eli needed young, questioning Samuel to listen.  We need each other to hear the voice of God.  We need each other to say, as Terry and Randall and Carol say today when they are ordained and installed as elders of our church, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

We need each other to figure out the difference between indigestion in the middle of the night and the tingling of God speaking to us.  Eli might have got very much wrong in his life: but what he got right is what matters: he helped those who would come after him hear and respond to God’s voice in new and powerful ways.   

That voice of God is hard to hear. 

It’s hard to hear God speaking when your own doubts drown out any trust in your own voice, much less God’s.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you don’t have food to eat or heat in your home.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you feel the church is not a safe place for you.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you feel that no one really expects much of you, much less wants you to succeed.  But God is still speaking – and it is our job to help each other recognize that voice.

You can probably tell by now that I don’t actually believe that the Word of the Lord is rare in our days…
But what is rare is someone willing to help others listen, especially when listening will challenge our way of doing things. 

If you want to hear the voice of God, don’t stare into the heavens begging, or pore over books on listening, and definitely don’t listen to endless sermons (ha).  If you want to hear the voice of God, help someone else hear it. 

And then be brave enough to trust God speaking through them, even if that means things have to change.  It takes two to listen.  And it takes all of us to respond with humility and courage.  Amen.


Sunday, January 11, 2015

Why the Water?

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January 11, 2015 -- Baptism of the Lord
Mark 4:1-11
4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon: “Why the Water?”

I don’t mean to brag (which of course means, I mean to brag!), but as far as water goes, I’m pretty important.  I might just be the most important river that’s ever been.  You can call me Jordan. 
Oh, don’t look so surprised…rivers can talk!  It’s not hard for me to tell you my story, for water is always making noise, you know.  Gurgling, bubbling, rushing…even when frozen, we still creak.  Water is rarely silent.  So I’m going to do my favorite thing: talk about myself.

You know all that has happened in me – the Jordan River – right?  I have a long, long history.

Joshua led the Israelites across me to get to the Promised Land.  As soon as the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant dipped their toes in my waters, I stopped for them, piling myself up in a big heap (I do like to show off) and letting them through safely.

In that land of Canaan, the tribes of Israel built an altar on my banks, recognizing it as a holy place. 
Prophets Elijah and Elisha, those wonder-workers, passed through me by making a dry path in the middle of my waters. 

The leper Naaman was healed after a soak in my stream.

In more recent time, my waters have been contested, with the need for a peace treaty in 1994 between Israel and Jordan, to guarantee that Jordan would get water from the Sea of Galilee.  People stopped fighting over me (for now).

But none of these events really changed me, or surprised me.  Water has always been seen as powerful and purifying as part of religious rituals.  And water continues to be the most contested resource in the world.   But there was one event that did something to me that I can’t really explain.

It was a baptism.  I was always something of a baptism destination – goodness, now I really am, because of what happened that day.

You see, there was a very odd fellow named John the Baptist.  I think his nickname gives you the idea – if you stood near him for longer than 5 minutes, it was pretty guaranteed you would wind up baptized.  He wore a coat made of camel’s fur and ate locusts and wild honey (you could call that the Johneo diet, I suppose).  He always had this wild look in his eye, like he was filled with some holy fire.  I saw it each time he bent his face over the surface of my waters.  He baptized so many, and I did what I did – washing them clean – and let God tend to the washing away of sin bit.

But then someone even odder than John came to be baptized by him.  His name was Jesus.  John had talked about this Jesus who would come, I remember (we waters listen well, you know, absorbing sound and all…haven’t you ever hummed under water?).

John said that he wasn’t even worthy to untie the sandals of this great one who would come.  Come, he did, this Jesus.  And his baptism could have easily blended into all the others – he was just a simple, ordinary-looking bearded fellow, after all.  But when he entered my waters with John, oh, something happened.

Something like when the Ark of the Covenant passed through my waters and I got piled up in a heap because of that great power.  Something like those ancient prophets performing wonders through me.  Something like that afflicted, aching Naaman being healed.  And something greater than all those things added together.

And, in case I missed that holy happening, the heavens had a similar experience: they opened up and a voice came along with the dove-like Spirit.  The voice said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  That voice was talking to Jesus.  But the strange part is, his baptism in my waters was his way of saying the same thing – to all of creation.

You see, he entered my dusty waters, thick with the sin of all those people, and he took it all upon himself.  By being baptized, that Jesus blessed all those who had come before him to the waters, and all of you who would come after him to the waters.  And in lowering himself into those waters, he named me Beloved, my waters themselves.  He named everyone who would ever enter the waters of baptism Beloved, and in his actions, he said to every single drop of my water, “I am well pleased with you.”

And so, because that divine human entered my waters to be baptized, he ended up soaking human sinfulness into himself to wash it all away.  He ended up making my waters holy in a way they had never been before.

I began by telling you (in a not-so-humble way, I’ll admit) that I might be the most holy water there ever was, or will be.  But that’s not because of me – it’s because of him.  And there’s something really essential you must realize about water: I’m not static, and I’m not new.  There is no new water on this planet.  I’m in a constant cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation and so, I’m not just stuck in the confines of my banks for all of time. 

I’ve gotten around.  I’m everywhere – there are drops of me that have been gathered with water from all over the world and rained down in a completely different place.  And I believe that’s why Jesus entered my waters that day.  He blessed me and, as the natural result of me doing what water does, that blessing has been showered all over the earth in unpredictable ways. 

Because holiness leaves a trace – especially the holiness of God-with-all-of-creation.  It is now impossible to decipher which drops of water are not mingled with every other drop of water on this planet.  There is a trace of the holiness that Beloved Jesus brought to my waters, in his choice to show solidarity with all the sinners being washed clean, with all those seeking belonging and community, in every single drop of water on this planet. 

The water you drank this morning. 
The water you bathed in. 
The water you brushed your teeth with. 
The waters of your baptism. 
The waters of morning dew, gentle rain and of rushing oceans. 
They are all holy, because Jesus chose to wade into my waters that day.

I suppose that is how holiness is supposed to work – it has its source in God, but then spreads throughout the earth with such generous abandon that it seeps into every patch of this dry, thirsty planet and every part of you parched people, panting for peace and forgiveness.  There are things I can do as the Jordan River to spread this sort of holiness around, but you can do more.

I can water the earth when it is thirsty, but only you can quench the loneliness in another by telling and showing them God is still with them.

I can wash away mud and dirt, but only you can remind people of the Beloved One who came to wash all sin and guilt away forever.

I can smooth a path with patience and constant movement, but only you can walk the risky road of forgiving another and smoothing over hatred and indifference with love.

I can provide a home for fish and creatures, but only you can work to ensure that no one is left out in the cold, forgotten.

I can constantly cycle as God designed me to do, but only you can ensure that my waters aren’t tainted with pollutants and toxins.

I might be important, but so are you.  The holiness of Jesus is every much a part of you as it is a part of me.  Don’t hoard that sort of holiness – follow my example.  Recklessly rain it upon all, until all come to finally know that they are God’s beloved, with whom God is well pleased.  Let’s drench this world with the compassion and grace of Christ.  I’ll keep doing my part – now you do yours.  Amen.