"Never Satisfied" March 11, 2018

Numbers 21: 4-9 John 3: 14-21 I’d like to let you in on a secret, Ministers graduating from Seminary, do not have all the answers. Oh, we earn Masters in Divinity and Doctors of Ministry, we know Church history and Theology, but the Seminary cannot and do not teach us how to confront the circumstance in the church, let alone all the problems in the world. Our 21st Century world is changing so fast, we have a hard time just keeping up. Several months ago, I got to a point of not wanting to listen to the news any more, but came to realize that if I did not, I would be as out of touch as someone in the 1890s looking at the world today. Our passages deal with questions without easy answers. There is part of me, that would like to cut John 3:16 from Nicodemus’ story and insert this at the very beginning. “In the Beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, because God so loved the world, that God gave God’s only begotten son!“ What a wonderful message this is for Christmas! But it is not Christmas, this is the 4th Week of Lent, and John 3:16 is about confronting the fact that all life as we know it ends, everything we control, every relationship dies. The hard question, without easy answers that we face in Lent, is that: the very incarnation of God, that Gift God gave us in the innocence of a child at Bethlehem, would be the sacrifice on the cross, the atonement for our sins. Jesus was not simply a Messenger, or a Prophet, that most precious life, that which Jesus gave up Divinity to take on, was given to die. That someone would die for you, is overwhelming. We live in a culture of accomplishments and take pride in being self-made. While we have more guns in America than we have people, less than 1 in 10 of us are willing to serve defending one another’s freedoms. The idea that someone would sacrifice their life for us, would sacrifice everything for us, trying to satisfy our needs for us, is huge. For the Gospel of John, the Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, or Lack of Belief, the Opposite of Faith is Broken Trust, breaking the Covenant with God. God loves, that is who God is, but will we stay in covenant relationship, will we continue to love, or break trust? The weekend after Labor day 1996, Judy and I came to Skaneateles for the first time. The Committee had done their work in investigating us with interviews and reference checks. But that weekend, our first-time look each other eye to eye and face to face, the Committee began unveiling a more realistic picture of the Church. The building was in desperate need of repair; they had pledged a campaign, which might be repaid over 5 years, but that only paid the first 1/5 of what was needed. Like most the Northeast, the community had a large number of people who had left. There had been conflict, severe enough that the same people aligned together regardless of the issue, and part of that was related to old old secrets. The number of unresolved issues got to feel like the game JENGA, at what point are there too many issues stacked on top and the candidate is going to turn and run. Accept, while I don’t know about the other candidates, I did not turn and run. Instead I began making a list of everything that needed to be satisfied, believing, they know their issues, all I have to do is satisfy those, and we live happily ever after. Except over the years we came to understand people can never be satisfied, the church will never be satisfied. This last week, I was enrolled in a class that the Seminary now titles as Transitional Ministry, and they used a phrase that I have said over and over. We transitioned from one phase into the next into the next, never satisfied, never done. We had 4 years of building and repaying debt. We paused to reflect. We had 4 years of commissioning and expanding music, paying for that. Then debt-free, we shifted to missions: developing the food pantry ecumenically, rebuilding the Manor, sponsoring refugees, then developing Health care halfway around the world. The people of God with Moses complained, they were not satisfied with manna from heaven, with water from out of rocks, they complained, and they died! But God loved the people so much, God gave the people a reality check. Will you refuse to be satisfied, knowing that that way leads to death, as an Ending? Or will you look beyond and work through suffering, looking through death to the possibility of something greater? Moses made a symbol of their vision of death, and put it on a pole to hold up over the people, for the people to look on death, to name the reality of a death of relationships, a death of all we know, in order to believe in something we do not understand? There is an ethical dilemma “to knowing, to understanding.” If we understand, if we can know and choose, we are implicated in choosing what we will do. I heard the most marvelous story of a young family. The father was putting his 3 year old down for the night, having bathed him, and made a snack, three stories and a drink, it was finally time for lights out. But not wanting to be put to bed, as the parent reached for the light switch, the toddler screamed “I hate you!” And the parent stopped, and said, “I am sorry to hear that, because I love you.” Instead of reacting, with “I’m sorry Daddy, I love you to.” Or “It’s okay”… The child screamed all the more “Don’t say that!” The parent repeated, “But, it’s true, I love you” and the child screamed “I don’t want to hear that!” And the father said, “I am sorry, but I do love you. Whether you like it or not.” In the face of unconditional love, the child realized he was powerless. This is what we affirm at the Sacrament of Baptism, “We do not know all that life has in store for you, the challenges and careers and struggles are all a mystery to us. But no matter what, we will love you, making your joys our joys and your worries our worries, and your heartaches our heartaches.” The father could have equivocated, negotiating “I would love you if you laid down and went to sleep.” Or the parent could even just walk away without saying anything but the next night the child might have decided they did not want vegetables, or a bath. The father refused to negotiate, refused to make his love for his child conditional, that parent’s love could never be satisfied, all the child could do was accept or flee that love, and there was no where else to go.