"For Us or Everyone Else?" August 11, 2013

Hebrews 11 Isaiah 1: 10-20 Luke 12: 32-41 One Sunday morning in worship, I looked out upon the congregation, and saw that here upon the floor in the second pew was a child turned around backward engrossed in coloring her bulletin program. The parents smiled that everything was as it should be, and I smiled back reassuringly. But during a pause in the preaching of the sermon this cherubic voice spoke out “Mommy is he talking to us or everybody else?” Rubbing her back, her mother said “Shhh, it's all right dear go back to what you were doing.” Suddenly it hit me that this is what we have done to faith. Instead of Salvation being our hope and goal and longing, rather than teaching the stories of Scripture as the foundations of our faith, we have conditioned and reassured our children that they do not need to pay attention to reality. We distract them with games and devices, teaching them that being polite is saying “Thank you” and “I am sorry” and “I love you” to family, even when you are not. It happened again this weekend, that we had a wedding. A beautiful affair with all the friends and family gathered. The couple described that what was unique, was something they had gotten from Amazon.com. Throughout the wedding, there was an empty vase before the couple. At the climax of the wedding, the parents came forward each with vial of sand in shades of silver, gold and brown, which they poured into the vase to form a foundation. After the parents were reseated the couple took their own vials of colored sand and layered these in a beautiful pattern upon their parents foundation of silver, gold and brown. Then, when the vase was almost overflowing, they took an oil candle and placed it upon the top, which became their unity candle. It was a beautiful thing, and a symbol of the sharing this couple hoped to have based on all their parents had provided. But as we walked down the aisle one of the guests leaned over asking “So what difference did that make for their staying married?” We are easily distracted and caught up in ritual, in the drama of the moment, without realizing there is a great deal more to life than going through the motions of saying please and thank you, and I am sorry... without meaning. That the simple words “I love you” are a promise and re-assurance of faith that together we create meaning, together we can believe in more than everything we have seen and known. The current Matt Damon Sci-fi “Elysium,” like the “Matrix” series, follow the theme of John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, in which at the very beginning the hero awakens from the reality of everything they have known to believe there is something far better, another world. In each of the current manifestations the goal becomes shattering the difference between worlds, bringing that reality down once and for all to be in concert with what everyone else knows as real. In the Puritan classic, Pilgrim's Progress, the Character “Christian” reads a book, and suddenly realizes the reality he has known is a City of Destruction focused upon its own consumption, a Sodom and Gomorrah, and he sets out on a journey for The Celestial City of God. Each of these are about more than a quest, a great journey, stories are our search for meaning. A quest for whether what those before us claimed to know and believe has meaning, or where we find salvation. The Word of God as it comes from Isaiah, names God's frustration with a people who only go through the motions of life. At the time of Isaiah, worship in the Temple had gone on for hundreds of years. Over those Centuries, instead of worship being about the celebration of our faith, about wrestling with priorities and ethical values, worship had followed a formula. We are sinners. Sin is a debt owed to God. Sinners must make a sacrifice to atone for their sins. There are two corruptions here: The corruption that the more sacrifices that were offered, the more sinners who said they were sorry, the more successful the Temple Worship. There were more people. There was ore money.This is success, Right? And also, whether we are anything more than sinners? God, who only wanted to love, to have relationship with Creation, is drowning in the blood of all the sacrifices that people had made. There was a constant parade of people, bowing down, saying I am sorry, and after hundreds of years of this, according to Isaiah, God said “ENOUGH!” So what do we think has changed in the thousands of years, we have continued? The point is not in making a sacrifice. Not in saying “I am sorry” or “Forgive me” or “I love you.” The point is whether we are transformed and changed to live in love, to live in forgiveness, or not? Years ago, there was a young man who went searching for faith. He found a great teacher, and asked that the teacher would show him what he needed to believe. The teacher took the man by the neck and forced his head under water and held him there as the novitiate wrestled and struggled to survive. Finally, the drowning man was allowed up. As he coughed and sputtered, and pushed the water from his face, the teacher asked “Why did you struggle, what were you searching for?” The waterlogged man replied, “I was struggling for air, searching only to breathe so as to survive.” The teacher replied, “Come back to me, when your struggle for faith, your need to believe is as desperate as for air.” The other day, I spoke with a man, who described that after 64 years of marriage, knowing his wife was dying day by day for the last many years, had held her in his arms as they slept. When he awoke, she had died. And he described feeling like he had been kicked in the stomach. That is to be desperate to believe. I hope that you know, your pastor is not so sadistic of a teacher as to try to drown you. And I do not believe God intentionally causes us pain. The point of faith is not to shock, or to entertain, or to console. For years now, we have celebrated in worship, in many and different ways. Barking like a dog. Praying in Confession. Laughing and Singing. Making Offerings. Sharing Communion. Serving one another. We could replace the Bibles in the pews with Kindles to read the Scriptures. We could replace the Hymnals with projections of words. We could replace the preacher with pyrotechnics, or actors, or a live band. The point of faith, is not whether we said the right words. Not whether we got the right people, or how many people. The point is whether we believe, and believing whether we pray and act, as we believe. We began worship this day, with the 11th chapter from the Letter to the Hebrews, which has a succinct recap of the journey of Abraham and Sarah. One day when he was 70 years young, Abram was called by God to leave home and family, and everything they had ever known to follow God. He took his wife and followed. Day after day, for years and decades they journeyed in hope of an inheritance. The nuance there, is that an inheritance is not fulfilled in your own lifetime. You are struggling, you are on this journey, so that there will be future generations after us, who might receive, who might believe. We said last week, that part of the nature of an inheritance is whether our parents, our loved ones, loved us as much as we thought, as much as they loved others; in this case whether God loves us; but even more whether we treasure their love. The particulars of Genesis, include that Sarah was very beautiful. Year after year as they journeyed, they encountered powerful, kings and pharaohs. Being afraid, Abraham had told his wife Sarah to tell the Kings and Pharaohs that she was only his sister instead of his wife. She bore this indignity. She bore their flirtations and gifts. Every time, their secrets would be found out, because secrets can never be hid. Finally, when they had wandered the earth on a journey approaching 40 years, when Sarah was 90 and Abraham over a 100 years of age, Abraham told his wife they were going to have a child. She laughed. After everything she had been through, journeying beside this partner. Now, when he was as good as dead, when it was long past the time of conception for her, they were going to have a child? But though she laughed, still she believed. Searching for our Celestial City... searching for what will be home for us... searching for fulfillment, can we believe? Jesus said: “Fear Not, little flock, for it is God's pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” We know God's desire. The question is whether we believe this is for us, or everybody else?