A meditation on Psalm 130

I had a fun time wrestling with the text this week. It's sinking in that I am unemployed; a couple more rejection letters came; longterm frustrations with DH recurring; some sort of bug dropping my serotonin just to magnify everything else; and then my grandmother (not unexpectedly) died. I think I needed the sermon more than the congregation, but it's not a bad pulpit supply lesson -- although perhaps a bit more teachy than preachy.

When I began seminary three years ago, I didn’t have a very good knowledge of the psalms. I knew snippets from here and there, after all, they in all sort of songs we sing! I had memorized the 23^rd, the 100^th, and the 1^st; but I didn’t have the depth and breadth of understanding of the psalms that I had of much of the rest of the Bible. After all, they’re so…. Different. These are the emotions and prayers and hymns of people from thousands of years ago. This is the age of rational, "just the facts ma’am", study. And they’re Poetry. And poetry loses something in the translation. What can 4000 year old poetry tell me about God? or about me? I was a computer science major. An engineer. I didn’t go for those emotional bits of the Bible.

Then, last summer, while I was doing a chaplaincy internship at UPMC, I encountered a woman in the hospital who was facing a terminal diagnosis. This woman had been taught that to express any uncertainty or fear was a lack of faith. That it was an insult to God to have doubts and fears. So I took her for a walk through the psalms.

The Psalms are a treasure trove of emotion: great joy, great sadness,great anger, great despair, determination, and thanksgiving. The full spectrum of human emotion. Because God made us to have emotions and God created out bodies with adrenaline and serotonin and endorphins and all sorts of hormones that run wild with those emotions. God expects us to have emotions including fear and even despair. Just look at David, a man after God’s own heart. Look at some of the psalms he wrote. OY! That’s emotion. The psalms help us give voice to our emotions and even to express those emotions to God.

I was originally going to use this Psalm as a secondary text, but then, as I spent time with it this week and as I studied it, it really started to resonate deep within me. Now, bear with me a moment, but I came to truly appreciate this psalm when I went through it in Hebrew. Poets like to use words with layers of meaning and words that play off one another. The Psalmist was no exception. I’m not going to turn this into a Hebrew lesson :) but there are some things that the English translation just plain loses.

If you look closely at your Bibles, you’ll notice that verses 1, 3a, 5, and 7 have “the Lord” in small caps while verses 2, 3b, and 6 have “the Lord” in regular text. The poet is using 2 different ways of referring to God. The first one, the one rendered in small caps in your Bible, is the Name Of God. Somewhere along the line, Jewish Rabbis had decided that you couldn’t take the name of God in vain (that’s number 3 on the big list); anyway, you can’t take the name of God in vain if you never say it. To honor this concern, Christian translators have usually followed their example. So name of God, YHWH, is shown in your Bibles as Lord in small caps. You can distinguish it from the regular word for lord if you know what you’re looking for, but as translated, it won’t be spoken and inadvertently taken in vain, and most of the time it doesn’t make a big difference in reading the passage. But in this psalm, it’s important to note that the poet is going back and forth between the personal, intimate name of God and God’s title as Lord.

It’s like being on a first name basis with the Queen: she may be Lizzie, Mom, or Grandmum in private; but never forget that she is “Your Majesty”.

The use of the title of “Lord” for God reminds us that we’re dealing with the great Lord and creator of the universe to whom we owe our very existence. The personal name reminds us that we worship a God who desires relationship, who has granted us the right to come and call Him by name. By alternating between these two forms of address, the Psalmist reminds us of the power and majesty, as well as the love and approachability of God. By holding these extremes in tension, the poet squelches our human tendency to consider God as EITHER forceful and distant OR loving and manageable. So, a little later, when the poet speaks of our sin and God’s forgiveness, it is with a full understanding that it is loving grace that allows us to approach; it is also what allows the poet to tell the rest of the congregation in v7 and 8 that God has the power and will to redeem us from all our iniquities. God’s not going to let our sins keep him away from his children and God has the wherewithal to make that happen.

So, now that we have permission to come before the Holy One of Israel, what is the occasion under which we approach? “Out of the depths I cry to thee”, the depths were chaos, frequently used to refer to the realm of the dead, a metaphor for great distress, even unto death. That’s where the poet is, in distress and chaos, basically in a place he considers like hell. We’ve most of us been in a similar place. You know how that feels. So what does the poet do? Does he throw a pity party? Does he tell God it’s unfair? No. In verse 5 he says “I will wait for YHWH”. That sounds rather bland and boring. Not “send down your angels to rescue me NOW!” not “I will climb out of the pit” just, “I will wait for YHWH”. For this we read the psalm? To watch a man sit at a bus stop? But there is a strong lesson here. The Hebrew word for “wait” and for “hope” are the same. There are 2 different words used in verse 5, the first translated “wait”, and the second “hope” but either Hebrew word could be translated either way. The Hebrew language doesn’t separate Hope in God from Waiting for God. The Hebrew word means to wait with expectation. We know it’s coming, we’re just _waiting_ for it. The big difference in the two words is that the first means more to endure, still with expectation; and the second is used only for faith in God.

So now lets look at that again, the poet’s life is in the pits. But he’s going to endure, to persevere, putting his expectation in the word of God. But what does that mean, God’s “Word”? Well, this side of the reformation, our first thought is scripture, and the Torah would have been part of the poet’s thought, but he certainly didn’t just mean the words on the page. Here again we have a Hebrew word that just doesn’t translate well into English. The word here means word/event/deed. Inseparable. What you say IS what you do, total integrity. After all, this is the God who spoke creation into existence. word/event/deed are all one. The poet is choosing to trust God in the context of everything God has said/promised/done for His people. It wasn’t just “how does my personal life look right now” it was, “How has the Holy One of Israel dealt with his chosen people through history?” In other words, to wait in expectation on the Lord is to quit asking “why?” or “why me?” or “when will it be over?”, and start looking at WHO is in control.

Who is in control? Verse 7 reminds us the primary attribute of God on which the poet was depending. Not omnipotence, omniscience, immutability or any of those other concepts we actually inherited from Greek religions. No, the primary attribute of God to the Jewish people and therefore to the poet was hesed. Hesed – it has been translated here as steadfast love, others translations use loyalty, goodness, kindness; the KJV uses lovingkindness (one word), others use fidelity, or occasionally, mercy. The most important thing in putting our trust in God is God’s love and care for us. And God’s history of care that shows us God is reliable.

The Israelites used to rehearse their history of salvation all the time. Just to say “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” was to recall the stories of each of these men and their interactions with God. Many prophets begin with, “The Lord who brought you out of Egypt” – the Jews are admonished to never forget the history of God’s work with them. And the story of God’s work with the Jews is the story of God’s steadfast love.

Puritans were encouraged to keep a diary to examine the work of God in their lives. Each person examined their spiritual growth and insights, but they also used these diaries to record answers to prayer and the places where they saw God’s hand moving in their life – what they called “the providences of God”. Then, they would go back and read these diaries, some would even underline and dog-ear passages to find them more readily, and these Puritans would use the diaries to bolster their faith when life was rough. As one Puritan woman recorded (in her diary of course!): “My own experience has ever proved to me that thou art the God that has fed me my whole life long, the God that didst never leave me upon the mount of difficulty, but always appeared and wrought deliverance”[i] The diaries served much like a family photo album or memory book and the woman was like a child going through the stories with her father, recalling all the times he’s been there for her. Not abstract stories of someone else’s life, but clear, first hand experiences from her own. She remembers all the times the Father has been there and she knows he will continue to be. She didn’t dwell on the bad things happening in her life, she didn’t look for someone else to blame, she moved forward in life, remembering the God that would see her through. She remembered her personal experience of God’s hesed, God’s steadfast love, and she could trust that it would continue – even if it didn’t make sense now. Let’s look at that psalm again, with what we know now:

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O YHWH.

² Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O YHWH, should account for iniquities;
Lord, who could stand?

⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, thus you may be revered.

⁵ I endure for YHWH, my soul perseveres,
and in his word and deed I will hope.

⁶ my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, hope in YHWH!
For with YHWH there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.

⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

There we are. Life isn’t always what we want or what we think it ought to be. We can’t truthfully say we understand why rotten things happen. Some times we don’t like the place we’re in. But we remember WHO is in control; who is the Lord of the universe and of our lives. And we can remember what God has done for us in the past. In the midst of the depths, when life doesn’t make sense, I will endure, trusting the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God who gave his son to redeem our iniquities, I will trust God to do what is right in the context of all humanity and all time. That’s not always an easy thing to do. That’s why we remember all of God’s providences like the Puritans did. By remembering the past providences of God we are free to trust our lives to him even when we don’t understand. We’re free to say “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I can trust God to come through this time, because I remember how God has come through for me before.”

Thanks be to God.

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[i] http://books.google.com/books?id=z-MxJ4iFqi8C&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=puritan+providence+diary&source=web&ots=tM0LQu8XAF&sig=yM4V1lC1GiykjT38JvmBYN6FmnM&hl=en#PPA32,M1

Sermon on feeding the 5000 (John 6:1-4 with Eph 3:7-21)

This sermon is not the one I worked on all week. This is the one that rewrote itself Saturday afternoon. It is something they needed to hear, but nothing something I would have planned to say as a pulpit supply; but I am told the Spirit was in it's delivery. I came out thinking it never really came together, but many who heard it say it did. God is good. The Spirit does indeed have our backs in the pulpit. This is also (of course) not exactly as delivered.

Jesus has been performing miracles and teaching to the crowds, but he has pulled away with his disciples to get in a little teaching time with them, away from the crowd. There are still many things they need to know, things he can’t say in front of the crowds, so they go up a mountain to get away. But that isn’t to be. The crowds have had a taste of miracles and they want to see more. They’re intrigued by this teacher, this prophet, and they wonder if he could be the promised one. Remember, Israel is occupied by the Romans, and they want to be free. Civil and religious writings tell us there were many messiah pretenders in the time before and after Jesus; most advocating revolt against the political power of Rome. The crowd wonders if this might be the one. So they follow.

It is also important to know the time of year. Our passage tells us that it was close to Passover. Passover – when the Jews celebrate liberation from Egyptian domination. When God caused the plagues and parted the Red Sea, then cared for them for forty years in the desert feeding them miraculously every day as God rained down bread from heaven. The great Prophet Moses had told them that one day there would come a prophet like him. These people’s imaginations were looking for that promised “prophet like Moses”. Jesus had just said (in verse 5:46 ) “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.”

Maybe this miracle worker was the prophet Moses wrote about. Maybe they’d finally be free of the Romans! So they follow and crowd around. But it’s getting late. And no one has food. And there are no parkway plazas or fast food restaurants to stop in. As a matter of fact, the crowd is bigger than most villages nearby. They wouldn’t have resources to feed that many extra people. So what is Jesus to do? Ah, a prime teaching moment. He turns and asks the disciples.

Jesus has set up the context. It is Passover time. He spoke of the fact that Moses wrote about him. What presumption! And they’ve gone up the mountain to receive teaching – like Moses went up Mt Sinai. Now the hungry masses need to be fed like God fed them at Moses’ request when they were in the wilderness. Jesus is gearing up for the punch line. To see if the disciples have started to understand what he’s been teaching. Jesus turns and asks the disciples. He knows what he’s going to do. And he knows He can do it. but do the disciples get it? Jesus turns and asks the disciples.

In the other gospels, the disciples recommend that Jesus send the people away to find their own food. Now there’s a solution. Punt. Walk away from the entire predicament. “Not my problem. They brought it on themselves when they didn’t pack a lunch. Send them away, Let’s get back to that special teaching you had in mind, Jesus.” They chose to ignore the plan.

Jesus didn’t accept that proposal. That wasn’t His plan. Jesus turns and asks the disciples.

Phillip sees the enormity, the impossibility of the task. It would take more than 6 months’ wages to buy enough bread to give them a little, let alone actually FEED them– and that’s assuming they could even find that much to buy. Phillip sees all the reasons it won’t work and starts listing them. He laughs at the plan.

Jesus didn’t accept that, either. He had a plan, he knew what he was going to do. Jesus turns and asks the disciples.

Andrew doesn’t understand either, but he trusts Jesus to know what’s going on. So, he says, here’s a kid with his lunch. Just enough for the one child. “what is that among so many?” Maybe he was discouraged, maybe he was hopeful, maybe he was daring Jesus; we don’t know. But Andrew chose to give the information Jesus to see what he would do with it.

NOW Jesus acts.

of course, Jesus could have done it without the child’s lunch. In the temptation stories, Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread, so he must have been able to. So Jesus could have taken that route. But he didn’t. God, throughout history has worked primary through people. Even parting the Red Sea, God had Moses hold up his staff. God doesn’t do all the work while we sit back and watch. He expects us to play our part, to make our contribution.

Ah, there’s the rub. We’re supposed to make our contribution and there are some common mistakes we make when God asks for our contribution.

The first mistake we tend to make is when, like Phillip or the other disciples, we try to take over the plan. God asks us to play a role and we try to come in and direct the play. "Lord, you can’t really mean THAT, this would be so much more practical." Or "This is how we do things here, so just move over and I’ll show you." "God, this thing I’m comfortable with would be sooo much better than what you’re planning on doing."

Sounds kinda silly when I put it that way, but come on, be honest. We’ve all done it sometime.

Sometimes we do this here in the church, because, we think the plan is to be and do what we’ve always been and done even though the neighborhood and the world and even we are very different; we’ve quit listening and we’re working on old instructions. Sometimes we think the plan for our church is to be just like that church down the road, as if different churches and different people didn’t have different jobs assigned in the kingdom. In either case, we come to God with a list of what WE think our programs and outreach should be instead of listening for God’s plan. Sometimes instead of listening to God, we listen to what the media and culture tell us church should be. We end up being like the disciples who didn’t want to participate, or like Phillip who just criticized the plan.

God knows what God is going to do: here at [our church], and in each of your lives. Just like Jesus knew. He asked the disciples as a test. And they didn’t do too well. Hopefully we’ll do better; because if [our church] is to be a healthy Body of Christ it won’t get there by following our plan. Not by following [Pastor]’s plan or even session’s plan. We have to follow God’s plan; get our plans in line with his, then we will succeed -- because we got on board with the winning plan.

A second mistake we make when God asks for our contribution is by withholding what we’ve got. Not giving what he asks of us. Maybe that’s from selfishness. After all It’s MINE, I earned it! Sunday Morning is my only time to sleep in, I deserve that.

And what does scripture say about that? In Psalms, God says that “every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.” God created this earth and everything in it and on it belongs to Him. You are given the responsibility to watch over some of God’s world (and some of God’s children); but you’re just the steward, the caretaker, not the owner. James tells us “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father”. And Job told us “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” And don’t forget the Parable of the rich man who built extra warehouses to store all his wealth. “God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Everything we have, and everything we are belongs to God. Ever wonder why we use the term, “I gave my life to Christ”? He has a plan to use you, your life, this church, but he asks for your willing contribution.

Sometimes we withhold our contribution because we fear it is so little. Look back at our storey, Barley loaves and fishes – dinner rolls and anchovies (the fish would have been pickled so they didn’t spoil, and little fish like anchovies were common in that area) – a poor boy’s box lunch. And look what Jesus did with that!

Another guy who called himself the least of men, the greatest of sinner, was described by one contemporary writer as “a man little of stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked.” This man didn’t deserve anything, had little to commend himself, but became the great apostle to the Gentiles, speaking in the great Greek halls of learning, because Paul gave what he had to the Lord.

So, instead of complaining about what we do not have, or using it as an excuse for not following God’s plan, we need to give thanks to God for what we do have, and God will make it go farther; just like those barley loaves and fishes.

I went to a concert on Friday night, and heard a song about this passage by a man who, 13 years ago, was given 6 months to live. After surgery to remove the brain tumor, he says he was reading the parable and thought, “pretty good for 5 loaves and 2 fishes”, so he asked God “what can you do with a brain tumor and a guitar?” the answer: 12 year (so far) recording and concert career; a chance to tell people all over the world about the hope he has in Jesus, even though his cancer has recurred.

But letting go is scary. Letting go of our plans and searching for God’s plan is scary. But we are free to give because Jesus loves us; and perfect love casts out fear. If we know the all-powerful God loves us and wants the best for us, we don’t need to protect our own interests. Sometimes it hard because we don’t understand, because, by human standards, things are NOT going well. But still, as Christians, we place our trust: our lives, our talents and our money in the hands of a God who loves and cares for us.

A God who dwells in our hearts through faith. As Paul says, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Filled with the Holy Spirit, we can let go of our own agendas and get on board with God’s plan to be the people and the church He wants us to be. All the different gifts and skills needed to accomplish God’s plans for [our church] are here in [our church]. But God leaves it to us whether we will bring them forward. God knows there’s not enough in what we bring to accomplish his plan, but God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, will multiply our gifts to fulfill his plans. Look what he can do with 5 loaves and 2 fishes, or with a guitar and a brain tumor, and who on earth knows what he will do with your gifts.

I will remember

Scripture Lesson From the OT: Lamentations 3:1-26
Scripture Lesson From the NT: Romans 8:31-39

As some of you know, I’ve been serving an internship as a chaplain at Borg Hospital this summer. I visit with patients on several neurological and other surgical units. I visit with patients who request to see me, and I visit with whatever patients and families cross my path as I “round”: walking through the units and sticking my head in rooms. During this time I’ve seen a lot of people who have come to a crisis point in their lives: folks in car crashes, folks with newly delivered terminal diagnoses, and their families. I frequently hear: “I never thought I/my son/my husband/my daughter would be here.” And then they ask the inevitable question, spoken or unspoken, “why?” Of course, that question isn’t limited to people in the hospital. Most of us have had some situation in our lives where we asked the same thing. Why, God? Why me?

Sometimes we can’t see God in our life. At some points, life just doesn’t make sense. We look at the mess that is our life and we do not see the hand of God. We think that if God were at work in our lives then our lives would look … well, better, somehow.

We want what society says is a good life. I’ll even go out on a limb and say that, at some level, most of us want to believe the prosperity gospel preached in so many churches today. Come on, be truthful, we yearn to believe that God wants us all to be rich, in perfect health, and have nice things and have an easy life.
We see Joel Osteen’s book on the best seller list and it promises Your Best Life Now. And we look at our lives as they stand, and we want what he promises. Joel tells us that we can have power and wealth and health if we just think positively. This is not a new message. But it’s not a Biblical one either. Wealth and health are not the primary indicators of God’s presence in our lives.

Look at the Lamentations passage. The picture the poet paints is not pretty. His city has fallen to the conquering army after a protracted siege. He was supposed to be safe because he was in the beloved city of the most high God. Instead he’s thin as a rail, weak, diseased. His home and his livelihood are gone. He has no material position or status. His paths twist around. Everywhere he turns, he runs into a wall. He is in darkness. Mocked and alone.

We look at our lives. We see jobs lost, bills that must be paid. We see families falling apart, children in trouble. We see disease and death. We feel the isolation, the shame of our lives. Where is God? Like the poet, we cry out to God in our prayers and we hear no response. Sometimes it’s just really hard to see God’s hand in our life.

But God has promised us He is always here even when we don’t see him. The most straightforward promise was the one Christ made to the disciples: “lo I am with you always even to the close of the age.” (Matt 28:20) He will be with us always, for all time.

Psalm 139 which we read in the prayer this morning promises, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” So, wherever we go, God is with us. Our home, away at college, in the service in Iraq, in the hospital, the jail, the courtroom: God is there.

One of the seminary professors is fond of “catching” students in a trick question: “when you walk into a hospital room, do you bring Christ into that room?” Most students, aware that a) this is a seminary and b) they are pastors in training, will immediately answer, “yes!” to which the good professor will reply with an emphatic “no! … Christ is already there.”

We’ve seen that God is always with us. Romans ups it a notch. Not only is God there, but there is nothing can undo that. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now, Paul’s not making a big deal out of these things, in fact he seems to just assume these horrible things will happen, but Paul knows God is with us through it all. Just as God is with us in the good things in life, he is with us in the bad. God is always wherever we are.

We remember God’s faithfulness… We remember all the times God has been there when we needed help and strength and encouragement.

The Israelites used to rehearse their history of salvation all the time. Just to say “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” was to recall the stories of each of these men and their interactions with God. Many prophets begin with, “The Lord who brought you out of Egypt” – the Jews are never to forget the history of God’s work with them. And the story of God’s work with the Jews is the story of God’s faithful love.

The Puritans made this more personal. Puritans were encouraged to keep a diary to examine the work of God in their lives. Each person examined their spiritual growth and insights, but they also used these diaries to record answers to prayer and the places where they saw God’s hand moving in their life – what they called “the providences of God”. Then, they would go back and read these diaries, some would even underline and dog-ear passages to find them more readily, and these Puritans would use the diaries to bolster their faith when life was rough. As one Puritan woman recorded (in her diary of course!): “My own experience has ever proved to me that thou art the God that has fed me my whole life long, the God that didst never leave me upon the mount of difficulty, but always appeared and wrought deliverance” The diaries served much like a family photo album or memory book and the woman was like a child going through the stories with her father, recalling all the times he’s been there for her. Not abstract stories of someone else’s life, but clear, first hand experiences from her own. She remembers all the times the Father has been there and she knows he will continue to be. She didn’t dwell on the bad things happening in her life, she didn’t look for someone else to blame, she moved forward in life, remembering the God that would see her through.

We’re not so good at that. We tend to be “what have you done for us lately?” last week is just, so, last week. But we must not forget all that has come before, we have to remember from our lives and through the ages. We must choose to remember God’s faithfulness.

Sometimes remembering can be difficult. We might not have been looking for God in our joys and good times so we may not remember the things the things He did for us. We don’t have those Puritan journals. That makes it hard. Trust is built over time, first in small things then in the big ones. If we haven’t been looking for God and trusting Him in the small things, we are not going to be ready for the big things.

Athletes rely on something they call muscle memory where you practice a move some many times your body almost learns to do it without your brain. For example, you keep swinging that golf club or that bat until your body knows the movement; or when you take a self defense class you go through the moves many times. You build the muscles, and train your body so that, you should ever need to respond, the response will be automatic. It will come from an ingrained pattern of behavior. We need to build up our spiritual muscle memory. How do we do that? Romans 10:17 tells us, “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” If you want to know God, know his word.

If a crisis hits, we can only draw on what we have. And I have seen too many people this summer that don’t have anything to draw on. They haven’t done any spiritual training. They don’t know scripture, they don’t have a prayer life – They do not personally know Jesus. Maybe they know they ought to turn to God because their parents were Christians. Or maybe they have friends who are. Maybe they even go to church. But without a working relationship, they have no history to remember. They don’t trust God.

But when you need to remember, Each of us must decide for our self: Will I remember ? Do I trust?

When we chose to remember, God gives us hope. Hope isn’t something we can find or muster up for ourselves. Hope is a gift from God. Hope is a lifeline God gives us to get through the hard times.

Now, I’m not talking about “I hope the local team makes it to the playoffs this year” or “I hope my husband got us reservations for our anniversary.” That’s wishing. That’s the problem with the English word. In the Hebrew, the word for hope is the word for wait, with expectation. We know it’s coming, we’re just _waiting_ for it.

The problem is, it doesn’t always come the way we expect or the way we would choose. God doesn’t follow our scripts. And sometimes we forget that our priorities are not necessarily God’s priorities – after, all, we don’t see the whole picture. We hold to our wishes and try to call them hope.

But part of Hope is the letting go of our wishes. And the willingness to trust God, the loving father, whose compassion never fails, to trust God to do what is right for us in the context of all humanity and all time. To believe as it says in V28 “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”

Trusting is not an easy thing to do. That’s why we remember all of God’s providences like the Puritans did. Their remembering didn’t mean they were without doubt, as a matter of fact, they might have been relying on their “habit of faith”. You know, that point where you’re beyond actually hoping or trusting; but you make a decision to continue to remember God’s faithfulness. To believe that if God is for us none can successfully be against us.

All our answers, all our theology is an just attempt to confess what we believe, not to explain how it works. So we wait on the Lord. And the Lord is good to those who wait, his compassions are new every day. Because we need help everyday. God gives us the faith to wait. God gives us hope.

Life isn’t always what we want or what we think it ought to be. We can’t truthfully say we understand why rotten things happen. Some times we don’t like the place we’re in. But we remember who is in control. Who is the Lord of the universe and of our lives. And we can remember what that God has done for us in the past. By remembering the past providences of God we are free to trust our lives to him even when we don’t understand. We’re free to say “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I can trust God to come through this time, because I remember how God has come through for me before.” In all things we are conquerors – not because it turns out the way we want, but because we are in Christ Jesus.

A life worthy of the calling

(Isa 49:1-7 and Eph 4:1-16)

Did you ever play a recreational team sport where the teams are selected by captains? Remember how exhilarating it felt to be called first? Or do you remember fantasizing about how great it would be to be called first?

We are called

This morning’s passage in Isaiah tells us:

• “Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name.”

And it goes on:

• “the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Psalm 139 takes it even further:

• “you knit me together in my mother’s womb … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Now THAT is being called first. Before we were born, before we did anything to earn it, God called us for His team. The God of the universe, the Holy One of Israel, has made mention of your name, He knows you, He chose you. He knows everything about you, and he loves you anyway. If you really stop to think about that, instead of just taking it for granted as something we say in church, it really blows the mind. Listen again: The God of the universe, the Holy One of Israel, has made mention of your name, He knows you, He Chose you. He knows everything about you, and he loves you anyway.

Last week as we celebrated the baptism of Jesus, we remembered our own baptisms. Real Minister spoke of how the water marks us members of God’s family. This week I want to look at what that means in how we live our lives, or as Paul puts it in Ephesians, as we “lead a life worthy of the calling”.

To be a team

To fulfill our calling, we need to first understand what the Bible says about WHY we are called. I hate to burst any bubbles, but we weren’t called so that we would have wealth, or power, or even so that our lives would be easy. Instead, Isaiah tells us we were called to be God’s servants.

Earlier in his letter, before the passage we read, Paul has told the Ephesians the same good news we just heard when he said ^“it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” But he goes on in that same paragraph to say “we are .. created … to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So we are chosen totally by God’s grace, but he did chose us to DO something.

Now I can’t sit here and tell you exactly what God has called YOU to do, because I don’t know. There are certain types of behavior we are all told to exhibit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), but as for the actual works God has planned for you, you’ll have to ask God. But I can tell you that the answer is NOT the same for everyone. It’s not even the same for everyone here. The Ephesians passage tells us that we were each given grace and gifts to “equip us for ministry” and goes on to list a few, even more are listed in Corinthians. However, there are whole sermon series or multi-week Sunday school lessons on discerning your spiritual gifts: Don’t worry, I won’t try to cover it all now. I’d rather look at a different aspect: Teamwork. Paul speaks in this passage of building up the body of Christ and growing into the head which is Christ. In other words: We are to be the body of Christ. Arms reaching out, mouths proclaiming his love, those are the attractive things. But every body also has the less appealing functions: the spinal cord that carries messages throughout the body; the ligaments that hold things together, the bones that give us structure: without these things the body could not function.

Lets go back to that team for a minute: When we put together a team, we chose different skills for different positions. What kind of a team would have all goalies, all quarterbacks, or all receivers; certainly not a very good one! Even if everyone on the team could throw better than , we’d never win without receivers and blockers. There have to be those players whose job it is to facilitate the heroes (and there are a lot more of them than the heroes!)

Paul tells us that “each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift … to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”. Everything we need is here—if we can get the parts working together.

But God didn’t say it was easy

Now Paul was not unwise to the ways of the world. He knew that folks don’t always get along. That’s why he spends so much time telling us HOW. Let’s take a look at Paul’s Rules for spiritual unity:

1. First HUMILITY. Humility is the opposite of pride. Now I don ‘t mean “pride in a job done well” which is really gratification. Humility is the opposite of smugness or arrogance. In Philippians, Paul tells us to “in humility, consider others better than yourselves.” I saw a T-shirt the other day that says “Jesus loves you, but I’m His favorite.” That is NOT humility. We should NEVER think of ourselves as better than any of God’s other children.

2. We are also to handle one another with GENTLENESS. That is not a common trait in the public arena today. When someone cuts you off on the highway, would you characterize your response as “gentleness”?

3. With PATIENCE. Not of us reach the same conclusions at the same time. Some just move more slowly. Some of us need to try things to find out they won’t work. We tend to think of patience as waiting passively. The Greek is actually “long-fused”, contrast that with “short-fused”! the King James translated it better as: “long-suffering”.

4. in LOVE. The word here is not brotherly love or affectionate love. Its Agape love – The kind that comes from God; the kind we can’t manage on our own. An undeserved, sometimes even unreciprocated love. This kind of love is not a just a feeling, it is a decision to act for the true best interest of the other party.

5. making EVERY EFFORT to maintain the unity of the Spirit – This is an ongoing activity: It’s a present participle, not a past tense verb. This isn’t something you do once. It’s a decision you have to make everyday, every encounter, and every conflict.

These rules are simple, but they are not easy. Paul says “we must no longer be tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming”. These principles are not intended to make us into doormats who put up with everything. We’re supposed to be mature in our faith, but humble, gentle, patient and loving with one another. We have a goal: to serve God, to grow into our roles. As Paul says “speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, [That’s us!] as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” If we can pull this off, we could make a radical change in our relationships!

Closing

Paul tells us that “each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift … to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”. I believe that within each community: each church, each presbytery, each synod – God provides the grace, the gifts, that are needed within that community to accomplish God’s purposes. But it’s up to us to make use of them and function as a body. God allows us to make the decision to sit quietly and let our gifts atrophy. He also allows us to argue and bicker instead of being one body. But it breaks his heart.

As we start a new year and as we ordain and install new elders at the congregational meeting next week, take some time to reflect on your role in this body. Ask yourself: Am I contributing as I have been gifted? But also ask: Am I making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace? Am I helping and building up my partners in the ministry we call country church Presbyterian? Beyond that, Am I leading a life worthy of my calling?

Let us pray:

Lord open our hearts and minds to the possibilities you have in store for us. Give us grace, compassion, humility and gentleness in our dealings with one another, building us in to a fit body worthy of your headship. Amen.

Are you ready?

In a sentence: As we prepare our homes for the coming of the Christ Child, let’s remember Christ the King who is to come and prepare our lives for him.

Well, here we are, the first Sunday in Advent. Many people will have out of town guests coming to stay, others will just have local guests stopping by. Are you ready? Is the frig stocked? House tidied, dusted and vacuumed – plenty of clean sheets and towels? Then there’s the hustle and bustle of the shopping, the decorating, the baking… so much to do before they get here… the wrapping, did we forget uncle George’s gift? They’ll be here tomorrow… have we gotten the cat hair off the guest bed? I thought YOU were buying his favorite soda. AAAARGH. Welcome to the Season of Peace.

Our society -- the endless advertising and store decorations (which have been up since before Halloween) are designed to make you buy, Buy, BUY! That is what Christmas is all about, right? It’s my job to answer that with a resounding NO!

As a matter of fact, if you want to get picky (and I do), it’s not even Christmas time. It’s Advent. Christmas time is historically the time between Christmas day and epiphany – The 12 days between the church celebration of the birth and the celebration of the arrival of the wise men. That was the time for gift-giving and parties. Advent is about contemplation, preparation, examining ourselves and our lives to see if we’re ready to receive the Lord of the Universe who is also our savior. But…it’s hard to market that.

But it is what I’m going to challenge you to do today, to look at advent as a time of preparation. We lit a candle today to remind us of the waiting. but, Today is only the first Sunday in advent. We’re not at Christmas yet – there are 4 more candles in that wreath. We have begun to look forward to the celebration of the incarnation of Christ, but for Christians, Advent is also tied to the expectation of Christ’s second coming. As a matter of fact the passage we read today is about the return of Christ.

In the Christian Calendar, we celebrate the two together – the time leading up to the celebration of the incarnation – Christmas, is also the time of deliberate reflection and preparation for the second coming. 2000 years ago. Christ came as Jesus of Nazareth; one day, Christ will come in glory. The passage challenges us: Are we ready? not just for the little baby safely ensconced in the manger, but also for the King of kings? In order to answer that question we have to ask another -- What does it mean to be ready? I propose that we need to prepare our lives, our hearts, and our souls.

Lives lived in readiness:
The people in this morning’s Gospel reading were going about their everyday lives: farming, cooking, marrying and giving in marriage (which implies generations) when suddenly it happened: “two [were] in the field; one [was] taken and one [was] left”. So we’re not expected to stop our daily living. But there ought to be something different about us. What is a life lived in readiness?

The epistle reading for today gives us more information: Romans 13:11-14 says:
Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
We are to live our lives in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our lives are like our houses. All too often life just overwhelms us and the dust and “works of darkness” creep into the corners. In preparation for the coming of Christ, our lives should be swept clean. We can even add the ornamentation of Christ-like behaviors. Now, something out of place in a clean house stands out, just as a bit of sin stands out in an upright life; However, if we don’t keep things cleaned up, it’s far too easy to miss when they start piling up. What’s one more bit of clutter? One more time succumbing to temptation?

Now on a normal, day to day basis, many of us keep our lives like we (well, like I) keep house. We keep the front room clean and tidy and presentable, but don’t dare let anyone look in the junk room! Or under the beds, or in the hall closet -- that’s where I hide all my secret messes! WAKE UP! THE DAY IS NEAR! As Paul said, live honorably as if Christ were coming any minute!

Heart of Anticipation
Over the past several weeks, Martha was awaiting George's return home from Iraq – first to the States, then to Smalltown. She wasn’t sure when he would come. She finally have a date for his return to the States, but for a few weeks she was in constant anticipation of the phone call saying he was here, or even for him to walk in the door. Martha had a heart of anticipation. (For those who don’t know, George was here last week.)

We should all feel like Martha, or like parents anticipating the birth or adoption of a baby – you can’t contain them. Especially for adoptive parents, it’s very much like the church, you don’t know when it will happen. We want it to happen and we’re ready at any moment, but, especially with overseas adoption, it could be months or years. Like this morning’s scripture tells us: no one knows when except the Father.

But if our lives aren’t ready, if we’re too caught up in the things about us, we can’t really be sure we want him to come. Just like those houseguests. If we have soccer games, and business meetings and the house isn’t in order, we’re not REALLY sure we want them to come. On the other hand, when the house is ready, we’re happy to see guests. When are lives are ready, we can joyfully anticipate Christ’s return because there is nothing to stand between us and God. So, if you’re caught in the nightmare of December busy-ness, WAKE UP! for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Soul of Peace
Finally, We know the peace of the holiday season comes when all the chores are done, the house is ready, and you can welcome your guests in the peace of knowing that all is ready and in order. The Soul of Peace comes from prioritizing the things of Christ, NOT the things of this world. As we’re told in Philippians 4:
whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
I don’t know about what you’ve seen, but what I’ve seen at the mall is NOT what is noble, pure, lovely, or admirable. WAKE UP! December mall madness is hustle and bustle, Jesus is peace.

Conclusion:
We need to slow down and wait. There are 4 more candles before Christmas. This is Advent, a time of preparation, a time to examine our lives and prepare for the return of the King. The season is not about being so busy we that can’t hear the baby crying for us.

I challenge you to take time this advent to examine your life: where do you need some house cleaning or a thorough remodel? Do you live a life that’s ready, a heart filled with anticipation for Christ’s return, and soul full of God’s peace?

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Are you ready?