The Mayberry Preacher

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY - THE 10-MINUTE MORAL WEIGHT TRAINING REGIMEN

Genesis 18: 22-33
Steve Lindsley
September 16, 2012

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I know we’re in the midst of this sermon series on Living Biblically and reading excerpts from A.J. Jacobs’ book and all, but I thought I’d start off this morning by reading from another book.  I got this years ago; I think someone left it for me on my office desk or something.  It’s called Children’s Letters To God, and it’s a collection of various notes – usually just a sentence or two – that children have penned to God.  I get the sense some clever Sunday school teacher came up with the idea – all the way down to the Xeroxed text of the letters, and even drawings to boot.

I think my favorite section is the one that highlights some of their prayers. Here’s just a sampling:

Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.

Dear God, please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter.
There is nothing good in there now.

Dear God, please send me a pony.  I’ve never asked for anything before.
You can look it up.

Dear God, if we come back as something,
please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton, because I hate her.

Dear God, please send Dennis Clark to a different camp this year.

Dear God, I want to be just like my Dad when I get big,
but not with so much hair all over.

(from Children's Letters To God, compiled by Stuart Hample & Eric Marshall: Workman Publishing, New York, 1991).

Ah, the things kids pray for!  But it’s not just the little ones, you know.  We mature adults have been known to dish out some doozys from time to time, haven’t we?  Dear God, please let the Panthers get this first down.  Dear God, kindly compel this police offer to issue me a warning instead of a ticket.  Dear God, if you get me through this birthday sleepover, I will praise your name till the day I die, AMEN!  And those are just the ones I’ve offered up; I feel certain you have your own.

The thing is, all of us lift up all different kinds of prayers for all different kinds of reasons.  For prayers, as we know, are nothing more than conversations with God.  I love that our Beacons, whenever they close one of their Sunday night programs, they don’t pray” – they “talk to God.”  Because really, that’s all it is.  It’s a conversation, a mutual exchange between the human and divine.

And there is perhaps no stranger conversation than the one we find in our scripture today – this little back-and-forth between the great patriarch Abraham and God.  I’ll be totally honest with you: I had no idea this conversation was even in the Bible until I read A.J.’s book.  Somehow it flew below my radar all this time.

Here’s the scene: the ancient city of Sodom is facing divine wrath for some egregious sin. Now most of us have been brought up to believe that this sin was something sexual, when in fact if you read the Bible (which we’re trying to do a better job of in this sermon series), what you find is that the city’s sin was the sin of inhospitability.  These people in Sodom were just not very welcoming to the stranger and the vulnerable – our widows and orphans from last week.  They were downright hostile to them, in fact.  No “Most Friendliest City” award here, folks!

So because of their inhospitability, Sodom is doomed.  And for reasons that aren’t quite explained to us, Abraham didn’t want this to happen.  So he engages God in this back-and-forth to try and convince God otherwise.  And it really is astounding what unfolds.

It starts with Abraham going to God: Hey God, I know you’ve got it in for ol’ Sodom there.  And I’ll admit, those people are pretty mean.  But you know, and I’m just saying, what if there were fifty righteous people in that city?  That’d be a shame to destroy them, don’t you think?  You think fifty righteous people would be worth sparing Sodom, maybe? God gives this some thought and agrees, okay, if there are fifty, the city will be spared.

Abraham is pleased, but he’s not done yet.  Maybe he’s not certain that there are fifty righteous people!  Better to be safe than sorry, right?  So he goes back to God: Hey God, that’s great, thanks!  But just for argument’s said, what if we’re not talking fifty but, I don’t know, 45?  I mean, that’s only five less, you know.  Think you might spare the city still?  God says sure, 45 is enough.

Abraham’s on a roll – why stop now?  Wow, God, you’re a generous God!  You’re awesome!  But you knew that already.  So I’m just wondering if forty righteous souls would be enough to spare Sodom.  I think it’d be – don’t you?  God agrees.  And Abraham keeps going, back and forth with God – to thirty, to twenty, to ten.  And in the end, Abraham gets God to agree to spare the city of Sodom for just ten righteous souls.  That’s some pretty slick negotiating, don’t you think?  I need to get this man to help me buy my next car.

Now there are some obvious problems with this story, which may be the reason we don’t hear about it much.  There’s the basic fact that the city Sodom was not spared – either because God changed God’s mind, which God is certainly entitled to do; or because there weren’t ten righteous souls in the city.  Which is pretty sad, since I feel certain we have ten righteous souls in a single pew in this sanctuary this morning!

The other problem with the story has to do this whole “negotiating-with-God” thing – not something that really jives with our theology.  God is not someone to be bargained with, to be manipulated or swayed in any direction other than the direction God is already heading.  Conversations with God are not conversations between two equals.  And that’s true, of course.  But you know, there’s a key difference in Abraham’s conversation with God – did you notice this?  Abraham is not negotiating for himself.  He’s not trying to get something out of it for him.  Abraham is doing this for the benefit of others.  And that’s what makes this little exchange a prayer.

In his book simply titled Prayer, author Richard Foster talks about some of the common types of prayers in our lives.  There’s the prayer of adoration, which is the “spontaneous yearning of the heart to glorify and praise God.” Foster also talks about prayers in which we hand our burdens over to God, which he calls the prayer of relinquishment.  There’s the prayer of thanksgiving, where we give thanks to God for the many blessings God has bestowed on us. These are the prayers my family and I try to say before every meal, including one that our youngest came up with a few weeks ago:

Knock knock!
Who’s There?
God!
God who?
God, thank you for our food. Amen!

Isn’t that great!

So, prayers of adoration, prayers of relinquishment, prayers of thanksgiving.  You also have the prayer of petition, where we come before God and ask for something for ourselves.  If I had to guess, I’d say that God probably hears these prayers the most.

The last type of prayer, though, is the one I think about when I read today’s story – Foster calls it intercessory prayer.  The deal is that you’re asking for something, so in that sense it’s kind of like a prayer of petition.  But the difference is that you’re not asking it for you. You’re not praying for your health, or that you’ll get that great job, or that your team will win the game.  You’re praying that something good will happen to someone else.

And see, that’s why Abraham’s conversation with God is less a negotiation and more a prayer of intercession.  Listen to how our friend A.J. describes it:

*****************
I’ve discovered another category of prayer that I like: praying on behalf of others, for the sick, needy, depressed—anyone who’s been kicked around by fate. Intercessory prayer, as it’s called.

(I think Abraham’s story in Genesis 18 is an intercessory prayer.  And I must confess..), at first I found the whole Abraham passage comical. I mean, here’s Abraham sounding like a salesman at a bazaar trying to get rid of his last decorative vase. But on reflection, what’s wrong with what he did? It’s actually a noble, beautiful—if ultimately doomed—attempt to save the lives of his fellow humans.

I’m not finished with my year, so I’m withholding judgment, but my rational side says that intercessory prayer today is no more effective than Abraham’s effort. I still can’t wrap my brain around the notion that God would change God’s mind because we ask God to.

And yet I still love these prayers. To me they’re moral weight training.

And so every night I pray for others for ten minutes—a friend about to undergo a cornea operation, my great-aunt whose sweet husband just died in their swimming pool, the guy I met in a Bible study class whose head was dented in a subway accident. It’s ten minutes where it’s impossible to be self-centered. Ten minutes where I can’t think about my career, or my Amazon.com book ranking, or that a blog in San Francisco made snarky comments about my latest Esquire article.

It’s only ten minutes of intercessory prayer.  But I really like it.

(The Year Of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, pgs. 127-128)

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Ten minutes, he says.  Ten minutes a day when he prays to God, but – and this is important – he prays to God for everyone and everything other than himself.     

Chew on this, would you: think of ten minutes – 600 seconds – in your average day.  Ten unplanned minutes where you’re not working or running errands or sleeping.  When you truly have time to think.  What do you typically do with those ten minutes? Watch one-third of your favorite TV sitcom?  Facebook-browsing? 

Now think about what those ten minutes would look like if we all followed A.J.’s lead and engaged in a little intercessory prayer of our own. Heck, we’ll even borrow his own lingo and call it “The 10-Minute Moral Weight Training Regimen.”  Ten minutes of prayer – kneeling at our bedside or driving in our car or walking down the grocery store aisle (although I’d suggest silently there).  Ten minutes of prayer, where we pray not for our needs, not for our desires, but for the needs and desires of others.  It can be a set time every day, or something we engage in as the time comes to us.  But ten minutes every single day….

And I should probably mention, folks, that I’m not posing this hypothetically – I mean this.  I’m seriously suggesting that each one of us give ten minutes out of every day to intercessory prayer.  And don’t think for a minute that we won’t have ten minutes of stuff to pray about.  Turn on the news.  Scan your Facebook news feed.  There are people hurting out there, near and far.  There are embassies on the other side of the world getting blown up and people losing their lives.  There are families right here in our town who are overburdened and stressed to the breaking point.  There are more and more people showing up at Friends Feeding Friends every Thursday night, and at the food pantry, and at the door of First Presbyterian Church trying to get something to eat.  There are people caught in the crossfire, suffering sicknesses, feeling like they have nowhere to turn.

Every last one of them needs us to pray for them.  And not because those prayers are a negotiation that will always get them what they need.  Prayer doesn’t work because it’s “results-driven.”  Prayer works because it’s “relationship-driven.”   A conversation between Creator and Created, drawing others in with us.  Helping us to realize and feel in the bottom of our hearts that we are all part of this together, that we are not unto ourselves; that we are never, ever alone.   

And see, I think Abraham got that.  I think those kids with their prayers got that.  Sure, it’s kind of bizarre to bargain with God.  Yeah, it’s a little crude to pray for a pony or ask never to become Jennifer Norton.  But you know what they say – you don’t talk to someone you don’t believe is there.  Let our prayers, our intercessions, our conversations with an almighty and loving God serve as witness, to ourselves and to others, our unwavering belief in a God who hears all our prayers and longs for the day when there is literally no more brokenness for us to intercede on.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

IT'S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT THE DESTINATION

Genesis 12: 1-5; Hebrews 11:1-13, 12: 1-2
Steve Lindsley
June 17, 2012

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I’ve said it before, folks – I’m a fan of airports.  I know it sounds strange to some, as airports are loathe to those who travel for a living.  But for me, flying remains a novelty, and I enjoy every minute of it.  Well, once I get pass security, that is.  That’s always a pain.  But on the other side, I soak it up.  I love flying and even cramming into undersized coach seats, and the takeoff and landing and free soft drinks.  I love the people movers and random bookstores and overpriced merchandise I’ll never buy.
But you know what I really love, most of all?  I love strolling the length of the concourse, as for some reason my gate is always at the other end.  And I’m not in a hurry, I take my time, unlike the majority of my fellow travelers.  All variations of speed from a heightened walk to a full-blown sprint.  Dragging suitcases with wheels or small children, or both.  People I feel certain I’ll never brush by again, in this lifetime at least.

And I’m always fascinated by all the destinations at the various gates along the way: Chicago, New Orleans, Nashville.  New York City, Buffalo, St. Louis, Phoenix.  Seattle, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Detroit, Louisville, Houston, Sioux Falls.  It’s wild, thinking that one little enclosed strip of metal and glass and carpet can be the launching pad to so many different places.  At each of these gates, people standing in line, handing off boarding passes, strolling down tarmacs with an agenda and a plan.  They know their final destination.  They know exactly where they’re going.

In that respect, at least, they have the upper hand on one particular traveler; the one we happen upon in our scriptures today.  The 11th chapter of Hebrews is one of the more heralded parts of the New Testament; a “Who’s Who” of the Bible greats and how they followed God “by faith.”  A cloud of witnesses, it’s called.  And the one who gets the most press time is none other than Abraham, the guy who started it all way back in the Genesis passage Elaine read earlier.  It was Abraham whom God appeared to out of nowhere one night, taking him outside and showing him a star-studded sky that would number his descendants.  That was the promise.  It was Abraham whom God called to lead his chosen people.  And it was Abraham whom God gave, at the ripe old age of 100, a son – Isaac, who would begin the storied family lineage and all those descendants God had promised.

But the thing we should note here is how Abraham began that journey: a very, very curious beginning; as the writer of Hebrews tells us:

By faith Abraham obeyed
when he was called to set out for a place
that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out…

…and catch this last part…

… and he set out not knowing where he was going.

Now let’s just chew on that for a minute, shall we?  Let’s think about that long and hard, y’all; because so often these stories in the Bible become so routine, so second-hand to us, that we often fail to see their full dimension.  Let’s ponder the fact that the foundation of the Israelite nation, the Jewish faith and Christianity, this foundation begins with God appearing to an unsuspecting 75-year old man, and essentially saying: Abraham, I want you to pack everything up, all your family and all your belongings; and I want you to go on a trip from which you will never return. Oh, and I’m not going to tell you where you’re going, either.

You know what that’s like?  That’s like standing at the starting line of a 10K race one Saturday morning, and having no idea where the race finishes up – you’re just going to run until you think it’s over.  Or it’s like piling into the family car for the summer vacation trip with all the preparations made – the newspaper stopped for a week, the pet sitter lined up, the car packed.  Every detail is completed, except one: you have absolutely no idea where it is you are going.  No room reservations, no address to plug into the GPS.  You literally don’t know, as you prepare to pull out of your driveway, whether you’re going to turn right or left.

Now I don’t know about you, but I find it amazing that, over the years, we’ve actually applauded Abraham for this.  I mean, who gets a pat on the back for running a race without a finish line, or leaving on vacation with no destination? Going through life without an agenda in mind, without any goals?  We characterize that behavior as reckless, irresponsible, even selfish, don’t we?

I mean, we tell our children from day one, do we not, to do their best in school and get involved in all kinds of extracurricular activities.  And why?  Because it’ll look good on a college application and help us get into a good college.  And when we get into that college?  We make the best grades and apply for the best internships, because a solid transcript coupled with a strong resume will help us land a good job.  And when we land that job?  We put in overtime and go above and beyond the call of duty so we can make partner, or get the big salary, or put ourselves in a position to buy into the business.  So much of our lives in the first world is driven by the desire to take the necessary steps to get to a particular destination, a goal, a finish line.  Achieving to succeed. Forward-focused.  That’s a huge part of what drives so much of the Western mindset.

And then this guy Abraham comes along, and he’s embarking on some life-long journey without having a clue where he’s going, all because God told him to.  Just go, and don’t worry about where you’re going, Abraham, because God will lead you there – some day.  Don’t worry about the finish line, Abraham, because God will show it to you – eventually.  And the writer of Hebrews takes Abraham and lifts him up, celebrates him for his non-destination, anti-finish line behavior; as a charter member in the cloud of witnesses and a paragon of excellence in the faith.

Does this sound as ludicrous to you as it does to me?  Or to put it more personally: if it were you God had asked instead of Abraham, would you have gone?

As many of you know, my father works with the Olympics and is gearing up right now for some time in London later this summer.  I can’t remember if it was he or someone else who shared this with me. They’d asked me if I had ever heard of the unique race that was part of the original Greek Olympics.  The only thing I could think of was the fact that all the athletes competed in the nude – which was true, he told me, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.  No, he told me that there was this one event categorically different from all the others.  Most of the races, like today, were all about finishing first; but there was one event that had nothing to do with where one finished.  It wasn’t even about a destination, really.  The winner of this particular event, my friend told me, was the person who finished with their torch still lit. 

A torch – flame, burning.  Now think about that.  If that’s the race you’re in, are you really concerned about whatever finish line is in front of you?  No – your focus is all on the torch, doing whatever you can to keep it burning.  Whatever to keep the flame lit.

See, I can’t help but wonder if that’s the kind of faith Abraham and all the others in this “cloud of witnesses” are celebrated for.  What do you think?  So much of Christian faith today is focused on the destination – be it heaven, or a blessed life.  We manufacture a finish line that God has no desire for us to manufacture.  We make it up!  And when we get there, or think we get there, we take on a role that is not ours to take on.  We convince ourselves that we’re finished, we’re complete.  That the journey is over.

How crazy is that, given that the father of our faith was sent by God on a journey and didn’t even know where he was going?  How can we ever say we’ve arrived if Abraham and all those others couldn’t say the same? 

No, my friends; the Christian journey is not about the destination.  It’s about something else – or, more precisely, someone else. As Hebrews says:

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us run with perseverance the race set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith….   

Folks, you and I are on a journey – a journey of faith.  But this journey isn’t always about where we’re going or what our destination is.  It’s about keeping the flame on our torch lit.  And that flame is none other than Jesus himself – the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”  He is our goal, he is our destination, he is our finish line.

Don’t you see how dramatically this changes things?  We never “arrive” – we are never “done” as sojourners in the faith.  We are always works in progress, doing our little part to build a portion of God’s kingdom on earth.  And the minute we think we have arrived is the minute that flame starts to go out.  The minute we think “we don’t need to go to that Bible study, we already know enough about the Bible” or “we went to church last month, we can skip this Sunday,” or “I served Friends Feeding Friends three months in a row; someone else can do it this time” – the minute we start thinking stuff like that is the minute we’ve manufactured a destination that God never intended for us.

The journey of faith never ends!  And isn’t that a beautiful, enriching, freeing kind of thing – even for us destination-minded Westerners?  Our journey of faith keeps going, because God goes with us.  And that can’t help but change the way that we take part in the journey.

It’s like an airport, but a little different than the one before.  Imagine O’Hare or Hartsfield in Atlanta – one of the big ones – the day before Christmas or the day after Thanksgiving, when the place is slammed with people, frantically going here and there, trying to get to their gate so they board their plane and make their way to their pre-determined destinations…

And in the midst of all that that chaos is a family of four, sitting in a group of chairs in the corner of the concourse.  They’re obviously traveling somewhere for the holidays, but unlike everyone else they don’t seem to be in a rush.  Mom and Dad are looking at a Time magazine and talking about the cover issue.  Brother and Sister are tossing a small ball back and forth, seeing how many times they can pass it without letting it drop.  They all talk and laugh and seem perfectly at ease.  They’re heading somewhere; of course.  But that somewhere isn’t monopolizing all their time and energy.  They’re just “being” with each other; they’re enjoying each other.  They’re keeping their torch lit.  And that’s the greatest journey of all.

Someone once said this:

The truth is that God’s will for us isn’t bound up in the final destination, be it heaven, a career choice or even a particular ministry.  God’s will is for us to be in relationship with Jesus, to trust him with everything in our lives and to live each day in his presence.

And when you think about it, isn’t that a lot better than just getting to somewhere?  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

...AND IT WAS GOOD!

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Steve Lindsley
June 19, 2011

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

It all begins with four simple words:
    In. The. Beginning. God.

When nothing else was, when life as we know it was future-bound,
    Before rocks and trees, before people, before oceans,
        Before things like hope and light and pain and love,
            Before all these: nothing.
Not you or me, or buildings or budgets or cars,
    Not Gods of our own making,
        Not presidents or congressmen, not countries or governments,
            Not anything we’ve come to know, save one:
                In the beginning, God.

This is our story of Genesis:
    A narrative of beginnings –
        Not just of a world, but of a people.
            Cosmic getting personal!
This is our story of Genesis:
    Not questions or theories; not graphs or charts or diagrams,
        But a relationship, God and creation, waiting to be birthed.
            In the beginning, God.
   
And God was getting busy!
    Unsatisfied with remaining stationary,
        Our God had a plan!
An empty canvas ripe for a masterpiece;
    A “formless void” – unproductive and worthless,
        Like a stagnant pool of water stranded in a sea of asphalt.
       
And God took that void and embellished it with God’s creativity,
    Surely smiling as He did.
Because as awesome and powerful and wonderful as God was,
    As many plans as God had swirling around in the divine mind,
        God was lonely.
            Longing to enjoy the forthcoming masterpiece with someone.
                And so it started. In the beginning.
                    With God. Creating.
               
Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Not with the wave of a hand,
    Nor the wink of an eye
        Did God begin God’s tour de force.
Not with the nod of a head
    Did God summon forth the created order.
God spoke the world into being!
    A word, a single word
        Voiced into the formless void,
            Clear and intentional, carefully crafted:
                God knew what God was doing.
For words bear great power
    To build up and transform,
        Communicating not just a simple thought,
            but a living, breathing reality.
                Words matter!
   
And so God spoke it: LIGHT!
    And with that word, the darkness, the absence, the nothingness,
        Shoved aside like the turning of a page. 
    Night and day, both part of the plan,
        The order that God was setting in motion,
            All with a single decree.

What can YOU do with a word?
    What can you create – or destroy –
        With what is spoken?
    Do you bring light into the world around you,
        Or do you shroud yourself and others
            in a cloak of darkness?
Create something new this day with the words you choose.           
    Use words that, like that first day of creation,
        Shine.
            
And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

“Separating waters from waters” –
    Something only God could do!
        A creating, living, dynamic, active, God with a plan.
    Only God could take chaotic waters
Sloshing around in the emptiness,
    And give those waters structure and order.
        Waters that, as Missouri and Tennessee and the Dakotas
            and Kentucky and Louisiana and others
                learned all too well this year,
                    Bear with them the potential
                        For tremendous destructive power.
And yet God stilled those waters
    Crafting it into domes above and below.
           And in so doing, created something new
                out of what was already there.
                    Indeed, the very first recycling!

 And so now, Sky.  Because God spoke it.
    Waters above, waters below.
        Clouds of white, of many shapes and sizes,
            Suspended on a backdrop of azure blue.
    “Heavens” God named them.  A home for angels
And the object of the wonder of those below, gazing into its infiniteness.
        Marveling at the universe beyond, and the God who assembled it all
            With a bold exclamation!

And on this day, as every day,
    God sums up the spirit of creation
        With a joyous expression of faith and love, declaring:
That’s good!

And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Like waves receding from the shore,
Retreating over the sands of a sunny beach,
        The waters huddled together, as if vying for solidarity:
            Seas and oceans collecting.
    And in their absence, they leave terra firma behind.
        As sturdy and as sure as the foundation of God’s very labors.
            The rich smell of dirt and earth;
                The abrasive feel of rock and stone,
                    The grainy-ness of sand and slate.
        Mountain vistas alongside valley plains,
            Dry dusty deserts, lush rain forests, icy frozen tundra,
                All brought into being with a word.

And on that land grew life – plants, vegetation
    Numbering too many to count.
        Each one following the lead of its Creator
And taking on the task of creation itself.
    This tree making apples.  That tree growing oranges.
        That bush producing berries.  That vine making grapes.
            One and all, they follow the spirit of their Creator
                And create something of their own.
                         
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

The word for “seasons” in the ancient Hebrew tongue means:
    “Religious festivals.”
        So that even the very rhythm of spring, summer, winter, fall,
            The sun and Earth taking part in their cyclical celestial dance,
                Even that itself is an act of worship!

Like colorful ornaments hung on a living room Christmas tree,
    The planets and stars, carefully placed in their positions.
        Billions of them, so many that humanity’s finest telescope
            Will never see a fraction of their multitude.
        Stars near and far, later guiding sailors through the seas;
            How amazing that something so distant
                could show us the way.
        Stars the ancients assembled into constellations
            And gave them names of their own: Andromeda. Gemini.
                Usra Major and Usra Minor.  Taurus. Sagittarius.
                    Creation is contagious!

Moon and sun, shining their respective light,
    Bathing the world in night and day.
        Those days turning into months, months into seasons,
            seasons into years.
How wonderful that one creation spawns another.
    Indeed, as God continues to exclaim:
        That’s good!
   
And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Life begins moving!
    Not with sheaves of wheat blowing in the breeze
        Or the tides and waves of the oceans.
    But flesh and blood, scales and feathers,
        Filling the domes above and below with motion!
    And sounds: the song of a bird, the calling of a whale,
        The bark of a dog and the bellow of cattle.
            Creation is multi-sensory!

All of this, a testimony to the order of the masterpiece:
    Light needed first, so that earth and heaven could be made,
        Earth needed next, so plants could grow in the sun’s warmth,
            Water to feed the earth,
                Plants for the animals to graze.
Everything happens for a reason, everything in its place,
    Everything in God’s time, according to God’s plan.

And look: God bestows upon this day a blessing – a divine kiss;
    And with it, a command:
        Prosper and grow, reproduce, inhabit!
            Fill the seas and the sky with your presence.
                Enjoy all God has made for you.
                    Create forevermore, hand in hand with the Creator!
       
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’  So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

And then on the sixth, God surveying all that was:
    Skies, earth, planets, stars, land, seas, plants, creatures.
        It was wonderful!  It was marvelous!
            But it was not enough.  Still, not enough.
                Something, missing.  God, still alone.
Formed and fermented in the recesses of God’s intellect,
    Long before light was spoken and waters were separated
        Lay a thought – a beautiful, pleasing dream
            Of one last creation, a final stroke of the brush.
And for this one, God would not move outward but inward,
    Reaching inside and extracting God’s very image,
        An inner divine reflection, of all the hope and promise and beauty;
            So fragile, yet so full of potential,
                So simple, yet so complicated,
                    So contradictory, yet so complete.
        The very likeness of the living God,
            Embraced in flesh,
                And animated with Spirit.

And God created us.
    All of us.  Women and men, young and old,
        All nationalities, all creeds, all lifestyles, God made us.
            All beliefs, or no beliefs, God made us.
                Black and white, Christian and Muslim,
                    Republican and Democrat, Gay and straight,
                        God made us.
                           
Created to “have dominion” over everything that came before,
    “Dominion” meaning care-ful, not care-less
        Not exploiting, but nurturing,
            Not abusing, but cultivating,
                Not out of arrogance and entitlement,
                    But with gratitude and compassion.
                       
One last time, God speaks;
And out of his words, you and I join the created family,
    Imago Dei. The image of God.
And it was good!                 

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.  These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

And then, after all had been made,
    After speaking into being an entire universe,
        After chaos had been given order,
God took a break.
        Not saying, “I’ve had enough”
            But, “Let me soak this in!”
                   
God rested and worshipped – the very first Sabbath,
    Pausing to delight in the joyous gift of life,
        Exhaling and breathing in.
And God would command us to do the same.
    On the seventh, to rest from our labors,
        and soak in God’s goodness and glory
               In all its many forms.

And God creates still,
    Not in six days, but every day,
        Commanding us to do the same.
     For the intent of creation never reaches its completion,
        Always evolving, transforming.
            As we.
       Made in the image of the very God,
            Evolving and transforming,
                Succeeding and sinning,
                    Redeemed and forgiven,
                        Re-created all over again.

And as we endeavor to always be made new
    Harmonious partners in God’s great masterpiece,
May we together with our Creator,
    Behold the wonder before us
        And forever speak those words in a voice true and clear,
            “It is Good!”
Thanks be to God!  AMEN!

AS MANY AS THE STARS

NOTE: I'm back. Thanks be to God!

******************

Genesis 15: 1-18
Psalm 27: 7-14
Steve Lindsley
August 8, 2010

They called it The Blackout of 2003.  New York, Toronto, Ottowa, Cleveland, New England – this huge mass of northeastern North America, all without power for in some cases as long as 48 hours.  It began around 4:00 on a Thursday afternoon; they think it started somewhere in Ohio.  Within a few hours it spread over state and country lines, throwing everything in its path into darkness – including the great city of New York.

A 60 Minutes journalist went around lower Manhattan in the dark on Friday night, interviewing residents as they slept on street corners.  And it was not just homeless people sleeping there, it was also folks from expensive high-rises who had to get out of the stifling heat.  They were all there together on the street corner that night.

There was this one man the lady interviewed.  He looked to be in his mid-30s and was playing checkers with a friend by the light of a kerosene lantern, sipping what had to have been a lukewarm Coke.  He had a big smile on his face, though, as the reporter asked him what had been the most memorable part of this night.  He pointed to the sky and said, “See that?  Do you see it?  It's stars.  Tons of stars!  It’s amazing,” he went on to say, “I’ve lived in Manhattan all my life and I’ve never seen stars here.  The city lights are always way too bright.  But with the power gone, the stars come out of nowhere.  Who would’ve ever thought I’d get to see this??”

You know, I’ve never thought about the novelty of stars in Manhattan – the kind you find in the sky, not walking the streets of Times Square.  Webster’s defines a star as “a natural luminous body of great mass which produces energy by means of nuclear fusion reactions. ”  I prefer to think of them the same way I did as a young kid – as the song says, “like a diamond in the sky.” There are literally billions of stars in our universe, only a few of which are visible to the naked eye.  They’ve guided sailors in their journeys and helped interpret the futures of fortune-seekers.  The ancients configured them into groups of constellations and gave them names like Big Dipper, Gemini, Ursa Major.  We are all mesmerized by the stars when we get to see them. 

There was another night a long, long time ago when another man took note of the stars.  But it wasn't a power outage that revealed them – there wasn't electricity in his day.  He saw them all the time, every night; and yet he didn't quite seem them the way he did on this night – the night that God told Abram to look at the stars above his head.  And on this star-studded night God made a promise to Abram, one that would be fulfilled for generations to come.  Look at all the stars, Abram.  Count them. Can you do it?  Count your descendants, Abram – for they will be as many as many as the stars you see. 

You've got to wonder what was running through Abram's mind when he heard God say this – something we are told he “eagerly believed.”  Did Abram even try to actually count the stars – and if he did, how long did it take before he got frustrated and quit?  Did he ever contemplate for a second how any of this would come to pass, given the fact that he and his wife, Sarai, had been trying for years, decades to have a child, just one child?

See, because if I were in his shoes, that would be the hangup, right there.  It's easy in our day and time, thousands of years after the fact, to nod our heads in agreement – because we all know how this will play out, we know the end of the story already.  How God’s people would do great and mighty things; that among the descendants of Abram and Sarai would be people with names like Joseph and Moses and David and Mary and Jesus.  In our blissful hindsight we clearly see the wisdom and truth of God’s promise to Abram. Because it is him under those stars, not us.

But if you and I were standing there that night, looking up at the vastness of it all, I'm not so sure we would've embraced it with such blind and unquestioning faith.  In fact, there’s a part of me that would've taken some issue with what God was doing here.  It doesn’t seem that fair, does it?  God had called Abram to follow and serve him – which Abram did, faithfully.  And his reward for this?  To be woken up in the middle of the night, dragged outside in his PJ’s to see the stars, and be told that one day – one day – he’d have a bunch of descendants.  Not tomorrow, or next week, or even next year.  Some day he'd never live to see, a day that, according to scripture, would not come for another 400 years.  What kind of promise is that?

When we take the time to see this scenario from Abram's view, it really makes you wonder what God was up to.  And I guess this speaks as much as anything to the culture that  you and I find ourselves in today.  We live our lives immersed in a world of immediate gratification – we get what we want, and we get it NOW.  We order a burger from McDonald’s and complain when it’s not delivered to our tray in a few seconds.  We can purchase almost anything over the internet with just a few clicks of the mouse and sixteen digits off our credit card.  Most of us would find our lives dramatically altered without things like cell phones and email, texting and instant messages.  By and large, we live by the mantra my mother once had embroidered and hung in our kitchen growing up: God, please grant me patience – and give it to me right now!

This impatience can translate to human relationships too.  Often we expect people to instantly provide for us love, respect, affection.  We’re quick as a society to jump head-first into relationships and often just as quick to jump out of them.  Many times we adopt a “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately” mentality that demands a great deal from those around us, often creating unreasonable expectations of others – and sometimes unreasonable expectations of ourselves.

Larry Walters was a 33-year-old man who had recently been laid off from his job of ten years.  In a moment of inspiration partly borne out of sheer boredom, Walters decided he wanted to, let’s just say, see his neighborhood from a different perspective.  So he purchased 45 used weather balloons from the local army surplus store and strapped them and himself to a lawn chair off his back porch.  With him he brought a few Cokes, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and a BB gun, so he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.

Now Walters made the assumption – as it turns out, a very wrong one – that the balloons would lift him just a hundred feet or so in the air; a leisurely ride.  He wasn't quite prepared when he soared to almost 11,000 feet, over two miles off the ground!  And as if that wasn't enough, the winds carried him right in the middle of the traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport.  Too frightened to shoot any balloons, Larry Walters stayed airborne for more than three hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights across the country. (http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline.walters.asp, visited on 8.2.2010)

Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions.  Were you scared?  Yes.  Would you do it again?  No.  Why did you do it?  His answer to this one was most telling: Because I just couldn’t sit around doing nothing.

While most of us – I hope most of us – would find more productive and less hazardous things to do with our free time, I do think there is something within each one of us, a little something, that can sympathize with Larry's desire to not just “sit around doing nothing.”  We like to be on the move, on the go!  We want to see results, and we want to see them now.

So is it any wonder that we may take issue with what God does with Abram in our scripture today?  God is asking his faithful servant to do something that doesn’t come easily to most of us – to wait.  To have faith and believe in the promise, even when that promise is not going to be fulfilled anytime soon.  To go the arduous way of “delayed gratification” where we hold off on the reward and trust that it will come about in its time.  And that, my friends, is easier said than done.

One of those descendants whose star Abram got to see that night was, among other things, a poet.  And in the final verses of the 27th Psalm, the great King David writes this:

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and let your heart take courage;
Wait for the Lord!

It wouldn't surprise us in the least if David was saying these words to himself, would it?  Who knows what event might have precipitated – dealing with an enemy nation or those trying to undermine him.  Whatever it was, David acknowledges that in matters of faith, we do not always get what we want when we want it.  In fact, we rarely do.  That's because it really isn't about us.  It never has been.  It's always about God.

One of the many challenges our Christian faith presents to us is to continue living, as one commentator puts it, in “the frequently perceived distance between what God has promised and what human beings are expecting..”  I like the way he puts that – it feels like something I've experienced time and time again, perhaps you have too.  It's being aware of the fact that we operate on a different timetable than the rest of the world; a world which spends an awful lot of time looking down at the ground.  We, however – we are called to look up at the stars.

And when we do that, we see the promise.  It's he promise of a little boy walking on a beach early one morning, a beach covered with starfish – hundreds of them, brought ashore by the vicious tide the night before.  All morning long the boy had been picking them up, one by one by one, and throwing them back into the ocean. 

Soon his mother came to him and tried to reason, in her best motherly way, that such an act, while noble, was hopeless.  There are too many of them, she told him.  How can this make any real difference? 

The boy tossed another starfish into the waters and, pointing at it, looked back at his mother and said, But Mommy, it made a difference for that one.

You and I, we are star gazers, we are people of the promise.  A promise given to a man long ago by a God who dragged him out of bed to look up at the night sky.  It is a promise that is made manifest in each and every one of us.  And you and I know: it makes a difference.  It makes all the difference in the world.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

THE SEVENTH-INNING STRETCH

Exodus 20: 8-11, Psalm 63: 1-11
Steve Lindsley
April 18, 2010

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I do appreciate the mark that “America's favorite pastime” has left on our culture.   Specifically, I'm fascinated with all the little traditions and rituals the sport continues to cling to, holdovers from a different time in this modern age of wireless internet and ATMs.  Like the uniforms – those skinny pant legs and button-over jerseys.  Only on a baseball field does that attire look appropriate.  I love the smell of ballpark food, not really the cost of it; I love the metal bleachers and fold-up seats, the singing of the national anthem behind home plate, the fireworks at game's end.

And I really like that thing called the seventh-inning stretch.  Now they don't show it on TV, at least much of it, so you really have to be at the game to appreciate it.  But you're sitting in one of those fold-up bleacher seats, your legs are kind of going numb – it's time to take a break.  And in the middle of the seventh inning, right before the home team comes to bat, you're invited by the loudspeaker to stand up.  You stretch your arms high above your head, you bend from side to side, shake out your legs.  You hear the organ launch into “Take me out to the ballgame” and you sing the last line with gusto: For it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game!

Baseball historians have not been able to arrive at a definitive explanation of where the seventh-inning stretch came from.  The earliest account appears to date all the way back to 1882, at a home game for Manhattan College.  It was a hot and muggy August afternoon; and the team manager started to notice the fans becoming restless around the seventh inning – to the point that even the players were noticing it.  And so, to break the tension, he called a time-out and instructed everyone in the bleachers to stand up and unwind for a bit.  It worked so well that they did this same thing at every home game that year, and some of the visiting teams began to take the practice back with them.  And thus a sacred baseball tradition was born. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_inning_stretch"    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_inning_stretch, visited on 4.12.2010)

It's a pretty good idea, this seventh-inning stretch.  But it would be incorrect to think that its origins lie exclusively in baseball.  I mean, if you want to be technical about it, it goes back much further; all the way to the very beginning:

And on the seventh day, God rested from all the work that was done.

At least that's how the second chapter of the book of Genesis remembers it.   It's the tail end of the creation story; the chronicling, as best the human mind can capture, of how the universe and this world and everything in it came to be.  And after six pretty busy days, however one defines a “day;” after God had been hard at work in the shop, the scriptures states pretty clearly – God took a seventh-inning stretch.  We don't know exactly how God rested, and it's not like God's up there stretching out legs and humming a baseball tune.  But as far as metaphors go, it's really not a bad one, all things considered.  In God's own way, God took a little break. 

Now I could be over-thinking things here – it certainly wouldn't be the first time – but have you ever wondered why God needed to take a break?  I mean, that's not something an “omnipotent,” all-powerful God really needs to do, is it?  Besides the fact is that God was coming off a pretty successful run in the creating business, six pretty awesome days – so why stop?  To borrow a baseball image, why should you put down the ball when you're batting a thousand?

Makes you wonder whether God was really resting for God's benefit, or if it's more likely that God was resting for ours.  The cycle of work and rest; six days of labor and one day off, is built into the very DNA of the Bible.  There's that passage from Exodus that Mark read earlier, part of what we know as the Ten Commandments.  And that fourth commandment – the one that's often reduced to a one-liner that we think simply  instructs us to go to church – it actually says a whole lot more if we read on a bit:

Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.  For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; but rested the seventh day.

This notion of “sabbath” – a Hebrew word that literally means, “to rest from labors” – this is found throughout the scriptures, intricately woven into its very fabric.  When the Israelites are wandering in the desert for a generation, they are fed a day's supply of manna and quail – except on the sixth day, when they get a double dose to cover them for two.  The Leviticus code contains specific “do's” and “don't's” of holy sabbath for the practicing Jew, such as restrictions on what you can eat and drink or even how far you can walk.  When Jesus comes along he drives the religious authorities nuts by performing miracles on the Sabbath, apparently crossing the line in their minds between rest and work.

To say that the idea of sabbath has changed dramatically would be a huge understatement.  We Christians came along and moved our sabbath to Sunday in a nod to the day of Jesus' resurrection.  But this is just a cosmetic change.  The real change happened in more substantial ways.  For instance, we are prone to think of “sabbath” as just a few hours in church rather than an entire day of observance.  Sundays are no longer different from any other, as we use this day to frequent our offices, schedule soccer practices, mow the grass, open the store. 

We've even altered the way we understand “rest from our labors” in general. Somewhere along the line someone thought it'd be a good idea to create this incredibly contradictory thing called “working vacations.”  I'd like to get a hold of that guy.  Our beloved Blackberries and laptop computers keep us constantly connected, constantly expending ourselves.  We've even gotten to the point where we proudly display, like a badge of honor, the last time we took a vacation or mental health day, the number of hours we clocked in at the office this week, the amount of miles we put on the car running errands.

I imagine it was someone under circumstances like these who, in the depths of their exhaustion, at the height of their being “sabbath-deprived,” carved out just enough time and energy to put pen to paper and write these words:

O God, I seek you.
My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

The psalmist was on to something, here wasn't he?  When we deny ourselves “sabbath” in its may forms, when we interrupt the normal cycle of work and rest that you and I were created for, we find ourselves in the wilderness with this person, seeking God, thirsting for God in a land where life-giving water is scarce.  And the thing is, we may not even realize we're doing this.  But in the depths of our soul, we know – we know that six days of work must be followed with that day of rest.  A seventh-inning stretch.

In a few weeks, as you know, you and I are going to embark on a seventh-inning stretch of sorts, a seventh day of rest.  And it's not by accident that the name given to this is similar to the Hebrew word “sabbath.”  Like the day that's set aside on God's calendar, a sabbatical is a chance for both pastor and congregation to engage in a period of rest together.  Except this “rest” is not simply doing nothing – it's not passive, it's active.  It's activity that refreshes and renews rather than wearing down; one that takes stock of the past so that the future can be imagined together. 

It's new, this idea of sabbatical, I know.  It's something I've never done before. Likewise, in its 152-year history, this church has never gone on a sabbatical with its pastor.  It's something new for both of us.  And, as sometimes happens with new things, apprehensions arise.  I'm heard a little talk about how this sabbatical is a precursor to me leaving or that I'm burned out or, as I heard most recently, I'm planning on launching a full-time music career.  Which, incidentally, would be news my wife!  None of these bear any resemblance to the truth, of course, but it's human nature to be apprehensive. 

In fact, to be honest, there's a bit of apprehension on my part as well.  See, so much of a pastor's self-identity – not just how they see themselves as a minister but how they see themselves as a human being – so much of that identity is tied up in the church.  In the work of the church, in the tasks of ministry, in the people pastors are called to serve.  So the thought of being apart from all that, which is such a large part of who I am, is a bit unsettling. 

But see, that's just one more reason why this sabbatical, this period of “holy rest” is something you and I can be excited about!  It's a chance we don't get much in life; a life that churns along mercilessly, non-stop in our “check-things-off-the-list,” running-from-point-A-to-point-B-and-C” kind of world. This sabbatical is an opportunity for you and me to step off the treadmill for a spell and think about why we love doing what we do together. 

And while we're doing that, it also happens to be a time for us to experience some pretty neat renewing activities!  I'm looking forward to seeing the look on my boys' faces when they set foot in Disney World for the very first time.  I'm looking forward to actually getting to sit with my family in worship somewhere!  I'm looking forward to listening to music in ways other than just sticking a CD in the car stereo on the way to some appointment.   And I'm equally excited about the renewing activities you'll be taking part of on your sabbatical – the privilege of listening to a wonderful preacher like Steve McCutchan every Sunday morning, concerts with Bryan McFarland and Melva Houston.  And together, you and I will read Marjorie Thompson's book on Christian spirituality, Soul Feast,  which you can pick up at no cost to you in the hallway on your way out of church today, one for each family.

So you and I have a lot of reasons to be excited about this period of mutual rest.  But you know something?  None of them are the best part of all of this – not even close!  That's because the best part about the seventh-inning stretch is the baseball that comes after it!  The great thing about God resting on the seventh day is that on the eighth day, and every day after that, God gets right back to work – creating, never-ending.

So may our sabbatical in the coming months be about graciously receiving the holy rest we need and deserve.  And may it also be about preparing us for the work in ministry that is to come after, the new ways that you and I will continue to help build the kingdom of God on earth right here, together, at the corner of Church and Main. We've got a lot of game left in us, folks.  So let's rest for a spell, and then let's play some ball!  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

SLEEPING ON STONES

Genesis 28: 10-19a

Steve Lindsley

September 6, 2009

When I was six years old my grandmother on my father’s side – “Granny,” as we called her – married Dave, a wonderful man from Pennsylvania.  For a while the two lived up there before returning to the mountains of North Carolina, where Granny had lived with her first husband, my grandfather, before he died an untimely death.

    

We took only one trip to Pennsylvania to visit Granny and Dave.  I was twelve and it was during the month of August, hot and humid as that time of year can be.  On this particular day we were cooling off in a river that flowed through the terrain of a rural part of the state.  Dave was teaching me how to throw the flat river stones that lined the embankment so they would skip across the water, all the way to the other side if you were lucky enough.  

    

But the memory of that day that most surfaces in my mind was an amazing feat Granny performed for me, which I recalled at her memorial service years later.  She walked up to me with a smile on her face, holding a rather thick river stone in her hands.  Standing there she said, “Look, Steve – strong Granny!”  And with that she grasped this rock on either side, grimaced her face a bit, and snapped the stone in two.

I, of course, was speechless and utterly amazed that my Granny, at her age – or any age, for that matter – could do such a thing.  These were, after all, very solid, dense river stones.  Not the kind that someone could just casually break in two.

From then on Granny was, without question, my greatest hero; up until the day she died my junior year in college.  And it didn’t really matter when I learned that the stone had already been broken; it didn’t bother me all that much when she showed me how, if you held both parts together like adjoining puzzle pieces, you could hardly see the break.  Somehow the secret behind Granny’s trick didn’t lessen the wonder of it.   For, years later, I can still hear her words echoing in my mind – Strong Granny!  

Strong indeed!  Stones, after all, are not the most malleable item, unless you happen to be skilled in the art of stone carving.  They’re hard and rough; coarse and heavy.  Smaller ones make great paperweights; larger stones add that special ornate touch to a backyard garden.  They can also have some less-than-flattering uses – ask the woman in the Bible accused of adultery, who was almost put to death by stones before Jesus intervened.  Ask the great martyr Stephen, who was.

According to my Bible computer program there are 357 references to stones in the Old and New Testaments.  We come across one in our text this morning – a stone used for a very odd purpose.  Jacob was the younger son of the great Isaac, who was blind and nearing death.  Esau, being Jacob’s older brother, was the rightful heir to the blessing bestowed upon the oldest sibling.  But Jacob, at the encouragement of his mother, pretended to be Esau and stole his brother’s birthright.  When Esau learned of this he became enraged; and Jacob was forced to retreat into the desert by himself, a marked man, a son with a birthright that, for the time being, was totally useless to him.

So he is frightened, one imagines, and tired, and depressed, and doesn’t have a clue what to do.  The sun is setting, and his body is craving rest.  There are, of course, no Red Roof Inns on the road from Beer-sheba to Haran.  So he finds the most secluded spot he can, lies down on the dusty ground and tries to sleep.  And as if to highlight the extent of his misery, the scripture tells us that Jacob grabs a stone and sleeps with it under his head.  Now can you imagine anything more uncomfortable than that?  The stone is rough and doesn’t conform to his face and temple.  But it's all that he has.  And he drifts into a troubled sleep.

And in that sleep, we are told, Jacob has a dream.  A dream where the God of his ancestors appears to him in the form of a ladder ascending to heaven.  Suffice to say that a ladder in the desert is about as rare as, well, as grandmother breaking rocks in half!  But it isn’t what Jacob sees that catches his attention.   God speaks to him and God makes Jacob three promises.  The first is a promise of God’s everlasting presence – God says, I am with you.  The second is a promise of protection – God says, I will keep you.  

I imagine that the first two promises prepared Jacob for the third.  For God assures Jacob that one day he will no longer be a fugitive wandering aimlessly in the desert – God says, I will bring you back to this land.  But not only will Jacob return home; God also makes an amazing proclamation, telling him this:

The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;

And your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth,

and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east

and to the north and to the south;

And all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.

Can you picture this?  The hard, dry ground he was laying on; the rough, unforgiving rock underneath his head, soon would be populated with his descendants down through the ages?  The dust that whipped mercilessly through the desert air, embedding itself into skin and hair and eyes, one day will be rivaled in number by the expansion of Jacob’s family tree?  How incredible this must have felt to poor Jacob lying there – a dream too good to be true!

Looking back, we know how the centuries would unfold; how Jacob’s sons would form twelve tribes of Israel and Judah; how one of those sons, Joseph, would become the right hand of Pharaoh; how in another generation God would raise Moses to lead God’s people back home where they would flourish and prosper under judges and kings.  And to think all of that can be traced back to a young dispossessed man stretched out on the dry ground, with a stone as his pillow.  

The promise is amazing.  The promise is too good to be true.  But the promise also carries with it a burden of sorts, doesn’t it?  To be told that you would be the father of a great and sprawling nation has to feel a little weighty, don’t you think?  After all, there’s a lot riding on your shoulders; you have a tremendous responsibility to God, your family, and all the families that would follow.  One wrong move and you could mess it up – and Lord knows you’ve done enough of that already!  Can you imagine waking from this dream?  To feel flowing through your veins, at the same time, the exhilaration of the wonderful works of God that will unfold, as well as the crushing weight of responsibility placed squarely on your shoulders?

I think about this paradox that we find in God’s promise, and I guess I keep coming back to that stone – the one Jacob slept on.  Because it seems to me that the stone and the promise have a lot in common with each other.  Both of them are hard and solid and don’t bend or break under pressure.  We know a stone isn’t going to wander off when we place it somewhere.  We also hold fast to the belief that a promise from God is lasting and won't diminish over time.  Both the stone and the promise are things we can count on.  I’m reminded of the children’s tale where three little pigs, through trial and error, discovered that a house of bricks could be relied upon much more than straw or sticks.  Likewise we recognize that when God makes a promise to us, it is something we can believe in and put our trust in.

But there's another side to the stone and the promise.  Both of them carry some weight.  I don’t know that I’ve every come across a “light stone.”  In the same way, I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a promise of God that didn’t require something of its recipient.  Both the stone and the promise don’t always agree with our wishes and desires.  Jacob’s stone didn’t conform to the contour of his head like a pillow would've – that had to have been uncomfortable.  Likewise, when God’s promise doesn't align with what we want or the plans we have, there's more than a bit of discomfort involved.

Think of some of the promises God has made over the centuries: I will be with you to the ends of the age.  Your descendants will number the stars in the sky.  I will be your God, and you will be my people.  I will give you the ability to speak my word to those who need to hear it.  Jacob.  Abraham.  Moses.  The prophets.  Even the disciples of Jesus – all of them were the recipients of both the bounty and the burden of God’s promise.  They may not have been an outcast in the desert, but in their own unique way they, too, experienced what it was like sleeping on stones.

Years have passed; generations have come and gone.  The beneficiaries and descendants of God’s promise have spread over the earth like dust.  And now we, too, find ourselves the receivers of the same promise God made all those years ago.  We are indeed a blessed people because of it.  And yet we also need to acknowledge the responsibility we face as God’s Chosen; the burden it places on us as we seek to live out our lives according to the will of the One who created us.  Whether we realize it or not, we know an awful lot about how it feels to sleep on stones.  

We know what’s its like sleeping on stones when we look at our place in the world around us.  We are God’s children; and our journey together is a testament to that undying promise.  And yet at the same time we live within the context of a culture that by and large does not acknowledge the promise; a world which experiences more brokenness than healing, more pain than comfort, more sadness than joy.  We read about it in the newspapers and we see it on cable news; we witness it in domestic disputes and terrorist threats and kidnapped children.  The promise calls us to rejoice and be grateful for the wonderful things God is doing in your life and in mine.  But the promise also reminds us that there is still plenty of world out there which still needs to hear and receive God’s blessing – and until that time comes, our work is never complete.

We also know what it’s like sleeping on stones here in our own congregation.  For many years we've been the grateful recipients of wonderful things that God has done among us.  By no means are we perfect; but within these walls exists a church family where people care for one another, where the gospel is lived out, where God’s love continues to be shared in both word and deed.  And as our church grows and changes, as we embrace new ways of living into our vision, we will continue experiencing the joys and the burdens of what it means to sleep on stones.

There's another way you and I experience the paradox of sleeping on stones – and that is within the context of our individual journey of faith.  Now you probably know that I'm not one who would ever say that the Christian walk is exclusively an individual exercise – we were created, we were intended to always be a community, a family of faith.  But there comes a point in that walk when things boil down to nothing more than the nature of the relationship that exists between each one of us and God.  Perhaps this is where we experience the greatest paradox of the promise.

I’m sure you’ve heard the story about the eight-year old boy whose younger brother was dying of a rare disease and needed a blood transfusion.  Only his brother had the correct blood type.  One night the parents sat the older sibling down and explained to him the dire situation and what would need to happen to save his brother's life.  And without the slightest sense of hesitation, the young boy said yes.

On the day of the procedure they prepped both brothers; the younger brother in need of life and the older one with the ability to grant it.  And as they lay there minutes before the transfusion began, the older sibling looked up into the eyes of his parents and, in a calm unwavering voice, asked them if they knew what it would feel like when he died.  Mother and father were understandably stunned, as they realized with both horror and amazement that their their son had thought he was going to have to give up his life in order to save his brother – and that he was willing to do what was asked of him anyway.

You know something?  I think that little boy, like Jacob of long ago, knew better than any theologian, Bible scholar, or any of us what it means to sleep on stones.  Stones that have been fashioned by a God who created us, who loves us, who promises us so much, and who expects so much from us.  Stones that are sure and certain, and stones we can't mold to our own whims and desires.  Stones that are a solid foundation, and stones that aren't always comfortable underneath us.  Stones placed by a grace-filled God who wants so much for us to respond in love.  

The question for us, then, is how you and I will respond to the promise.  That is always the question.  The answer is up to us.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

GOD-BREATHED

2 Timothy 3:10-17; Genesis 2: 2-7
Steve Lindsley
August 16, 2009

Margaret was always in the habit sharing her latest poem with me.  As the oldest living member of the church at the time, she would call me every so often to inform me that she had been “busy.”  And when she'd invite me over to share her latest creation, I was always happy to oblige.

On one of my last visits before she died, Margaret shared a poem of hers called “Patio Musings.”  She had written it the previous week on a glorious sunny spring morning, out on her back porch.  Even though her eyesight was failing, it was still enough to soak in the beautiful scene that awaited her that morning; a scene that she recounted in exquisite detail:

How poor we are, if full of care we don't have time to spare
To be still and to rest, and watch a robin build its nest
See the bluebird on the wing and listen to him sing
In this way we see creation at play
When did you last gaze into the sky just to watch the clouds roll by
Or look up in the tree and say a prayer for you and me
What's this world, if full of care we don't have time to spare
Full of care with no time for a prayer
If we take time to see the sights, hear the sounds, love the life
That surrounds our every move instead of hurrying right through
I think you'd be surprised of the wonder right before your eyes
If you only believe

That last stanza, incidentally, was one that I wrote, inspired by Margaret's words and the beautiful way she was able to soak up the scene from her back porch; to see the depth and magnitude of it all.  I was inspired, just as she was inspired.

Tell me this – what inspires you?  What causes you to stop and take notice, perhaps even put pen to paper as Margaret did?  Is it a sunrise over the ocean?  Watching an infant marvel at their new world?  A good book?  Inspiration works that way, doesn't it?  And we don't always know why.  Inspiration often just....happens.  It's not something we can schedule into our Blackberry or plan out like a family trip.  We often speak of inspiration as “striking” us, which suggests that it comes to us unannounced.  And some amazing things have come from people who've been inspired.  Mozart wrote beautiful arias; Van Gogh created some amazing paintings, Einstein discovered relativity, and a guy named Mark Zuckerberg came up with a social networking tool called Facebook.  And despite what some of you may think, it did take some inspiration to come up with that!

We in Christian circles like to speak of the Bible as being “inspired,” although we don't always know what that means exactly.  Does it simply mean that God was part of the process?  Does it mean the scriptures are literally true?  Or is there another way to understand them as “inspired?”  They're all important question to ask, because there's a lot being bantered about there these days about the scriptures – what they mean, what they don't mean; what they say about this topic or that issue.  It's easy to get lost in the shuffle of it all.

Which is why it's a good thing we've got Paul to set things straight.  The author of our scripture today is writing a letter to his protege Timothy, giving advice on how to further the good work of the early church.  And in the third chapter he offers this little nugget of wisdom:

All scripture is inspired by God
and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

All scripture is inspired by God.  You know what's interesting?  If you were to google this phrase in quotations, as I did this past week, you would get a slew of websites from churches, para-church organizations, and personal blogs; most of which use that quote as a banner to support one single underlying notion – the infallibility and literal nature of the word of God.  Kind of curious, because it's suggesting something besides the inspiring nature of scripture – how the words of the Psalms move us to joy or tears, how the prophets call us to a righteous anger, how the sayings of Jesus lead to transformation.  It's suggesting something more along the lines of a rigid declaration of unquestionable authority.  “The Bible means what it says and says what it means,” one church summarized under the verse.

Now certainly we hold fast to the notion that the Bible speaks the “truth” - a truth about how a people and their God walked together over the course of a few thousand years.  We believe that this “truth” still speaks to us today in our 21st century world.  The question is how that truth comes to us over the centuries and miles in between us and them; how it translates to our modern day.  And it's not as easy as reading what the words say and following them exactly as written.

Just as A.J. Jacobs, author of the best-seller The Year of Living Biblically.  As a self-described agnostic Jew, A.J. made the decision to follow every law in the Bible – all 613 of them – for a full year.  What transpired was both “inspirational” and humorous at the same time.  For instance, A.J. refrained from cutting his hair or shaving his face, per ancient Hebrew code (much to the chagrin of his wife and son).  His diet changed radically.  And in one particularly humorous section he actually stones an adulterer – this from the 20th chapter of Deuteronomy.  It involved, of course, finding someone willing to admit to being an adulterer (which he did) and dealing with the modern-day stigma attached to throwing rocks at people (he justifies that the Bible doesn't specify the size of the stone, so he uses a small pebble).

It's funny stuff, but it's serious too.  Because there are a lot of people in our world today who actually approach scripture like this – for real, not just for writing a book.  There are a lot of people who read the Bible as nothing more than some sort of “manual” or “textbook” for living.  At best this is a one-dimensional way to approach scripture.  At worst it's a way to support an agenda they already possess; propping up what they already believe.  And that's when you get things like scripture being used to support slavery or the non-mixing of races.  That's when you get the “prosperity gospel” where the faithful are rewarded with financial gain.  That's where you get the denigration of women, of minorities, of gays, of anyone who is deemed “different.”

Even A.J. the agnostic recognizes that there's more to being a person of faith than following scripture like some checklist.  There's something else going on behind these holy words that goes deeper than surface level; something else that makes them, in Paul's own words, “inspired.”  In fact, the actual word for “inspired” in 2 Timothy might clue us in a bit.  The Greek word here literally means “God-breathed.”  It's used very rarely in the Bible – in fact, this is the only time it's used.  And in a way it hearkens back to the second chapter of Genesis:

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living being.

You see what's being communicated here?  It is the very breath of God that gives us life; that animates what previously was nothing more than “dust of the ground.”  It's God's spirit filling our lungs and rushing through our bloodstream.  And it not only keeps our heart pumping and our organs functioning.  It feeds our soul; that part of us that is not just simple dust.  It is the carpentry behind us being fashioned in the image of God – imago dei.  And now, according to Paul, that very same thing takes place with scripture.  It, too, is “God-breathed.”

And that's saying something, isn't it?  Because think about it – we “God-breathed” human beings are not simple creatures, are we?  There is a lot of depth to us.   We are multi-dimensional; we're intricate and nuanced and complicated.  You don't get the feel of another person by just looking at what's on the surface.  You've got to dig deep.

And I'm wondering if the same sort of thing can be said about inspired, “God-breathed” scripture.  What do you think?  It reflects hundreds of people writing over the course of thousands of years.  It's got some depth to it, it's multi-faceted and diverse and complicated.  To say that a passage has one and only one meaning is failing to dig below the surface.  I have a minister friend who once preached a six-week sermon series on the Prodigal Son parable – six totally different sermons on the same passage.  Now that's some depth!

Kind of reminds me of the kaleidoscope I had as a kid – you know, that tube thing with the angled mirrors inside, reflecting on an assortment of colored pieces of plastic, beads and the like?  No one's changing the contents of what's inside the thing – but as you hold it up to the light and twist the rim you see something entirely different every time; another beautiful colorful truth to take in. 

That's the same sort of thing that happens with “God-breathed” scripture.  It's so much more than guidelines to be adhered to; words to be worshiped, quotations to be quoted.  It is a living entity, filled with God's very oxygen, pulsating and teeming with life.  And like the air we breathe, these words needs to be breathed into our bodies, experienced and pondered and meditated upon; before they are exhaled on in how we respond with our lives. 

It's like the way one 19th century English preacher described it.  One lazy spring afternoon he sat in his backyard and looked at a beech tree growing there.  But he did more than just look at it – he kind of did like Margaret did on her back porch.  He really looked at the tree; studied it with all its intricacies.  The green hue of the leaves, the texture of the bark, the design of the branches.  He watched the way a tiny squirrel ran up the branches, jumping from one to the other, back and forth, making use of every inch of this squirrel playground.  And that's when he put pen to paper and wrote these words:

The way to deal with God’s word is not merely to contemplate it, or study it, as a student does; but to live on it, as that squirrel lives on his beech tree. Let it be to you, spiritually, your house, your home, your food, your medicine, your clothing, the one essential element of your soul’s life and growth.  Let it not be something you observe from a distance.  Let it grow within you.  Let it live. http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93000022, visited on 8.10.2009.

And that's really what it's all about, isn't it?  Because when we let the words of God live in us, we can't help but let them live out of us.  We can't help but let the parting of the Red Sea story lead us to  put our trust in the path God has ahead of us.  We can't help but let the story of David and Bathsheba remind us that no one is above reproach, and how to respond when we've messed up.  We can't help but let all those Old Testament laws about caring for “widows and orphans” direct us to look out for and respond to the vulnerable of our day and time – especially as our country is mired in a heated debate on health care.  We can't help but let Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son remind us that everyone deserves a second chance, and that God's grace is available to all, even those we may feel least deserving of it.  We can't help but let Paul's words about there being no Jew or Greek, slave or free, remind us that being one in Christ Jesus means doing away with any dogma that claims some are “in” and others “out.”

We can't help but let every one of these “God-breathed” words stir us to action, to discipleship, to faithfulness.  So let them live – and may we always be truly inspired.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

WHEN GOD ASKED FOR TOO MUCH

(NOTE: We are having a guest preacher today, Feb. 15th.  So I thought I'd share a sermon I preached last year, Father's Day 2008, on a pretty difficult passage that I'm still trying to get my arms around.  Thanks as always for reading!)

Genesis 22: 1-14
Steve Lindsley
June 15, 2008

Let me begin this morning by offering a disclaimer of sorts for today’s sermon: it’s my fault.  It’s my fault.  And I don’t say that lightly, because in almost nine years of marriage I have come to use those words quite frequently, along with their closely related cousins, I’m sorry.   I know them well.

So I stand before you this morning to let you know that it’s my fault that this sermon is about what it is about today.  I realize now, I should’ve listened to my better judgment six months ago, when I was sequestered in the Manfredi’s creekside cabin planning out sermons for the next half-year.  It was January – a long ways away from June – and a warm fire was burning in the fireplace.  Organic Columbian coffee was brewing in the coffee maker.  Mozart was playing on the Bose ipod dock!  The whole scene was a succulent landscape of pastoral serenity; the perfect formula in which to conjure up profound sermonic insights and allow God to speak bold words of wisdom to one’s soul.

I do believe very much that divine inspiration takes place when planning sermons, and I give thanks to God for it.  I also believe that the caffeine content in organic Columbian coffee can get you so jazzed up you think you can take on the world with both hands tied behind your back.  Which is the only way I can rationally explain why I thought it’d be such a great idea to preach on the 22nd chapter of Genesis – on Father’s Day!

It’s not that I believe the story of Abraham’s “almost-sacrifice” of his own son is somehow less-inspired than any other scripture I’ve read from this pulpit and pondered on in a sermon.  It’s just that I find the whole story, to be honest, offensive.  Where in the world does God get off asking his greatest, most loyal servant to sacrifice his own flesh and blood – a son he and his wife had waited on for years; and a son from which Abraham’s descendants, per God’s own promise, would number “as many as the stars in the sky?”  It seems to me like God is asking for way too much here.

All of this leads us to the paradox that is often the word of God.  See, when we read scriptures that appear to make sense, that have no overarching “issue” to contend with, we accept them at face value with little thought.  So – God so loved the world.  The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall not want.  Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.  Case open and shut by the time we reach the period at the end of the sentence.

And then we get to those other scriptures, the ones that are not plain and simple, and they leave us with one of two options.  We can either ignore them completely, or we lunge for the path of least resistance and latch on with all our might to some surface explanation.  Except that doing this is something akin to riding in a tiny sailboat swirling around in a class 5 hurricane.  We’re left holding on for dear life, because the last thing we want to admit is that we don’t have a clue what God up to.

There is perhaps no passage in the Bible that better fits the latter description than ours today.  I know people who avoid the 22nd chapter of Genesis in their Bible like the plague.  And trying to make sense of it is often a difficult venture that doesn’t lead us anywhere.  For instance – I have always heard, and I imagine you have too, that this story is primarily about God testing Abraham.  After all, if this guy is going to transform God’s people from a wandering clan into the beginnings of a powerful nation, God needs to know he’s a reliable and trustworthy fella.  So throw him a worse-case scenario and see how he handles the heat.  This notion is certainly strengthened by the opening verses, which state quite clearly: God tested Abraham.

It sounds reasonable.  I mean, God does seem to make a habit of “testing” folks in the Bible.  Even in our day and age people talk about being “tested by God.”  When we’re going through a particularly trying time; when our faith encounters some bumps and bruises along the way, we’re often quick to rationalize that God is, in fact, trying to make us stronger and more “fit” for the rest of the journey.  So God “tests” us.

But come on……tested, like this?  I mean, does this not smack of God asking for a bit too much, almost to the point of being downright cruel?  Surely God could have thought up some other way for Abraham to demonstrate his fortitude and loyalty than asking the poor guy to kill his own son.  So I, for one, am not convinced.  I just can’t buy into the idea that all of this was simply about a test.

Then there are others who suggest that the real purpose of this story is more theological than historical.  Rather than just chronicling an event thousands of years ago, what this story really seeks to do is highlight the concept of sacrificial living.  Being a faithful follower sometimes means giving up what you want most so you can give God your best.  In fact, there are those who say this story in Genesis 22 is foreshadowing a future father who would willingly give up his son – that son being a Nazarene man thousands of years later, put to death on a Roman cross.  The God who asks Abraham to make the ultimate sacrifice is the same God who would later make one of his own.

To draw similarities between this story and the story of Jesus makes sense if you really want to see it.  But let’s remember – the Bible didn’t descend from heaven wrapped all nice and neat from Genesis to Revelation.  In fact, there were literally thousands of years that separated the period around Genesis from the events of the New Testament.   It’d be like some folks in the year 4008 reading back to an event that happened in 2008 and suggesting that the only purpose of the 21st century was to point to something in their own day and time.  You see how kind of thinking takes the significance out of the story itself.

Ugh.  You know, I kind of feel like another pastor who once found himself preaching on this passage – in his sermon he told his congregation: If you're expecting me to resolve the Abraham and Isaac story for you, I can only say that you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't have the answer.   And I think that’s the hard truth.  There really is no “answer” here – there is no way to “resolve” what God asks Abraham to do.  Neither of the explanations already mentioned get beyond the fact that God asked for way too much here.

And the truth of the matter is, I’m not just offended by what God asks Abraham.  I am just as offended by the fact that Abraham actually goes along with it!  The father in me has very little sympathy for a man who would entertain such a request, even going so far as to raise the knife above his son’s head.  I’m telling you – just between you and me, if it were me who God asked to take my first-born on a hike up the mountain like this, I daresay I would’ve suggested that God be the one to take the hike instead!  And part of me resents the fact that Abraham didn’t do just that.

So why did Abraham go along with it?  Why did he go up on the mountain?  That’s the real issue here, isn’t it?  Why did he come this close to following through on this very offensive request?  I don’t know.  Do you think he sensed at some level that there was more going on here that an empty altar and a outrageous request by the Almighty?  I’ll tell you why I ask that – remember Isaac’s question?  Here they are, almost to the mountain’s summit, each step bringing them closer to the unthinkable.  Isaac is smart enough to recognize that’s something amiss when a sacrifice is being prepared and there’s nothing to offer – so he asks his father: where’s the offering?  I can only fathom the excruciating agony Abraham felt at that moment – how to tactfully explain what was going on without actually saying it.  On the spur of the moment, and under immense pressure, Abraham keeps it simple, saying only that God will provide the offering.

God will provide.  Like so much of scripture, you can hear Abraham’s words in a couple of ways, can’t you?  You can hear them as the father’s rather couched way – and pretty quick on his feet, I might add – of diplomatically answering his son.  God will provide the sacrifice, Isaac…..the sacrifice which happens to be standing right next to me!  If nothing else we’ve got to admire Abraham a little bit for coming up with a pretty slick response, given the circumstances.

But there’s another way to hear Abraham’s words, and it has nothing to do with making the best of a horrible situation.  What if we hear his words not as a couched response, but as a statement of faith?  A statement of trust in God?  God WILL provide the offering, Isaac.  I don’t know how, I don’t know when; although I’d prefer that it’d be sooner rather than later.  But God will provide, Isaac.  God always has provided, and God always will.  What about that?  Abraham, hoping beyond hope that something will happen; trusting that something will intervene so that God will provide an offering for father and son to make together. 

And of course, that is precisely what comes to pass – God does provide!  A voice from above and a ram in a nearby thicket.  And you have to feel that Abraham experienced, at that very moment, two distinct and powerful emotions.  One, certainly relief that his son would live!  But also joy – the kind of joy that comes from knowing your God keeps God’s promises and your God never ceases to provide what is needed.

You know, I remember a number of years ago, a speaker at a Montreat Youth Conference.  It was Wednesday or Thursday morning, and the theme of the guys’ talk that day was God’s grace.  This guy had lived a pretty rough life, done some pretty rotten things, many of which would normally carry long prison terms.  In his talk he wanted to impress upon the 1500+ teenagers there that God’s love really can change your life, as apparently it did his.  That was the heart of his message.  The problem was that the tales of his previous life – tales he shared in embarrassingly specific detail, I might add – totally overshadowed his message.  When all us teenagers left that day, I can promise you – of all the things about the keynote we talked about, God’s grace was not one of them!

There is a part of me that wonders, just wonders, if maybe that’s what’s going on in the 22nd chapter of Genesis.  We have this story that is offensive to us.  That’s what jumps out at us, and it is hard to get past it.  But if we do – if we labor to see the larger picture – what we find is that this story is less about a father being asked to do the unthinkable, and more about a God who always, always provides; even in the most desperate of situations.  And while it’s true that the story starts off with this whole notion of God “testing” Abraham, look at how it ends: Abraham names the place Jehovah Jireh, which in Hebrew means, “The Lord will Provide.” One Old Testament scholar puts it this way:

(This story is about) the contradiction between the testing of God and the providing of God; between the sovereign freedom which requires complete obedience and the gracious faithfulness which gives good gifts; between the command and the promise; and between the word of death which takes away and the word of life which gives.  Faith is the readiness to answer to this strange contradiction in God.
(Genesis by Walter Bruggemann (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 191-192, 189)

When God asks for too much, it is often because the fulfillment of God’s promise is right around the corner, ready to jump out of the thicket to greet us.  And it’s okay if we’re offended when the command is too much, when obedience conflicts with our better judgment.  Because as I imagine Abraham gazing into the eyes of his precious Isaac on the flip-side of all of this, I think he knew: God doesn’t just ask too much of us.  More importantly, God provides us with way more than we ever need.  And that, my friends, is a message that’ll preach on Father’s Day.  Even if it’s still my fault.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

MORE THAN JUST BELIEVING: REDISCOVERING "GOING GREEN"

(Note to readers: well, I'm not preaching again this week!  Our church is having its first-ever Homecoming as part of our 150th anniversary celebration, and we are honored to have the Rev. Steve McCutchan preaching as I assist in worship.

So, to fill the gap this week, I've decided to repost a sermon I preached earlier this year as part of my Lenten Sermon Series.  I was led to repost this particular one in light of the recent release of "The Green Bible," an environmentally-aware publication of the NRSV translation.  It's pretty nifty, and I'd encourage you to read more about it in a post I made on my other blog.

It is kind of sad that those who were given the command "to till and keep the earth" have fallen so far behind in the environmental quest for our earth.  This sermon was an attempt to call us back to that very endeavor.)

 
 
Genesis 1: 26-31; Psalm 24: 1-2, 7-10
Steve Lindsley
March 2, 2008

There is a story that goes like this: a group of scientists, world-renowned experts in their various fields, were reviewing all the scientific accomplishments of the last millennium – diseases that had been cured, food that had been artificially manufactured, even life created in a test tube.  And they came to a unanimous conclusion – the human race did not need God anymore.  Things had gotten to the point, they surmised, where they could sustain the many species and the world without the Divine’s help. So they thought it would be the courteous thing to inform God of their decision, so that God would feel free to find another universe to oversee.

They came before God and shared their thoughts.  God, being a realist, admitted to the amazing strides the human race had made over the years.  So God was willing to leave humanity on its own if this group of experts could pass one small test.  I want you to create life, God asked them, just like I did in the beginning, with a handful of dirt.  The scientists took this challenge to heart.  They convened over the next few weeks, working day and night.  And finally – eureka!  They determined that, together, they possessed the scientific knowledge to meet God’s challenge.
So they went back to God and told God they had figured it out.  Show me, God asked.  One of the scientists ran outside and came back in with a vial full of dirt.  But before they got any further, God stopped them and said, Oh, I’m sorry, you must have misunderstood.  I meant for you to get your own dirt!

Now getting their “own dirt,” of course, is not something those scientists could’ve done.  Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that in a world where we can order fast food fast, where a few clicks on Amazon.com can put a book in our mailbox in a matter of days, where an old t-shirt can be discarded and replaced with a new one – in a world with so much of so much, one of the very few things we cannot get more of is dirt.  What we’ve got is all we’re ever going to have.

You know, it’s the same thing with this earth of ours.  As you know, our sermon series this Lenten season is focusing on More Than Just Believing. It’s about the idea that thoughts lead to actions, convictions lead to change, believing leads to following.  Last week we talked about how our faith calls us not only to think nice things about “the least of these,” but to stand alongside and align ourselves with them.  Today it’s not people we’re talking about, but something else that certainly needs our attention.  Consider the following:

• One-fifth of our planet’s tropical rainforests – crucial to the overall world climate – have been cleared since 1960.  Currently they’re disappearing at 1% each year.
• We are currently operating at 100 to 1000 times the normal extinction rate, which means that today, one in four mammal species, one in ten bird species, one in four amphibian species, and half of all primate species are threatened with extinction.
• In our lakes, rivers and oceans, fisheries are being depleted at twice their replacement rate.
• And speaking of water, by 2020 one in three people will suffer from fresh water shortages.  This has already been experienced in third-world countries, and is being felt now in industrialized nations, even in our own state of North Carolina, where some counties and municipalities are still under water restrictions.

I imagine many of you have heard these statistics or others like them before.  Now, here’s the interesting part: these were not compiled by some scientist or some stereotypical environmental activist.  These statistics were assembled by internationally acclaimed Christian writer and theologian Brian McLaren in his most recent book, aptly titled Everything Must Change. Brian is no push-over: he is a Biblical scholar who is part of a new movement – or more appropriately a new-old movement – to reclaim, among other things, the environmental component of the Christian faith.   He is making the important case that “going green,” as the current lingo goes, is not simply a nice thing for people of faith to do, but is in fact a Biblical mandate and duty for every follower of Christ.

Perhaps it may surprise us to look at this particular issue through the lens of faith – we’re not really used to that.  It is almost as if, over the years, we Christians have managed to remove ourselves from this conversation.  And that’s a shame – because this conversation is not only one we should be part of, but in fact it is one that we started, a very long time ago.

Remember back to the beginning of it all, the book of Genesis, and the beautiful account of how our world, and everything in it, came to be.  The heavens and the earth, day and night, created on the first day.  The sky above and waters below on the second and third.  The sun and moon and stars on the fourth; the fish in the seas and birds in the air on the fifth.  Animals roaming the earth on the sixth.  All the world was an intentional act of God; an act that had meaning and purpose and (something which will make us Presbyterians happy) order.

Also on the sixth day, God created humankind, male and female.  And there is something wonderfully unique about this particular creature in God’s order – it was given the following directive:

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Dominion.  It’s a powerful sort of word, isn’t it?  It comes from the Latin word dominus which literally means “lord” or “master.”  Webster’s defines “dominion” as “having supreme authority and absolute power.”  That’s strong stuff!  We think of someone having “dominion” over another and imagine total and complete ownership – where the domineering one completely subjugates the other, and can do with it as it pleases.

Which strikes me, because that’s exactly how it seems we’ve viewed our role in the created order over the years.  The human race has taken this “dominion” thing to an unfortunate extreme – thus the kinds of statistics and examples McLaren and many others continue to bring to our attention.  There is a carelessness and ignorance here, both of which are quite tragic.   Common sense dictates that we are setting up our world, and future generations, for disaster if we persist in habits that lead to the world’s detriment.  It’s just not very smart.

But you know what concerns me as a person of faith, more than this “not being very smart?”  It’s also horrible theology!  As Christians, we are making some assumptions about the world and our role in it that are way out of line with what the Bible tells us.  I’m reminded of the televangelist I once saw on TV who told his millions of viewers that, because God had given us “dominion” over all creation, we could literally do with it whatever we want.  It is ours – we own it!  There are even some who view the current environmental crises as somehow fulfilling Biblical prophecy about the “End Times;” so that the decline of the earth is to be welcomed with open arms.  What this does, of course, is rearrange the whole order of things.  Instead of God being at the center of the universe, we are.  Instead of God’s needs being the ones that matter the most, it’s our needs – our whims and desires, to be more accurate.  It is flawed theology, it is unbiblical, it is dangerous and – let’s just say it – it’s wrong.

There is an ancient story about two men in a rowboat heading toward land. Suddenly, with land still far away, one of the men begins to dig a hole in the bottom of the boat underneath his feet.  The other man asks him what in the world he’s doing.  To which the first replies, This is none of your business. I am digging the hole on my side of the boat!  The point of the story, of course, is that the earth is like a boat, our means of transport in this gift of life; and what one person does with this “boat” affects all who are on it with them.

You know, I wonder what would’ve happened if the televangelist mentioned earlier had taken a closer look at this Genesis passage, and this word “dominion.”  It’s kind of interesting, actually.  The Hebrew word used here, rada, has a connotation that differs dramatically from what the English translation suggests.   It is not at all about exploitation and domination; it’s about bearing a responsibility of care-giving and nurturing. Creation-care, if you will.  Think about that.  To “have dominion” over the world does not mean we can do with it what we want.  To have dominion over the world doesn’t mean it’s ours at all.  As the Psalmist says quite emphatically, The Earth is the LORD’s.  We are commissioned with the care and nurture of all creation; protecting rather than exploiting, building up instead of tearing down, being wise and thoughtful instead of instinctive and selfish.

Now that kind of changes things, doesn’t it?  It makes us wonder: what would the earth look like if Christians everywhere took this little rada word to heart?  What would it look like if we really did see our role, our responsibility, our duty as people of faith, to take care of creation and the creatures within it?  What might that look like?  Well, let me at least tell you what it’s going to look like here at First Presbyterian Church.  Just last month, our session unanimously adopted an initiative titled “FPC Goes Green;” created through the hard work of church members Dave Petri, Lorie Lindsley and Joe Lampl.  You have a copy of this on the back of your announcements page, and I’d like to invite you to follow me as I read it:

“The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” – Psalm 24:1
The Psalmist reminds us that creation is a gift from God.
And yet humanity has for the most part failed to acknowledge this,
assuming that the world is ours to do with as we please.
So we have engaged in practices that harm the environment,
contribute to global warming, and serve our own interests.
.As people of faith, the Christian community should stand opposed to this mindset
and do what it can to re-educate the faith community
that “going green” is not simply  a nice thing to do,
but is in fact a theological and Biblical mandate.
Therefore, as part of the 150th celebration of First Presbyterian Church of Mount Airy,
the session endorses the “FPC Goes Green” initiative.

So what exactly is this initiative?  How is our church going to “go green?”  I’m glad you asked!

First, we are in the process of switching our incandescent lighting to more energy-efficient CFL bulbs.  We’ve already done this with the standard 60-watt bulbs at various places around the church, as well as the spotlights in the Fellowship Hall and here in the sanctuary.  In addition to being much better for the environment by not using nearly as much electricity (thus burning less coal at the energy plant), our calculations suggest that the church will save as much as $600 a year on lighting expenses alone.

Second, beginning with this Sunday’s bulletin and this month’s Grapevine, we are switching to recycled paper in the church office.  Our mailings and other publications will follow suit.  For the most part, you’ll know we’re using recycled paper when you see the logo “Printed on Recycled Paper,” like the one on the back of today’s bulletin.

Third, we are beginning today an in-church recycling program of paper, plastics, magazines, aluminum cans and glass.  You’ll notice special marked blue containers at various points around the church.  All church members will be asked to use these bins for recyclables generated here at the church – bulletins you aren’t taking home with you, soda cans after a fellowship meal (and after you rinse them out, of course), just to name a few examples.  The staff will also use these bins during the week for paper office products, junk mail and catalogs.

To help with the recyclables, we are looking for volunteers to serve on what is being called the “Green Team.”  Twice a month, someone from this group will take the church’s recyclables to the recycling center here in Mount Airy.  We hope to get at least twelve people on the team so each person would only have to do this twice a year.  If you are interested in serving on the “Green Team,” please plan on signing up on the sign-up sheet down the hall after worship.

And finally, we are encouraging all church members to “go green” in their own homes.  You’ll find a handout in the bulletin this morning that gives you some very simple, practical steps on how to do this.  Take this home with you today and, if you would, make time in the coming week to read it with your family.  As you’ll see, it doesn’t involve anything terribly complicated or even expensive.  All it really takes is the willingness to acquire a new set of habits and routines in your home.

Friends, this is how our church, and hopefully its members as well, will “go green” in this year of celebration!  And you know what the really great thing about all of this is?  We’re not just “believing” that it’s good to take care of God’s earth.  We’re not just thinking that it’s a nice thing to do. We’re actually doing something about it as a people of faith!  We’re following Jesus; following his lead as he reminds us that having dominion over the earth means you and I have been given an incredible responsibility – and an incredible opportunity – to be the caretakers of this world that we were always intended to be.  So let’s all “go green:” not even though we’re Christians, but because we’re Christians.  Thanks be to God, AMEN.

FOURTH AND LONG - PASS OR PUNT??

Genesis 32:22-31
Steve Lindsley
September 7, 2008

Well my friends, praise be to God it is that time of year!  You turn on your TV  anytime Saturday or Sunday afternoons (as you're, you know, honoring the sabbath by resting on your living room couch) and you're bound to see the glorious scene played out before you: two teams suited up in helmets, shoulder pads, fancy unies; all huddled around a piece of pigskin.  It's football season, folks, and that is a good thing.

I have always been a fervent football fan – high school, college, professional, you name it.  There's something captivating about twelve guys on the field each with their own assignments, very specific plans on what to do for each play; and once the ball is set in motion somehow all of that comes together.  Sometimes the play doesn't go as designed and things fall apart.  Other times, though, the play unfolds perfectly – and when it does, it's a full-fledged symphony carried out on grass and dirt.

Perhaps there is no better example of a perfectly-executed play on the grid iron than one that took place in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.  The game was between the University of Oklahoma and Boise State.  This was a true matchup of David and Goliath – Oklahoma, one of the nation's football powerhouses, and Boise State a relatively unheard-of team out of Idaho.  As the game started, though, there was this strange feeling that Oklahoma seemed to be playing it safe – playing not to lose, essentially. On the other hand, Boise State was leaving it all out on the field, giving it their all, playing to win.

There are two minutes left in the fourth quarter and the game, to everyone's surprise, is close – Boise State is only down by seven.  They had the ball around the middle of the field, but it's all coming to a head: fourth down and 18 yards to get another first down. Conventional wisdom holds that the underdog Broncos should punt the ball and let their defense hold them and try to get the ball back.  But apparently that isn't in the cards this evening, or to be more exact, in the coaches' playbook.  They are going to pass.

The ball is hiked, and quarterback Jared Zabransky drops back a few steps in the pocket, frantically looking downfield for an open receiver as the pass rush quickly clamors around him.  Suddenly he fires a laser to a receiver in the middle of the field, around the 35 yard line.  The good news is that he catches the ball.  The bad news is that he is still three or four yards short of the first down, with defensive players right on top of him.

The receiver is not going to get the first down – but he doesn't need to.  That's because as soon as he catches the ball, and right before the defenders pounce, he suddenly pivots to his right and pitches the ball to his left – right into the outstretched arms of a Bronco teammate running down the opposite side of the field.  Without missing a stride he catches the ball and runs into the endzone.  It was a planned play, and they ran it to perfection.  But the magic isn't over then.  Rather than kick the extra point to tie the game, Boise State goes for the win – executing another trick play to make the two point conversion.  Final score: Boise State – 43; Oklahoma – 42.  And to add icing onto the cake, as if this isn't enough of a storybook ending, the guy who made the winning score runs over to his cheerleader girlfriend and – with an audience of millions watching – takes a knee and asks for her hand in marriage!  She, of course, says yes.

You just can't write stuff like this – and that's why I love football.  It would have been so easy for Boise State to play it safe – to punt the ball instead of trying for a ridiculous first down, or at the very least kicking the extra point and taking the game into overtime.  No one would've faulted them for that – they were, after all, Boise State, and weren't even supposed to be in this bowl game to begin with.  At least that's what conventional thinking said. It would have been a “moral victory” just to hold their own against a team like Oklahoma.

But Boise State was anything but conventional on that early January evening, and they refused to play it safe.  They came into that game, truly believing they could do something as crazy as winning.  They took chances on plays and schemes that would either go as planned or blow up in their faces.  They played to win.

You know, people can often resemble football teams, I've found.  Because some people live life out of fear of making a wrong move, or making a mistake.  They err on the side of caution rather than on the side of trying something new.  They play it safe.  Then there are those who see life as an endless string of possibilities, all of which need to be experienced.  No stone is left unturned – and when it comes to the game of life, these people play to win.

Now I am not much of a pop psychologist, but I have to think that Jacob kind of fell into the latter category, don't you?  This guy had a knack for living on the edge!  I mean, when the guy wrangles the family birthright and blessing from his older brother Esau by capitalizing on the moment and outright deception, you know you're not dealing with someone who “plays it safe.”  You're dealing with someone who plays to win.

In our reading we find an older Jacob on his own, resting peacefully one night by the river Jabbok.  Suddenly, out of the blue, this stranger appears and begins wrestling with him.  Kind of a random sort of thing, but there it is.  We don't know who this person is or what brought on the attack.  The thing we do know is that the struggle goes on for hours – all night until the dawn is coming.  Jacob may have been caught off-guard, and he may be wrestling with some divine being, but he was never about losing a fight.  He was in it to win.

He held on to his attacker, even after he has his hip knocked out of joint, and demanded from him a blessing.  And that's when the stranger tells him that his name is no longer Jacob, but Israel, because, as he put it, “you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”  That is what the word “Israel” means.  Name changes are common in the Bible and usually mark some major change in a person's life.  In Jacob's case it marked the time he “refused to lose” and more than held his own against, apparently, God himself.

You know, I've often wondered what this story is about exactly.  I mean, who in the world was this strange man?  Was he an angel, or God himself in the flesh?  Who was he?  We don't really know.  More questions come to mind – like what are these two fighting over?  The writer of Genesis is kind of weak on transition here, as we segue in the same verse from Jacob all alone to suddenly wrestling with this stranger.  Was his attacker trying to mug him?  Did Jacob unknowingly wander into someone else’s territory?  Once again, we don't really know.

So let’s deal with what we do know.  We know the two had a pretty good knock-down for most of the night.  We know Jacob’s opponent is smart enough to know how to cripple him in the hip.  We know that Jacob is – pun intended here – a sore loser who is not going to give up easily.  And we know this stranger has some kind of authority to both bless Jacob and give him his new name.  In a nutshell, that’s what we know.

Now there may be a lot about this scene that we don't understand, but I'm wondering if we already understand enough.  Because what it boils down to is this: when troubles find Jacob by the river Jabbok, when he is faced with the most formidable of foes; when it is fourth down and 18 and he's down by seven, he plays to win.  He stays with the struggle until he receives God’s blessing and gets his new name.  He doesn't punt – he goes for the pass.

And I'm not employing all this fun football imagery here to highlight stuff like male bravado and putting up the good fight and “Remember the Titans” sports glory.  Because ultimately football is nothing more than a game – a great game, if you ask me, but just a game.  Life, though – life is something else.  And rarely is there any real “glory” in the struggles that enter into your life and mine.  Rarely does the scene end with two trick plays, eight points and a marriage proposal.  We kind of feel like Jacob, don't we?  I mean, it's not like we went looking for trouble.  It's just that one day there we were, sitting  peacefully by the river lying down for a good night’s rest; and the next thing we know we’re being attacked by some stranger who just won’t let us go.  And we cry out to God, we yell at God, we may even curse God from time to time; and we echo the same cries the Psalmist did thousands of years ago: Why?  How long?  Have you forgotten me?  How long, God? Why??

I remember years ago, attending some conference with my youth group; and the speaker said something that really troubled me.  I can't remember the exact words, but it was along the lines of this: Commit your life to Christ, he said, and God will take all your troubles away.  God will make your life easier, because all things are easy when Jesus rules your heart.

And I remember thinking, even in my young state, how this sounded like way too much of a sales pitch, because the fact of the matter is that it just wasn't true.  It couldn't be true because sitting right next to me at that retreat was Jonathan, a good buddy of mine who had made a profession of faith and joined the church just like I had earlier in the year.  Two weeks before this retreat, Jonathan was attacked by the proverbial stranger in the night when his parents sat him and his younger brother down in the family living room to tell them that they were getting a divorce.  Jonathan's life certainly hadn't gotten any easier just because of his faith.  None of our lives had.

In fact, I think the case could be made that the stronger you are in your faith, and the longer you live as a person of faith, the harder living can get.  It gets harder because it is not easy to contend in the world we live.  We are Jacob trying to make it through the night.  We are Boise State staring across the line of scrimmage at Oklahoma.  We are people who profess our belief in a man who held no status in society, who made a habit of saying crazy things like “love your enemies” and “the first shall be last;” who was put to death in a way that was reserved for the most despicable of criminals.  It is no wonder that life as a person of faith is rarely an easy one.

Life is not always easy for those who choose to follow Jesus because of one reason and one reason only: we do not play the game the same way that the world does.  You and I, as people of faith living in the year 2008, follow in the footsteps of centuries and centuries of other people just like us who made a choice to play the game differently.  Not changing the rules; not breaking them.  We just stubbornly insist on playing it differently.  There's a man on the street corner, dressed in rags and toting a worn bag over his worn shoulders – and we hear Jesus say, inasmuch as you have done it for these, you have done it to me.  There are landfills of our waste that seem to pile up by the second, and the average person seems okay with that – and yet we do weird things like reducing and reusing and recycling.  There are people who put their full trust in institutions or governments or people of power because they believe they can provide them with security in an insecure world – meanwhile we spend our time and energy serving and working for another kingdom: the kingdom of God on earth.  There's a sense that the world is hopelessly segmented; that  there must be this group or that, that some must be in and others out; this race and that race; this class and that class; red states and blue states.  But you and I rise out of bed every morning and commit ourselves to an alternative view, one laid before us by the apostle Paul: there is neither Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, for all are one in Jesus Christ.

We are just stubborn about playing the game differently.  Not changing the rules; not breaking them.  Just playing it differently.  Jacob wrestled with “whoever-it-was” until dawn's light.  Boise State racked up an unexpected win.  And you and me?  It's not that our faith makes life any easier.  It just makes reaching the end zone all the more sweeter. And when we get there, and the celebration begins, we give thanks to God for passing on the punt, and going for the pass.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.