The Mayberry Preacher

TO EACH IS GIVEN: THE GIFT OF KNOWING WHAT TO DO

Judges 6: 36-40; Philippians 1: 3-11
Steve Lindsley
February 21, 2010


Last week, in our first sermon of the Lenten season, we talked about Paul's powerful words to the Corinthian church: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  We noted his important distinction: to each is given.  And we pondered the idea, instead of giving up something for Lent, of “taking something on.”

It's been interesting hearing some of you respond to that last claim in the week since.  One individual came up to me and voiced what I imagine is going through the minds of many of you: I'm fine with giving up giving up stuff for Lent, they said.  But what is it exactly that I'm supposed to take on?  And that's the question now, isn't it?  What is it we are called to do; what gifts do we possess that can be put to use in the life of the church?  This is not necessarily an easy question, is it?  Because it is a question of discernment; a question of calling.

Which is why one of our scripture readings today chronicles perhaps the Bible's most blatant, over-the-top instance of discerning one's call.  It involves Gideon, a judge God has raised to help Israel defeat the Midianites.  Keep in mind all of this is happening prior to King David and the monarchy, when Israel’s power and prestige were at their peak.  It wasn’t long before that God had led God’s people out of bondage in Egypt and through the wilderness for 40 years to the Promised Land.  And now, in their new home, they were constantly fending off attacks from other nations with the help of divinely-appointed military leaders known as “judges.”

Now some would think that being appointed by God would be enough for Gideon to know he was taking on the right thing.  Some would surmise that being called for divine service was all that was needed to convince him that he was fit for the job and equipped to take on whatever God asked.  But apparently that wasn't the case.  Even though God has all but guaranteed Gideon victory in battle, he still needed to know for sure.  He needed a sign. 

So before going to bed one night, Gideon “lays a fleece before the Lord” – literally.  A small piece of lambs wool, laid on the stone floor.  And a test attached to that wool – that if he wakes to find the wool wet and the surrounding floor dry, he will know that God is behind him 100%.  Night falls and dawn arrives, and Gideon wakes to find the scene just as he requested – the wool damp with moisture and the floor around it dry as a bone.

For whatever reason, though, Gideon is still not convinced.  Enthused, probably.  Confident, a little.  But not convinced.  Maybe he surmises that it’s not stretching the laws of nature all that much to expect early morning dew to collect on the wool and not on the stone floor.  Or maybe he just needs one more sign, one more nod in his direction to be sure, to be completely convinced that God’s path for him was true. 

So almost apologetically Gideon asks for a second sign – this time the reverse, a damp floor and dry wool at dawn’s light.  Which is exactly what he discovers the next day.  And apparently that's enough.  Gideon goes on to defeat the huge Midianite army with just 300 Israelites and assures himself not only a place in Hebrew history, but Hebrew lore – as the man who put God to the test with a piece of wool.  Twice.

You know, I'm torn by this story – torn in the sense that I wrestle with what to do with it.  Part of me really likes the clarity of it all – the clean-cutness, plain and simple; the fact that there is no middle ground, no gray areas.  Twice, Gideon has confirmed for him his calling, in dramatic fashion that even the most seasoned skeptic can't deny.

I like it when life works like that, don't you?  I like it when decisions I face are obvious; where doubt is minimal.  I like it when I wake up in the morning and just somehow know that I am meant to have Corn Flakes for breakfast instead of Cheerios.  I like it when something inside of me is fully convinced that I am to work on my sermon in the morning and go visit at the hospital in the afternoon, and not the other way around.  Gideon's story celebrates this sort of picture-perfect clarity in our lives, and when it happens like that, it's a great thing!

That's what one part of feels.  The other part, though, can't help but feel a little cheated by Gideon and his fleece trick – if not downright resentful of it.  Because the fact of the matter is that life rarely happens like that.  Sure, there are times when the planets align and the fleece comes out the way it needs to, and we have the clarification, the discernment we need.

But what happens when we wake up the next morning and check out our fleece, laid out all nice and neat on the threshing floor, and find that it's not soaking wet like we asked?  Or, better yet, what if we find that both the fleece and the floor are equally damp, or equally dry – what's that telling us?  So much of life is lived like this, in that nebulous “middle space,” in the places where the right solution or answer or choice isn't always obvious.  And that's when living our lives as people of faith can get kind of tricky.

A relationship with a good friend is on the rocks and we're struggling with what to do.  One day on a talk show we see an author interviewed who has just written a book about healing wounded friendships.  Is this a sign that God wants us to make our amends?  Or is it just coincidence?

We are summoned to the manager's office, and we know what's coming.  Word had been getting around all week.  And so, later, as we pack up our belongings, we have no clue what tomorrow will bring, or the day after that, or the day after that.  It would be so much easier if we had been able to call this shot ourselves – we could've made other plans, pursued other opportunities.  But now the rug has been pulled out from under us, so what do we do next?

Three colleges have sent us acceptance letters.  Each has their own merits and their own hangups.  There's not one factor tilting the scale in any particular direction – we wish there were!  We really can see ourselves at any of the three, but the bottom line is that we can only go to one.  Which one?

These kinds of things are the real stuff of life, stuff people are dealing with right now, dealing with all the time.  And I struggle with how to reconcile Gideon's story with scenarios like this.  How do we know what to do?  And not just in life in general, but specifically in our calling to the church.  I mean, To Each Is Given sounds nice, Mr. Paul, but it still begs the question: what is given??  What are our gifts and abilities?  And how do we go about finding them out? 

How indeed.  I imagine Paul was wondering the same thing, actually.  But not the Paul we met last week, writing to a Corinthian church who was letting their God-given gifts get in the way.  I'm talking about the Paul in our reading today, writing to the church in Philippi.  Earlier, Jane read the opening verses; a rather compassionate and heart-felt greeting to the congregation.  It concluded with this:

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more
with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best,
so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,
having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes
through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Now there's something we should know about this letter, something more than just the words that are being said.  It's the man behind the words – Paul actually wrote this letter while he was in prison, cast away there because of his work in ministry.  Throughout the letter we get the sense that Paul is honestly not sure what's going to happen – how long he'll be there, or if he'll ever get out at all.  For Paul this is a telling moment: even as he is uncertain about his own future, he pleads with the Christians in Philippi to be confident in what they are called to do; to have faith in their community, to still believe. 

Because that’s what it all boils down to, doesn't it – believing?  Believing in God, believing in ourselves?  Believing that you and I are part of something bigger than us, something beyond our capacity to understand; and that we each can play a part in that “something,” if we have faith, if we can just see a sign, if we just believe….

Did you ever see that Sunday morning cartoon with the two fleas?  It's two fleas  amidst a forest of animal fur; each hair follicle reaching high up above the tiny insects like trees.  And with a whimsical look on its face, one flea turns to the other and says, You know, sometimes I wonder if there really is a dog.  What makes the joke funny, of course, is that even as this tiny creature is able to question its place in the universe, it is completely and hopelessly immersed in that which it questions.  Doubts and uncertainties are real, but they cannot change in the least what is already there.

Author Kathleen Norris once made the observation that the Greek root of the word “believe” literally means “to give one’s heart to.”  This would become an important truth in her own life.  As a younger woman Norris challenged furiously her Christian upbringing and was consumed by doubts – doubts, she might say, were what she had given her heart to.   So she visited a Benedictine abbey and openly shared her intellectual frustrations.  And she discovered, much to her surprise, that the monks were less concerned with trying to eliminate her doubts and more interested in encouraging her to embrace and celebrate them.  Because, as one monk put it, “doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign than faith is alive and ready to grow.”

Isn’t that interesting?  Makes me wonder if Gideon's fleece thing wasn't what I've always thought it was – a silly little game with God – but more of a demonstration of tremendous faith, even as he was unsure what to do?  You and I try out best to follow what we perceive to be God’s will for our lives.  Sometimes it's obvious.  Other times it's not; a mass of gray rather than the black and white we’d prefer.  And we want to be sure that we do the right thing; that we make the right choices.  We want to know for certain that we’re “going with God.”

Sometimes, though, I have to wonder if what really matters – and what the fleece really teaches us – is that God isn’t as concerned about the direction we go in as much as that we invite God to go with us wherever we go.  That our task is not to figure out the minutiae and try to align ourselves with some huge “plan” God has us, but that we embrace God and invite God on the journey with us. 

So we invite God to go with us to the places where we find ourselves; the myriad of changes life throws at us.  Like Gideon, we invite God to go into battle with us, uncertain as we are about the outcome.  Like Paul we invite God to come with us to the places we're not sure we'll ever get out of. 

And all the while we listen for God's leading – not just at certain times, but all the time.  And not just that “still small voice” within us.  We listen to God speaking through the voices of others in the community of faith; the things they see in us that we may not see ourselves.  And when others voice what they see in us – You'd be an excellent Sunday School teacher, would you consider having your name put in nomination to be an elder, can you help out with Friends Feeding Friends this week – when we hear God's voice this way, we don't immediately write it off.  We have faith that what others see in us may very well be what God sees in us too.

Because ultimately, I figure, that's all Gideon wanted.  That's all Paul wanted.  That's all each one of us wants on this windy journey of faith.  We look.   We listen.  We discern.  And we go.  We may be surprised with what we see and hear and where we wind up.  We may be surprised.  I can pretty much promise you, though, that God won't be.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

DOING A LOT MORE WITH A LITTLE LESS

Judges 7: 1-8
Steve Lindsley
May 10 2009

As the saying goes, I remember it like it was yesterday.  Except it wasn't yesterday – it was 26 years ago.  But the memories are still there as strong as ever.

I remember it was my freshman year in high school, and our family was over at a friend's house in Raleigh to watch the big game.  For the previous month or so we had been captivated by the end of the basketball season for NC State – the team I was raised on and cheered for until I saw the light at Wake Forest.  Ten losses in the regular season used to guaranteed a team a front-row seat watching the postseason rather than playing in it.  And it would've for the Wolfpack, except that against all odds they actually won the ACC tournament and earned a most unexpected ticket to the Big Dance.

The next three weeks were magical – dramatic wins that earned State another day or two of basketball life, and enabled me to see some crazy things that I never saw before.  I saw bonfires in the middle of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.  I saw my first sofa thrown out of a six-story dorm room window.  Come to think of it, that was the only sofa I saw thrown out of a dorm room window!

There was plenty of college craziness, but none of it superceded the craziness on the court.  The games were amazing: Pepperdine by two in two overtimes.  UNLV by one.  Utah by nine.  Virginia by one, and Georgia by seven.  Each game was an unexpected victory, one in which fans had fully resigned themselves to the “moral victory” that would come once State lost.  Instead, State somehow found itself in the championship game facing the mighty Phi Slamma Jamma.

So we were at this friend's house, crouched around a television in the kitchen. We watched it until the bitter end, and I can still remember it.  State with the ball, game tied, mere seconds left.  Thurl Bailey in the corner, trapped, passes it out to the top of the key to Derrick Whittenburg, who almost loses it before turning and launching a prayer of a shot. It's close but not quite – and then Lorenzo Charles, God bless him, reaches up, uncontested, and stuffs the ball in the basket as time expires. 

They don't write stuff like this, you know.  They don't write it because in order for something to be good writing it has to be somewhat believable.  And this wasn't believable.  If it wasn't for the fact that we all saw it happen on our TV screens, we wouldn't have believed it either.  And yet, by the time coach Jim Valvano finally stopped running around the court and found someone to hug, the scoreboard said it all: State 54, Houston 52.  National champs.

We love the underdog story, don't we? We are naturally drawn by some cosmic force to the tale of the “lesser” upending the “larger” - the run-of-the-mill team knocking off a national contender, the obscure horse taking the Kentucky Derby in a landslide, the abandoned child who becomes valedictorian of his class at Yale.  We immortalize these stories in scrapbooks and YouTube clips; we make movies about them and call them things like Rocky and Hoosiers. 

The Bible also has its fair share of underdog stories – in fact, it could be said that the Bible itself is the story of the most unlikely and least powerful.  We find this sort of thing in our scripture reading today – an obscure tale about a judge and enemy combatants and a very odd way of preparing for battle.

Gideon's story in and of itself is interesting .  He was a judge – but not the kind we find in the courtroom.  Judges in Old Testament times were military leaders - “charismatic chieftans,” if you will.  They were called to power for a specific purpose, usually having to do with a threat from an outside nation.  They would lead the Israelites to victory, and then they'd step down from their seats of power and fade into the distance.  There were thirteen of them; Gideon was the fifth.

The thing about Gideon – and the thing I think most of us can relate to – is that he wasn't always sure of himself, and definitely wasn't sure what God wanted from him.  There's this great story about how, when tapped to be a judge, Gideon lays a fleece on the floor, suggesting that if God would make the fleece damp and the floor dry by morning, he'd know he was doing God's will.  When he wakes up and finds it to be exactly as he asked, he's still not convinced!  So he asks for the opposite – that the next day the fleece is dry and the floor damp.  When that happens, he seems to be convinced!

All of that, though, is just setting the stage for the real test.  The Midianites, 120,000 strong, are breathing down the Israelites' collective necks.  Gideon initially starts off with 32,000, which in and of itself makes for steep odds.  But God makes it even more challenging by instructing Gideon to send home the “fearful and trembling.”  It's a code out of Deuteronomy, actually, but it makes a small army even smaller.  And that was just the first cut.  The next one revolves around how those remaining 10,000 soldiers drink water by the riverside.  See, some kneel down and stick their faces all the way in to get a drink, while others get down on one knee and bring the water to their mouths with their hands.  There's conflicting opinion as to which one is more militarily viable, but the end result is the same – 9700 soldiers are given their walking papers, leaving Gideon with only 300.

Wow.  You know, I try to put myself in Gideon's shoes – what do you think he was thinking?  God, why are you doing this??  They've got over 100,000 – give me the fearful and trembling for crying out loud!  And now you want me to go at 'em with just 300?  What are you trying to do – do you want to embarrass us and yourself?  We'll never win this war!

Which, I imagine, was pretty much what the Midianites were thinking.  And can we blame them, really?  They had to figure this thing would be a cakewalk.  And yet we know that wasn't the case – that somehow, with just 300 soldiers, Gideon led his troops to victory.  Now that's an underdog story!  There is no reason – no logical reason – why those Israelites should've come out victorious on that day.  And that's why we're still talking about this thousands of years later.

But see, here's the thing: when we get beyond the “wow” factor of all of this, I can't help but wonder if there's more going on here than just a simple underdog story – wonderful a story as it is.  Because that's not what really inspires us as people of faith, is it?  That's not something that speaks to our soul.  I can't help but get this feeling when I look a little closer at these verses, particularly verse 2, where the Lord says to Gideon: the troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand.

Gideon, I imagine, probably took exception with that!  Too many troops – really, God??  But see, that the thing – this isn't about Gideon.  It's about God.  Which I imagine is why God then says this: Israel would only take the credit away from me; saying, My own hand has delivered me.

Ah, see?  This isn't about fashioning a great underdog story for the ages. This is about demonstrating a foundational truth of faith that goes beyond winning battles and fighting wars.  This is about acknowledging the source of all our hope, all our dreams, all our achievements.  And I'll give you a hint, folks – it's not us.  As people of faith, we have to come to terms with the fact that all we have comes from God. 

But we're funny about how we accept responsibility, aren't we?  It's kind of like a basketball or football coach, you know?  Their team plays their season and wins some games and loses others.  And if the team does poorly, most of the blame is laid at the coach's feet – right or wrong.  On the other hand, if the team does well, the coach gets much more credit than he or she deserves.

Seems to me that we do that same kind of thing in our lives – what do you think?  When things are going great, we tend to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.  We've blazed our own trail; we've pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But when life dishes out its worst, we're not as inclined to look inward.  Instead we look up, and we ask God the unanswerable question, “Why me??”

It's okay that we do that, you know.  It's human nature.  God knows it.  Always willing to take more credit than we deserve; always willing to push the blame off somewhere else.  It's been that way for thousands of years and I doubt it's going to change anytime soon.

But every now and then, you and I get a glimpse.  We get a glimpse of something beyond ourselves, beyond our limited perspective.  It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does we know how unique it is.  And we see that this story of Gideon in the 7th chapter of Judges is not simply about giving credit where credit is due.  We see that it's about believing in and following a God who makes a habit of doing the miraculous all the time around us – whether it's defeating an army of 120,000 with 300, or enabling a twelve-year old kid to slay a Philistine giant, or parting waters and freeing a nation, or even bring a crucified man back to life.

This is the kind of God we worship every Sunday; this is the God we pray to every night; this is the God we pledge our faithfulness to at the dawn of each new day.  And we do these things not because we are “wowed” by a miraculous God who seems to have a soft spot for the underdog.  We follow Jesus because each of us has discovered just how great he is and how great we can be through him.  We discover how our very lives are transformed by a God who can do so much more through us than we could ever do on our own.

Which makes me think of something I keep running into every now and then – a saying, just a little paragraph.  It goes something like this:

The next time you feel bad or useless,
and feel too far from God to do any good,
just remember this...

Noah was a drunk, Abraham was too old, Isaac was a daydreamer,
Jacob was a liar, Joseph was abused, Moses had a stuttering problem,
Gideon had only 300, Samson had a bad temper,
Rahab was a prostitute, Jeremiah and Timothy were too young,
David had an affair, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked,
(that's true, by the way – for three years!)
Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went bankrupt,
John the Baptist ate bugs, Peter denied Christ,
the disciples fell asleep while praying, Martha worried about everything,
Zacchaeus was too small, Paul was too religious,
Timothy had an ulcer ... AND Lazarus was dead!

(http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords=gideon&imageField2.x=0&imageField2.y=0, visited on 5.4.2009)

The quote finishes by saying: No more excuses now. Let God use you to God's full potential.  Indeed, God does just that.  And God will continue doing that – not because we want to, but because God wants to.  Whether it's an army of 300 defeating hundreds of thousands, or you and me simply trying to live faithful lives in the 21st century: God does so much more with less.  God does it with us.  It's comforting in a humbling sort of way, isn't it?  I think we can live with some humility – don't you?  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.