There is a rhythm to life, a flow of change that islife.  When this flow of change stops,there is death.  One of the reasons theDead Sea is called dead is because there is no outlet for the water so itbecomes stagnant and the salt and other chemicals become concentrated andcannot sustain life.  Similarly, asthmais a threat because it interrupts the natural flow of air in and out of thelungs and the more serious issue with the constriction of air flow is theinability to exhale the oxygen depleted air from the lungs.  We must resist our inclination to hold on, tohorde things.  When we hold on to things,there is no room for life giving change to happen.  Change is not a bad thing, change is the essenceof what it means to be alive.

It is clear this receiving and letting go is a basic elementof God’s plan for the universe and so I must believe God also intends this tobe a critical part of our spiritual life. God does not intend for us to grab onto spiritual experiences, concepts,or people and hold onto them as if they were the unchanging God.  Our spiritual life will become stagnant anddie if we refuse to hear and see new things from God and like the air thatbecomes toxic when it becomes trapped in our lungs, our spirits will lose theirfreshness their life giving qualities if we do not release them and allow themto return to us full of new nurture for the Source.

Change is frightening for us because it brings about theunknown.  It has been said, change cannothappen until our fear of what we are now is greater than our fear of theunknown.  Many members of thiscongregation have not engaged in the interim process tasks.  I believe that is because you are content withthe way the church is and see no need for the church to change, in fact some ofyou may most desire the church change not at all.  It is good to be content with the church butit is futile to believe the church will not change.  The church must change and grow if it is tolive.  This church, any church mustalways be seeking to discover what ministry God has called you to do.  The ministries we did in the past were thefresh spirit blowing through us and now we must draw in new spirit.  It may be a fresh way of doing our currentministries and it may be new ministries all together but in either case, itwill involve change. 

We must also be willing to draw in new leadership, not onlya new pastor but also new members, new ideas, new spirit so we can continue togrow, and to be alive.  I love the storyof the selection of David by Samuel. Everyone was looking for someone who looked like a monarch, or at leastlooked like the monarchs they had known. David was outside the image of a monarch, the youngest, the runt, andsome have described him as not being very masculine, too interested in playingthe lyre and composing songs.  But Godsaid you are looking on the outside and God is looking on the inside.  It is unfortunate that even those of us whohave been looked over by others because we did not fit their idea of how men orwomen should be can still overlook others that we don’t think look like membersof our congregation, or look like leaders, or look like our pastor.  We must be open to looking at the people whocome to us, the people who offer leadership, and the one who comes to be yourpastor as God looks at them and not as we want them to be.

God calls each of us into God’s service with all of ouruniqueness and diversity, with all of our gifts and talents, and with all ofour faults and foibles.  It seems to mewe too often respond to God’s call like the person in the old hymn, I come to the garden.  I would stay in the garden with God but Godbids me go with a voice of woe.  We seeGod’s call as an invitation to rest in God, stay with God and avoid thetroubles and the struggles of the world. But God through the example of Jesus tells us we are called into a lifeof service, a life of giving ourselves in service to others in healing, teaching,and loving others.  God calls us and theexample of Jesus sends us out.  I believeit is equally true that Jesus calls us and introduces us to God who sends usout with God’s Spirit.  It is a flow andrhythm of being called and sent.

It is only in our accepting this rhythm that we remain aliveand usable to God.  If we say no morechange, we are useless to God and to the world and we die.  There will be pain and there will be strugglein embracing the change and we must support each other as we experience thechange.  It is in coming together andsupporting each other that we find the value in being a community offaith.  Just trust if God has called usand Jesus has sent us there is nothing we cannot do.  Amen.

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more parties withthe intention of coming to an agreement, usually each party is seeking to gainsomething and willing to offer something to gain their desired outcome.  To negotiate with God is to imply we want somethingfrom God and we have something God needs or desires.  We are indebted to the stories in the HebrewTestament for our concept of God as a man we can negotiate with.  Both in the generic sense of man meaninghumankind and the literal sense of God being male, and old, white bearded manat that.  A read a commentary that put itthis way, the creation story tells us God created humankind in God’s own image;male and female God created them and humankind has been returning the favorever since by creating God in human form. God is not human, God does not relate to us as one person toanother.  God does not need anything wehave.  God does desire to have arelationship with us but God does not negotiate with us in order to gain that relationship.

The Hebrew Testament is full of stories of peoplenegotiating with God.  Abraham negotiateswith God to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Hannah negotiated with Godfor a child, Moses negotiated with God to spare the Israelites, and so on.  Then to story of Job was revealed byGod.  I firmly believe this story wasgiven to us because God wanted us to understand our relationship with God.  Some suggest that God’s response to Job is ridiculingand demeaning.  I don’t see it thatway.  I see God’s response to Job asbeing honest.  Job and the rest of us donot understand the world as God who created it does.  We do not even understand ourselves as Godwho created us does.  We do not have thefoundation necessary to criticize God for the way the world is.  We do not have the authority to take God totask for failing to be fair or just. When we critique God’s performance, we are speaking out of our arroganceand our refusal to see ourselves as the created.  We do not negotiate with God because we havenothing to offer God to convince God to do things our way rather than the wayGod intends.

How often I have heard people say they asked God to dosomething with the promise that they would change their behavior in some way ifGod granted their request.  I will quitsmoking if You heal someone, I will give more to the church if You get me abetter job or let me win the lottery, I will attend church regularly if You getme out of a tight spot.  How does Godgain by these promises?  Does yourquitting smoking improve God’s situation? Does God need your money to be able to survive?  Does your coming to church out of obligationbring God any satisfaction?  If you areconvicted that God wants you to stop some behavior, it is because God wants youto be healthy and happy and that behavior is preventing you from beingthat.  Giving to your church is not apayment to God in exchange for promised goods and services.  Giving to your church is how you express yourthanks to God for providing you with a place to learn about God, a place whereyou can come in your grief and joy and share them with God and others, and aplace where you can worship God.  Givingto the church is how we assure that others will have a place to learn ofGod.  Coming to church should not be anobligation but a privilege.  God loveswhen we come together to share our appreciation of all God has done for us andto hear what God would have us to do for others.  Church attendance out of obligation rarelysatisfies us and generally annoys God. We should do what we believe God asks of us not to gain favor but thatour life might be all that God intends it to be.

Does this mean we are never to bring our issues, ourconcerns to God?  Absolutely not!  Jesus taught us to pray, to pray to pray forwhat we need, for forgiveness, and for guidance.  Some would suggest the prayer includes a formof barter, forgive us and we will forgive others.  I would suggest the connection between beingforgiven and forgiving is that we cannot realize God’s forgiveness until wepractice forgiveness.  We will find itdifficult to believe we are forgiven if we cannot find it within ourselves toforgive.  Jesus prayed another prayer ofpetition.  In the Garden of Gethsemane,Jesus prayed that he not have to drink from the cup God had given to him.  Jesus did not barter, he did not declare howmuch more good he could do if he didn’t have to die.  He didn’t offer to do something else.  He simply asked if the cup could pass fromhim but that he wanted to do what was God’s will.  This is how we are to come to God with ourgrievances and our concerns.  We ask Godif we or another might be healed and, if not, that God might grant usunderstanding that what happens is in God’s plan.  We petition God that we might have asustainable wage and the wisdom to know what is a sustainable wage.  We petition God to remove bullying, war,famine, natural disasters and we ask God to show us the ways in which we are torespond in loving healing ways to these events.

We are entering a season of change.  You are seeking your settled pastor and I amseeking my new ministry.  Let our prayersbe for God’s wisdom and direction and not attempts to negotiate with God to dowhat we think is best.  We will all behappier if we recognize God is in charge and we are here to serve, not tolead.  Amen.

The book of Job is challenging to most people and even moreso to those who take the Bible literally. The concept of God playing a game with Satin and people are the gamepieces doesn’t work well with my understanding of God, or with the image of Godpresented by Jesus.  It would be easy tosimply dismiss the book but I prefer to open myself up to hear the story withnew ears.  The story of Job is a majorshift in how people understood God and their relationship with God.  The sacred texts prior to Job speak of God asjudgmental.  God intervened in the livesof people by rewarding those who were obedient and visiting calamity upon thosewho were disobedient.  The primary roleof the holy men and women was to interpret for the people what pleased God andwhat made God angry.  Clearly, this gavethese holy persons a great deal of power.

In the story of Job, God reveals that not everything thathappens to us is either a reward or a punishment.  In a world where there are violent storms andupheavals of the earth, people are going to get hurt.  In a world where imperfect persons controlthe wealth and means of production, people are going to go without and beexploited.  In a world where there areviruses and bacteria, people are going to get sick.  In a world with nations and rulers, there aregoing to be wars.  This is not God’s planfor us, it is just the way the world is because we are imperfect people.  Very often when I spend time with people whohave experienced a tragedy, there comes a point when they ask, “Why did thishappen to me?”  The question serves twopurposes.  It explains what we did so wecan change our behavior so it never happens again and we want to know there wasa purpose to what happened so as to make the unpleasantness worthwhile.  It has also been my experience this questionis not raised as often when something good has happened in one’s life.  This is the foundation of Job’s retort to hiswife.

My sense of what we are to learn from Job is that whathappens to us is not dependent upon the level of favor we have found withGod.  Being healthy and wealthy does notequate with being a righteous person in God’s eyes.  Being poor and ill does not mean one hasangered God.  Does this mean there isnothing to be learned from the difficult times of our life?  No, there is much to be learned from thedifficult times in our lives, but what we can learn is more about us than it isabout God.  God has created us with freewill, with wisdom, and with compassion and put us in dominion over God’screation.  When we experience sufferingin our own life or in the lives of others, God expects us to respond with ourwisdom and with our compassion.  We arecharged by God to work in ways to reduce the suffering caused by poverty and byillness.  My experience has been thosewho have not suffered are the least prepared to respond in compassionate waysto the suffering of others.  We don’thave to be poor or ill to be compassionate but knowing the weight of sufferingprovides us with the empathy to respond to others who struggle under itsweight.  One of the most effective waysto move someone from feeling overwhelmed by their circumstances to feelinghopeful they can manage is to remind them of other times when they have feltoverwhelmed and have come through.

I do not believe God sends us difficulties as punishment butI do believe God uses our struggles to demonstrate the depth of our faith andthe strength we find when we trust that faith. I so often hear people saying things like God won’t send you more thanyou can handle or God brought you to it and God will bring you through it.  As well-meaning as these expressions may be,they do not acknowledge the truth that sometimes we are given more than we canhandle and sometimes we arrive at places God didn’t bring us to.  What I believe to be true is God will neverabandon us, God is with us even when life is more than we can manage, and Godis with us when we find us in a place where we are not equipped to gothrough.  Our faith is not that life willnot be too hard or our path too difficult. Our faith is that in those times we can trust that God is with us,guiding us, holding us, and loving us even when we find it difficult to loveourselves.

Life is full of lessons, some of them more difficult thanothers.  The best we can do with thoselessons is to seek to learn how to be more loving, more healing, and to be morewise in the ways we live and the way we treat others.  In other words to be more Christ like.  Amen.