Source texts are at the end of the message.

The past week has certainly been one that challenges our sense of well being.  We had a heat wave that was brutal to those who could not escape it and economically costly to those who could.  We live in a State that has decided to eliminate all benefits to unemployed or under employed persons after 48 months and has made this retroactive.  The expectation is this will get them back to work in a State with the worst unemployment rate in the nation.  We have watched as those elected to govern our country have refused to reason together and create a solution to our national debt crisis.  Their stubbornness has the potential to send not only the United States but the whole world into recession or even depression.  People who depend on government payments to feed and house themselves and their dependents face going without.  And once again we see large scale violence perpetrated by someone who felt God was calling on him to avenge God for the conduct of the politicians of his country.  It is enough to cause us to despair or worse yet to respond in violent ways ourselves to correct what we think is wrong in the world.

Part of what confirms for me the Bible is a living source for the Word of God is, when I read it in difficult times like these, I discover God speaking to me in relevant ways.  There are three source texts for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary: the story of Jacob and Laban and the marriage of Jacob to Leah and Rachel, the letter of Paul to the church at Rome where he assures them that nothing can separate them from the love of God, and the Gospel reading where Jesus uses parables to describe God’s dominion and the value of it.  All three of these readings gave me understanding and comfort in relation to what is going on in the world today.

Jacob is a schemer and trickster and it seems this may be a genetic condition as his uncle Laban is also a schemer.  Leah and Rachel are powerless pawns in relation to these two powerful men. In the story, Jacob is working for his uncle in exchange for Rachel to be his wife.  Laban tricks Jacob and marries him to Leah instead and gets seven more years of labor from Jacob to earn the right to marry Rachel.  I see in this story the struggle between the elected leadership of our country, each side trying to best the other with little regard for the consequences for the people who depend on them for their safety. The story never mentions God and we are left to just assume God is working with these two egomaniacs to bring about an outcome where the powerless are not only protected but also achieve a measure of happiness.  Jacob who did not see value in Leah comes to love her and they produce together many children and a prosperous household.  Rachel who has had a life of privilege because of her beauty has learned that life is not always easy and she must trust in more than her privilege to find her happiness.  She also learns to live in a shared situation.  I find hope in the story that God will work with those who are using their power to control and exploit others and will seek the safety and happiness of those who appear powerless in the situation.

Paul’s letter to the church at Rome speaks directly to our situation and how we should respond.  The Roman church was experiencing persecution and there was tension within between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians.  Paul’s message was to bring all of this into perspective.  They are not to trouble themselves about being strong enough to do what needed to be done because their strength came from being children of God.  They needn’t even worry about knowing what to pray for because God’s Spirit is in them and knows what to pray for.  They are not to worry about what the situation of the world will do because the world does not have the ability to separate them from the love of God and living in God’s love is what is most important.  What a relief that is to me,and I hope to you, to know it is not up to me to conquer all the trouble in the world, it is not even my responsibility to know what to pray for in these difficult times.  I can trust in the assurance that no matter what happens, and what horrible things may happen, I am safe knowing that I am loved by God.  We can face religious extremists and political demigods when we know they have no control of the essential core of who I am and whose I am.  They cannot force me to be terrified nor can they force me to be mean spirited, these things will always remain within my control and, if I surrender them to God’s Spirit, I will remain within God’s will.

The Gospel parables may be the most reassuring of all.  Jesus tells us that God’s dominion is like a mustard seed and like a small amount of yeast in a vast amount of flour.  God’s dominion is made up of small things that God expands into large things.  A small loving act can grow into a safe place of shelter for the vulnerable.  I small act of reason can raise a whole lot of thoughtlessness into creating a wise solution.  We are not to worry about doing the great things to solve the whole problem, we are to worry about doing what we can do and doing it to the very best of our ability and letting God grow it into so much more.  Jesus also tells us that the dominion of God is like a treasure in a field or a precious pearl, or a boatload of fish.  We are to look for what is of value and cling to that and let the rest go.  We dig through the dirt to find the treasure,we open a lot of clams to find the pearl, and we wade through vast amount of fish to find the ones worth keeping. Once we find what is of value in our life, that is what we concentrate on, that is where we put our treasure and our effort and we let the rest of it go.

What are we to make of the world today?  We are to make it a more just, safer, and a peaceful place for all of God’s creation.  Amen.

First reading:  Genesis 29:15-28

¹⁵ Laban said to him, “Just because you are a relativeof mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages shouldbe.” ¹⁶ Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah,and the name of the younger was Rachel. ¹⁷ Leah had weak eyes, butRachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. ¹⁸ Jacob was in lovewith Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your youngerdaughter Rachel.” ¹⁹ Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to youthan to some other man. Stay here with me.” ²⁰ So Jacob served sevenyears to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of hislove for her. ²¹ Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My timeis completed, and I want to make love to her.” ²² So Laban broughttogether all the people of the place and gave a feast. ²³ But whenevening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and Jacobmade love to her. ²⁴ And Laban gave his servant Zilpah to hisdaughter as her attendant. ²⁵ When morning came, there was Leah! SoJacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you forRachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?” ²⁶ Laban replied, “Itis not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before theolder one. ²⁷ Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will giveyou the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.” ²⁸And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him hisdaughter Rachel to be his wife.

Second reading:  Romans 8:26-39

²⁶ Inthe same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we oughtto pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷And the one who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because theSpirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. ²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love God,who have been called according to God’s purpose. ²⁹ For those Godforeknew God also predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus, that hemight be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And thoseGod predestined, were also called; those called, were also justified; those justified,God also glorified.

³¹ What,then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can beagainst us? ³² The One who did not spare Jesus the Son, but gave himup for us all—how will God not also, along with the Christ, graciously give usall things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God haschosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one whocondemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised tolife—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship orpersecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it iswritten:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerorsthrough the One who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neitherdeath nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future,nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else inall creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is inChrist Jesus our Savior.

Gospel: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

³¹ Hetold them another parable: “The dominion of heaven is like a mustard seed,which a farmer took and planted in the field. ³² Though it is thesmallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plantsand becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” ³³He told them still another parable: “The dominion of heaven is like yeast thata baker took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked allthrough the dough.” ⁴⁴ “The dominion of heaven is like treasurehidden in a field. When a person found it, the person hid it again, and then injoy went and sold all he or she had and bought that field. ⁴⁵“Again, the dominion of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. ⁴⁶When one of great value is found, the merchant went away and sold everything andbought it. ⁴⁷ “Once again, the dominion of heaven is like a net thatwas let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When itwas full, those  fishing pulled it up onthe shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threwthe bad away. ⁴⁹ This is how it will be at the end of the age. Theangels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous ⁵⁰ andthrow them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashingof teeth.

⁵¹ “Haveyou understood all these things?” Jesus asked.

“Yes,” they replied.

⁵² He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the lawwho has become a disciple in the dominion of heaven is like the owner of ahouse who brings out of the storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

As a child of the ‘70s, the expression “getting stoned” has a very different meaning then the story of Stephan, the first recorded martyr for professed belief in Jesus the Christ.  The word “stone” has very different meanings even in the two passages we heard earlier.  In the story from Acts, the stones are weapons used to kill while the stone in the passage in First Peter is about being a cornerstone like Jesus.  These stones are meant to build up.  There isn’t any real difference in the stones.  The difference is in how we use them.  The difference is in our intention, in our spirit.

We don’t actually carry around stones to hurl at people or to lay the foundation for a building.  What we do carry around with us is our words and actions.  We hurl words at people that are meant to wound or destroy or we undergird others with words meant to bring them comfort or encouragement.  We act toward others in ways that will hurt them or make them feel unworthy or we can behave in ways that support another.  We are either stones of destruction or stones of foundation based upon our intent.  Sometimes we may believe we are doing the right thing when we hurt or judge another person based on what we believe.  We attack others out of what we believe to be righteous anger.  We should consider that the people who were throwing stones at Stephan were doing so because they believed he had blasphemed.  Saul watched the stoning of Stephen and believed it was the right thing.  He went on to persecute many more Christians because he believed they were outside of God’s will.  It was only when he had a Spirit filled encounter with the Christ that he understood the error of his words and actions.  Saul became Paul and he became one of the first champions of the inclusive nature of God’s love.  He argued for the inclusion of the gentiles without requiring them to become Jews first.  When we use our religion to condemn and to reject, we are acting like those who stoned Stephan and the Spirit is not in our actions.

Most of us probably believe we don’t hurl harmful words and actions at others because we don’t speak harshly or we don’t say condemning things. But, what about when you share someone else’s story without their permission?  What about when we share something that we don’t know for ourselves to be true?  Our words can be just as hurtful and destructive when we are sharing information that is not ours to tell or that is not something we know to be true.  Too often in church communities we feel it is appropriate to talk about each other as an expression of our concern.  We share information as a prayer concern and therefore it isn’t gossip.  These words can cause harm to those whose story is being shared without their knowledge or permission.  We tear people down when we offer judging or condemning words and call it constructive criticism.  We do harm to others when we tell others the motivation and intention of someone when we have no way of knowing their motivation or intention.  It is too easy for us to stone others when we say and do things thoughtlessly. 

We as Christians are called to be cornerstones, building blocks just as Jesus is the cornerstone.  Jesus said to us he would send the Spirit to us to guide us so we could not only do what he did but do even greater things.  As Spirit filled stones we are to build up, we are to make the world better, stronger, safer for everyone.  Good building blocks are solid, well grounded, and designed to hold weight on them.  As building stones we speak only from what we know to be true and we speak directly to those we seek to support.  Words and actions that build up are words that speak about what we feel, believe, and desire.  As building blocks we will use mostly “I” statements and avoid “you” statements.  We will choose words and actions that reflect what we believe to be God’s will for ourselves and will avoid expressions about what is God’s will for someone else.  If we follow the example set for us by Jesus, we will seek more to connect others with God than to make them do our will.  Jesus taught most effectively by the example of his life rather than creating a lot of rules and requirements for others.  The most stinging criticism Jesus had was for those who abused their religious authority or their religious beliefs to create hardship for others.  The challenge for us is to do the same.

I suggest the best way for us to be building blocks and not weapons is to ask ourselves what we believe the impact of our words and actions will be on others.  We can ask ourselves, “How will these words or actions make the world better or encourage another?”  Before we speak, we should consider whether what we are about to say is our story to tell and do we know it to be true.  Before we express a criticism of another, we can think about a way to express ourselves in a positive way.  It is always more constructive to offer a suggestion of a better way to do something than to criticize what has been done or suggested.  When we consider sharing information as a prayer request, we may want to remember that God knows the details even better than we do.  When we ask for details about someone else’s health or domestic situation, we may want to remember that we don’t have to have the details to be supportive and hold them up in prayer.  When we want to know what is happening in someone else’s life, we may want to consider the best person to ask is that person directly and then keep what we are told to ourselves.  You see, stones aren’t really designed to carry tales, they are much better are being supports.

We will be more content and the world will be a better place if we choose to allow the Spirit to use us as building blocks than if we allow ourselves to used as weapons of destruction.  Amen

We are a resurrection people!  We believe in new life coming from death.  We believe that God is able to make all things new.  We believe this but we don’t always live it. Sometimes we are more like the people in the dessert complaining that God has abandoned them there to die. Today we celebrate an empty tomb and a risen Christ and still we are sometimes more like the disciples living in hiding and believing that everything we had believed in died.  We think in terms of endings being forever and not able to comprehend the glorious potential in starting over.  Our faith is all about cycles, about everything having a season, and in trusting that God is in control of the planting, the growing, the harvesting, and the planting again.  We all know that for something new to grow a seed has to be planted, seed decays and then sprouts.  The plant grows and produced new seeds which are harvested and planted and the cycle begins again.

Sometimes we are tempted to think that life is about reaching a destination rather than about cycling through experiences.  As children, we talk of becoming an adult as if it was an event rather than a life-long maturing process.  We speak of getting an education as if we ever stop learning.  We say we have found our life mate while most of us know a life mate is someone you rediscover every day and, if you don’t, you discover you and your life mate have grown apart.  We think we want everything to settle down and just stay the same.    But the truth is nothing stays the same, even rocks wear away in the wind or water.  We cannot avoid change so we should learn to live into the change expecting great things to come from it. 

When I speak to churches and people about accepting change, they will often counter with God never changes.  God doesn’t change, however, we have yet to fully comprehend God so our understanding of God will and must change as God is revealed to us in new ways.  And, I don’t want to upset you too much, but God is not what we call the church.  There is the universal Church of all believers but what we call church falls far short of the true Church.  We can get so attached to what we think makes church church that we can’t let the cycle of life happen in our churches.  Can you imagine what would have happened if they people in the dessert had decided they weren’t moving, they were going to sit right where they were and insist God make the dessert their promised land?  I am pretty sure the cloud and pillar of fire would have kept moving and those who didn’t follow would have died in a dessert and wondered why God didn’t fulfill God’s promise.

Each time life forces us to handle a change, it is an opportunity for us to grow in some way.  Not all changes are fun, not all changes make our lives better, but all changes teach us something about ourselves and, if we are willing to listen to the Spirit, will teach us something about God.  One of the most beautiful creatures God made is the butterfly.  Last week we had butterflies everywhere.  We had butterflies on our altar cloth and some of us had butterflies in our hair.  But you know for there to be a butterfly, the caterpillar has to be willing to change, to go through what looks much like death so it can develop into a butterfly.  Sometimes we have to be willing to let go of what we think we are supposed to be so we can become what God intends us to be.  Sometimes we have to b e willing to start over.

Have you ever been bone weary?  Have you ever been chilled to the bone?  Do you say you can feel something in your bones?  Our bones are the center of our earthly self.  Our bones are the last part of this human body to decay and disappear when we die.  Our bones define what we look like.  Some of us put more trappings on top of our bones than others but still it is our bones that define our basic shape.  We depend on our bones for almost everything we do.  Our bones are to this earthly body what our soul is to our eternal self.  When we break a bone, we are in great pain and often doing things becomes much more difficult.  When our bones are weary, chilled, aching, it is difficult for us to want to do anything.

One of the most difficult aspects of doing interim ministry is that I come to congregations that are bone weary.  They have been through a difficult time.  Many times they have a sense of dread about the future; they may even have lost all hope.  Sometimes I feel like Ezekiel, called into the desert to preach to the dry bones.  I trust in the promise of God that my words will carry the breath of God to bring new life to the hopeless dry bones.  God says even when we feel dead and without hope there is hope in God.  God will open up the graves and bring us out healthy.  You can’t miss the connection between Ezekiel in the desert bringing new life to dry bones and Jesus at the tomb brining new life to Lazarus.  God has the power to breathe new life into that which appears dead to us.  I do not claim to understand why Jesus let Lazarus die when he had the power to heal him even from a distance.  He healed the centurion’s companion from a distance.  Jesus said it was to show God’s glory by glorifying Jesus.  We have to trust God even in the worst of circumstances so our faith brings glory to God.  If our faith does not sustain us in the most difficult circumstances then it is no faith at all.

There is much to be considered in the words of Jesus when the tomb of Lazarus is opened.  He says, “Unwrap him and let him loose.”  Other versions have Jesus saying, “Unbind him”.  The Ezekiel story has God releasing the dead Israelites from their graves.  Receiving God’s breath of life for our weary, dead bones requires our being liberated from what binds us to the past.  We cannot experience new life if we are unwilling to have the graves of the past opened up or to have our grave clothes removed.  When we cling to the trappings of the past we are clinging to our grave clothes.  We don’t want to be released from them, we want everyone else to put on grave clothes and join us.  When refuse to have the issues of the past dug up and exposed to the air, we are refusing to be healed of the past and let it go.  For some of us, keeping things buried and unresolved is more important than breathing new life into us.  Those old issues have become our identity and we cannot imagine existing without them and we miss the new life offered to us.

It is clear we are not able to breathe new life into ourselves.  That would be like giving yourself CPR, it just can’t be done.  We may be tempted to take things in our own hands or to despair when God does not appear when we believe it is time for something to happen.  We hear the frustration on the part of Mary and Martha that Jesus didn’t come in time to save Lazarus. There is a gospel hymn that says “Isn’t it great even when He’s four days late, He’s right on time!”  I will excuse the male language for God because the concept it right on target.  There is no late in God’s timing.  Mary and Martha wanted Jesus there four days earlier but Jesus came when it was right in God’s timing.  I honestly struggle with why God would have chosen to have Lazarus die and Mary and Martha to grieve so but my faith says God’s timing is right and it is not for me to understand or approve.  Jesus we are told wept at the grave of Lazarus, Jesus must also have struggled with why this had to happen this way.  Did he weep for Lazarus?  That seems unlikely because Jesus knew Lazarus would live again.  Did he weep for the pain and suffering the death of Lazarus has caused his good friends?  This makes sense to me.  Or possibly, Jesus wept because he knew he would be calling his friend Lazarus back from eternal peace to once again struggle with the demands of living.  Lazarus was being called back to life to be part of watching his friend, Jesus, be arrested, tortured, and crucified.  I have reached the point in my life when I realize that death is not the most frightening circumstance we face.  We will watch those we love get sick, suffer, and leave us.  We will have times when we rejoice in the death of someone close to us because they are released from the torment of this life.  We will watch as nations make war on each other.  We will watch as those with power make war on the powerless.  We will witness natural disasters with great loss of life and suffering.  Clearly there are worse things for us to endure than the passing from this life to the life eternal.

God says I can bring you out of your graves of despair, loneliness, fear, and weariness and bring you new life.  I can give you back your hope and your passion and lead you to the Promised Land.  God can breathe new life into the weary bones of each one of us if only we are willing to come out of our graves and cut off our grave clothes and live as God shows us to live.  Amen.

I think everything you need to know as a congregation going through a change in spiritual leadership and seeking to learn healthier ways of being church can be found in the scripture readings for this Sunday.  Perhaps, I will use these scriptures for my introduction weekend for new congregations.  The story from First Samuel talks about how you look for a new leader using God’s eyes.  The letter to the church at Ephesus tells you about focusing on the important stuff and let go of the busy work.  And the story of Jesus healing the person born blind tells us about how we can miss the good news when we get so caught up in trying to determine if things were done the way they have always been done and whether the person that did them had the authority to do so.  That is pretty much it in a nutshell.  But not to worry, I am going to crack this nut open and spend a little more time thinking about what this means for you and me today.

I am going to start with the whole busy work thing.  There is going to be a temptation on your part to just be busy about the tasks of getting your profile completed and getting your search committee together.  It is possible that in the business, you will lose sight of why you are doing these things.  Unless you are willing to examine yourselves in the light of Christ, your efforts to draw a picture of who you are will be incomplete and inaccurate.  You don’t go into a dark room to paint someone’s portrait, unless you think you know what they look like and don’t want any evidence to the contrary.  You cannot paint an accurate picture of this congregation, where it is now and where it is going unless you are willing to turn the light on bright, and have open and honest exploration of who you are and where you want to go.  To do otherwise is just busy work.

You, like Samuel, are going to be charged by God to find a new leader and anoint them to lead this congregation.  The first thing God charged Samuel to do was to let go of the past leader, or leaders.  It will do you no good to seek a spiritual leader for this congregation if you have not resolved your issues with the past leaders and that includes me.  If you go into pastoral search with the intention of judging the candidates based on how much they are like or different from past leaders, you will be looking as humans look and not as God looks.  You may have had a real sense of connection with a previous pastor and you want to hire a pastor just like that one.  You won’t be successful and you will be disappointed.  You may have had a bad experience with a previous pastor and you are going to make certain you don’t make that mistake again.  The person you interview may seem like the other pastor but they are not them and if you pass them over because they look or act like the other, you may miss the one God has chosen for you.  You will be tempted to find the person you think looks like a pastor to you, God says, you look on the outside but I look on the inside.  You need to be open to God telling you what is on the inside.  Like Samuel, you may be tempted to anoint the first one who comes to you and says, “here am I.”  Do not anoint anyone until you here God saying, “This is the one!”

Probably the most important lesson is how not to be church from the story of the blind person healed by Jesus.  Who can read this without a sensing the humor intended by the story.  This person has been blind from birth and the disciples see him as a theological discussion point.  You will be tempted to see the needs of the community as an opportunity to discuss God’s intention by allowing this to happen.  We sometimes want to debate whether poverty is the fault of the person who is poor, the fault of society, or ordained by God.  We debate whether illness is the result of life choices, the result of a failed medical system, or God’s punishment.  We discuss crime as the fault of parenting, a character flaw, oppressive society, or a lack of religious connection by the perpetrator.   Jesus dismisses this debate and says that human need is an opportunity for the people of faith to respond with God’s love without looking for fault or blame.  And then, when the person goes to the religious authorities, they don’t care about the miracle that has happened.  They want proof this is the person that was blind, and they want to know who did this, and what authority they had to be doing what they did.  We, as church, will miss the miracle if we focus on determining the facts, analyzing the methods, and debating whether what was done was done in the proper way and by the proper persons.  We can be too concerned about preserving our way of doing things, and protecting our authority than we are with being about what God has called us to do.  We need to have structure but the structure is meant to support the ministry, not the ministry to support the structure.  When you question what has happened it should not be to deny what has happened, or to question the motives of those involved.  The questions should be directed at how does this serve the mission and vision of this church.  And, if it doesn’t, the second question should be, should this be part of our mission and vision. 

I have a negative reaction to the word “test”.  I don’t like tests of any kind.  I love going to class and learning knew information but I hate being tested on it.  I don’t like medical tests because I know they are going to reveal I haven’t been doing what I am supposed to do.  I don’t like eye tests, I don’t like driving tests, I don’t like tests of my friendship, my character, or my faith.  I don’t like tests because taking a test always implies the possibility of failure. 

Knowing that testing implies the possibility of failure, does it not seem odd that the ancient Hebrews are described in the Exodus story as having put God to the test?  What does that mean?  Is it possible for God to fail the test?  What would it mean if God did fail the test?  Would God not be God, would the people be free to get a new god, or would they want their sacrifices back?  When I read the story centuries later it is hard to understand how these people could doubt God’s presence with them.  They had been brought through the Dead Sea by God rolling back the water to let them pass through.  They had been provided a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide them, bad water has been made clean, and they have been fed with manna and quail.  Really, what more could the people want to know that God is with them and God has a plan?

It is so reassuring to know we have grown in our faith over the passing centuries and we don’t put God to the test.  We are confident that God is God and that God has a plan for us so there is no need to put God to the test.  The problem is the test the people had for God had nothing to do with God being God or even God having a plan.  The people were testing God as to whether God would give them what they wanted today.  It didn’t really matter what God had done in the past, they were thirsty today and wanted to know what God was going to do about it.  When I read the story from this perspective, maybe we haven’t progress very much in the centuries since the time our ancestors of faith wandered the desert.  God has provided for us abundantly.  We have been given people who have led us as a people.  We have had Rev. Elder Troy Perry who created a church where we are free to come and worship God just as we were created by God.  We have been given people with the vision and the commitment to found a church here in Dayton and sacrifice so we can have this building for our worship and our ministries.  We have had spiritual teachers that have fed us on God’s word and have provided us with clean water to refresh our parched souls.  God has blessed this community in so many ways.  As Paul said to the church at Rome, even when you didn’t deserve it God has sent God’s love to you in abundance.  And still, when there is a challenge, we start questioning where is God?  Is God going to take care of us?  Is God going to do what we want done here?

We have these notions of what God should do and how God should do it to prove to us that God is God.  I am pretty sure God is not concerned about passing our test.  In fact, I think God most often responds by testing us.  God tests our ability to live in God’s time, to trust in God even when we don’t see God doing anything.  Too often, when we are asked to wait and trust we fall back on that favorite verse of ours, “God helps those who help themselves.”  The problem is we cannot find anywhere in our sacred texts where God said that.  In fact, what our sacred texts tell us is when we decide to take matters in our own hands, God says, “Okay, have it your way.”  God permits our impatience and our doing it ourselves, but God rarely rewards it.

I have been unable to post my blogs to Facebook recently.  I have been told there is a solution.  This blog is an attempt to test out this solution.  You may now return to your regular Facebook cruising.

Being a people of faith should influence the way we understand the world around us.  As a people of faith, we express a belief in what we cannot see or prove.  At the very core of our faith is our belief in God. We cannot see God, we cannot prove God, we accept the existence of God on faith.  Because we believe in God based on faith, we understand in very many different ways.  God is revealed to us in a variety of ways which creates a different picture of God for each one of us.  The fact that we understand and picture God in so many different ways does not diminish God or make God any less real.  It confirms the vastness of our God, God cannot be fully understood or accurately pictured.

I do not believe God was any different in ancient times than God is today.  Our sacred stories speak of having conversations with God and having encounters with God that sound like God was much more directly involved in the lives of the faithful.  I do not believe God came up to Abram and spoke to him about this plan to travel to Canaan and establish a new nation.  I don’t believe God gave Abram a map that provided him with information on places to stay and eat on his trip to the Promised Land.  I do believe Abram felt a pull to take his family and his possession and travel to a new place.  I believe Abram was convinced this call was of God and that God would bless the move. Abram and Sarai are credited with having acted in faith not for having obeyed a god they saw or following the directions that God handed them.  We are the children of this faith, we are to act when we feel God moving us even though we don’t see God and we don’t have a completed plan signed by God in our hands.

Our faith instructs us to live life in a whole new way.  We live trusting in an unseen God, a God we cannot comprehend, and we cannot accurately describe.  The ancients found this very difficult to do so they began to write rules for how we are to behave.  They then had interpretations of the rules, and they created priests to apply the rules and exact punishment for those who violated the rules.  The people liked this better because they could understand the rules, even if they couldn’t keep them, and they could see the priests and hear them speaking to them directly.  It was a lot easier to have the rules and priests than it was to live by faith.

God saw that the people were losing their faith and were being oppressed by the rules and by the priests.  The priests, being human, worked the rules and their position to exploit the people.  Instead of bringing the people into a relationship with God, their creator, the priests were using the rules to drive the people away from God.  God knew they only way to solve this abuse of the people was to send the message directly to the people in a way they could understand.  God sent Jesus.

Jesus came to remind us we are a faith people, trusting in God even though we cannot comprehend God or see God.  We are to trust that God desires to be in relationship with us, to guide us, heal us, and empower us.  The people of Jesus’ time had trouble understanding what Jesus was telling them.  Some wanted him to be God because they could understand him and they could see him.  Jesus was clear, he was not God, he had come to point the people to God.  Jesus did not desire that the people worship him, or obey him.  He desired that they come to know God as he knew God, as a loving parent, ever present to care for us.  Jesus said to think of God as your Daddy, and I am sure Jesus would have been just as comfortable referring to God as Mommy.   To think of the Divine Creator of all that is as Mommy or Daddy is not to diminish God but rather to allow us to approach God without fear, as a child approaches a loving parent.  We do not need to have someone interpret God for us, we do not need to have rules to please God, we need to have faith.  Jesus came to restore our faith in God rather than placing our faith in rules or priests.

The sad truth is the followers of Jesus soon developed a religion very much like the religion Jesus came to liberate us from.  They created rules, they gave power to priests, and they convinced the people that they needed listen to them to please God.  They made religion burdensome, and they made some people feel unworthy of God’s love.  Due to our lack of faith in the unseen God, we permit others to tell us what God wants and how we are to please God.  God wants us to have the faith necessary to trust God to speak to us directly, to show us the way we should go, and to live our own lives of faith unburdened by what others think we should believe, do, be, or any other limitation on our relationship with God.

Flip Wilson, the comic, in his character of Geraldine, made the phrase, “The devil made me do it” a part of popular culture in the ‘70s.  However, Flip Wilson cannot be credited with making it popular to find someone else to blame for our misdeeds or our lack of doing what we should.  Finding someone to blame is as old as the Genesis story of the first humans, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a serpent.  There are some details that need to be filled in for us to understand this story and what it might mean for us today.  The first is to know that the first human creature was not called man by God, the creature was called Adam, meaning of or from the earth, earth creature if you will.  The suggestion is that God spoke all of creation into being except humans.  Humans were formed by God from the dirt and that form will return to the dirt, ashes to ashes and dirt to dirt.  What God breathed into the earth creature is life, or some would say soul.  God told the earth creature, Adam, do not eat of the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil or you will surely die.  It is possible to read this as you will lose your soul.  Then God creates for the earth creature, a partner, another earth creature but these earth creatures will be gendered.  God creates them, male and female.  The original earth creature, Adam, calls the partner, Eve, and names her woman.  Clearly, this is written by men who have decided they were first and that women came from them.  Others would say the original was a prototype and the second was the improved final product, it all depends upon perspective.  What is clear Eve was not present for the conversation regarding the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.

Along comes the serpent, believed to be evil, to convince Eve to eat from the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.  Some, mostly men, have used this to say that woman are the weaker vessel and easily swayed by evil temptation.  Others might point out the woman may have been vulnerable to the serpent’s argument because the man failed to communicate to her what God had said and the importance of the message.  In any case, the woman eats from the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil and convinces Adam to do so also.  The serpent said God had lied to the humans because God did not want the humans to be as powerful as God.  Many seem to have believed the serpent over God’s explanation.  What does that say about our willingness to be persuaded by questionable sources?  God said the people would surely die.  Adam and Eve did not die. So, did God lie?  Or do we go back to the understanding that God was talking about the death of the soul of humans.  What died was the human naiveté.  The humans began to judge the rightness and wrongness of the way things were.  They perceived they were naked and they were ashamed, and we have the foundation of the blame and shame way of relating to each other and ourselves.  God forbid them to eat from the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil because God knew, once humans gained a knowledge of good and evil, we would use it to shame ourselves and blame others.  No longer would we live in complete acceptance of the world as God created it or as we had been created.  No longer would humans rely on God to put the world in order and live in it as God had planned it.  Humans would toil the ground to produce their food and clothing because they would no longer trust in God’s ability to provide and they would not trust each other so they would always desire to have more and to keep others from having enough.  Living would revolve around making and enforcing rules based on what humans believe to be right or wrong.  I believe even the consequence of pain in child birth may come from the human sense of the rightness of doing what happens to create life and the fear women have learned about the process of bringing new life into being.  I cannot support that with science but I do believe God intended us to create new life and to live in intimacy with each other without all the angst and fear we have loaded onto our intimate lives.

What happened in the Garden of Eden is contrasted with what happened in the desert when the devil returns to test Jesus.  The devil tempts Jesus with getting rid of his hunger, and to prove God’s protection, and to have great power.  These arguments aren’t much different from the ones that the serpent used with the first humans so I would think we can assume these are the same arguments we will hear when evil tempts us to do something we know to be outside of God’s will.  Jesus doesn’t give into the temptation to fill his hunger, prove God’s protection, or to have great power.  Jesus replies this is not how God intends to meet his hunger, protect him, or give him great power.  All of the things the devil has offered to Jesus will come to him, but not through is demanding them in his way and at his time.  Each one of us will be tempted to satisfy our hunger, obtain protection, and have power.  The question is will we wait on God to provide or will we grab for it in our own way and then say, “The devil made me do it.”  Amen.

After I chose my sermon title for today, I wondered how many of you would have any memory of the 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It is a Steven Spielberg movie starring Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary encounters an alien and is drawn to an isolated spot where he finds an alien spaceship.  His encounter radically changes his life.  He becomes obsessed with his experience and the people around him struggle to make sense of what has happened to him.  I read the scripture stories for today and I thought they described a similar experience for the people of God who encountered God up close and personal, Moses on the mountain of Sinai and Jesus on an unidentified high mountain. 

Moses has an encounter with God, the burning bush, and his life is radically changed.  He is drawn to follow the force of this encounter.  He leads a nation into an isolated area and there he goes to the mountain top for a close and extended encounter with God.  We are told that this encounter changed Moses’ appearance.  The people struggled to understand what had happened to Moses and to make sense of it.  Mostly the people are frightened by what has happened to Moses.  The people would much prefer that Moses keep the details of his experience with God to himself, much the way people want Roy Neary to the details of his experience with the aliens to himself. 

Jesus announces that some of those around him would not die before seeing him coming in his dominion and, a week later, he takes three disciples with him to a mountain top.  The disciples are frightened to see Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah and he glows like a bright light.  Peter figures this is a good time and place to build places to house Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.  A voice speaks from the clouds confirming that Jesus is God’s child and God is well pleased with him.  The disciples fall on their faces in fear.

How do we respond to someone who has had a close encounter with God?  Are we frightened when someone’s encounter with God changes them?  Wound we prefer it if they kept it to themselves?  Or do we busily start working on something to contain them?  I think most people are frightened by radical changes and they are even more frightened when those changes are attributed to some supernatural source.  Most people like things a little more predictable.  How many of us come to worship expecting a radical encounter with God?  How many of us would even desire such a thing?  This is what Annie Dillard said about what we should expect when we come to worship, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”  Worship, or any encounter with God has the potential to change us radically.

The people who have a glimpse of the potential God encounters have are most likely the ones who are most concerned with controlling the encounter to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.  Someone said that many of us use religion like a vaccination; it exposes us to enough true faith to keep us from getting the real thing.  We don’t want God changing us radically, we don’t want to glow, and we don’t want to call attention to ourselves.  We just want to have God’s blessing, we want God to know our name without putting any demands on our lives.  We don’t want others to think we are fanatical or crazy.  The problem is you cannot have a close encounter of the God kind without it changing you dramatically.  When we have been in the presence of God, we glow with God’s light.  When we have heard God speak to us, we are drawn to follow.  Even if God asks us to do things the world will think is crazy.  Close encounters of the God kind are not for the faint of heart.  Most of those who have had a close encounter with God have been challenged to do more than they ever expected, most have not been understood by the people around them, and many have died without knowing why God asked them to do what they did.  My faith convinces me all who have had a close encounter of the God kind have died having lived a fuller, richer life than those who chose to play it safe and keep God contained in a shelter so no damage could be done.  Amen.