Preached on July 18 2010 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Amos 8:1-12
What happens when a nation of people who come from humble, hard-working roots become, over generations, richer and richer? That was Israel in the 7th century before Christ, when Amos was a prophet. Sometimes we get the wrong idea about prophets, and imagine that they are like fortune tellers, predicting the future by magical communication with God. What prophets are really best at is not seeing the future, but seeing the present more clearly than anyone else, and telling the truth about it, especially the truth that upsets people in power. So Amos tells the truth to Israel, to a people who have forgotten where they came from, and have been blinded by their own success. “Hear this, you that trample the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land.”
I think that if Amos were around today doing his prophet gig, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. There's no shortage of targets.
Hear this A.I.G., Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, and everyone who chased short-term profit over your responsibility to be honest and careful with our investments. You who brought ruin to people thrown out of homes, and let go from jobs, and cut off from the support that would give them just a bit of dignity.
In his day, Amos said: "[hear this, you who] say, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and when will the Sabbath [be over], so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’”
Today he might say: Hear this, you who say that whatever you can get away with in business is just fine. You who open factories where there are no regulations for a living wage or even healthy working conditions, you who bury workers in debt and so own their lives like slaves, you who want to rush through your weekly appearance at the big downtown church so you can get back to trading stocks and betting riches where people’s real lives are at stake. Hear this, you who think only of the profit margin when drilling a mile beneath the most beautiful waters of the world, and forget your moral obligation to take such risks only with the greatest caution possible. Did any of you think that you could go on like this, and somehow avoid devastation?
Yes, Amos would have it pretty easy today. Different century, different part of the world, vastly more complex economies and globalized corporate interests: but the same story. And so we hear in Amos a tragic story that is only too real for us today:
“Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? On that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.”
Sobering, isn’t it? And whether we think that devastation is God’s punishment for injustice (which I do not), or that devastation is the natural consequence of reckless injustice, we recognize the story that Amos lived in 2,700 years ago as our story also.
And then Amos says this interesting thing: “The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.”
A different kind of famine: not for bread or water, but a famine of the words of God. What kind of a famine is that?
The people are singing lamentations and mourning in sackcloths because all the prosperity that they’d enjoyed had been ruined, like a sandy beach covered in tar, and now they can’t hear the word of God. I wonder if it’s because things had been going too well for too long? I wonder if they had all benefited just enough when business was booming, when gas was cheap, when the DOW Jones was high, and everyone was buying so everyone was hiring.
Maybe they looked around and said “hey, we’re doing pretty well for ourselves. We’ve got our essential needs covered, we’ve got insurance and a safety net in case of emergency, and we’ve got enough left over to invent new needs and satisfy them.” And if you go along like that for long enough, it’s hard to see what you need to hear from God and so you forget how to listen. Oh, they still went to the temple and sang their psalms and prayed their prayers, but it was kind of just to keep up form. They had no needs, so they forgot how to listen to God’s word. And then when it all came crashing down, there was a famine for the word of God. I wonder if they had forgotten how to hear it.
You can’t ignore a garden, let the weeds grow and the soil dry up, and then one day when you really need a fresh tomato expect to go and find one waiting for you. You can’t stop practicing the piano, and then expect one day to be able to play Chopin. And you can’t ignore your friend’s phone calls, emails, invitations to dinner, and then suddenly reach some crisis in your life and call on that friend for support.
And so it is with our life with God. If things go too well for us for too long, sometimes we forget how to hear the word of God. And if you are not used to listening for the word of God, do you even notice that you’re missing it? I think about that when I read Amos, because the truth is that even though I would like to think about Amos ranting against BP and A.I.G. and whomever else I might blame, there is also a part of Amos that is speaking to me. Because when I am done with my anger at the trans-national corporations, and the government failures to regulate their greed and guard the common good, and when I am done with my frustration at the whole culture that values personal gain over responsibility to the human family and to the earth, then I have to recognize that I drive a car and I look for the cheapest gas without asking questions about why it’s so cheap. And I hope that the money in my pension fund grows big in the stock market without wondering what corners those companies are cutting to earn those profits. And I buy shoes and clothes with faraway labels without wondering if the workers are safe, or earn enough to live on.
It’s great when they speak against my enemies, but they also speak a difficult truth to me. The truth is that even if I didn’t set up the system, even if I never made a conscious choice to demand cheap gas despite the enormous risks, I am still a part of that system. I am a part of a lot of these horrors that we’ve brought down on ourselves. And even if I know that I cannot solve these large problems on my own, I cannot ignore the fact that I can make many smaller choices in a different way.
But my individual choices are not going to solve the big picture. So what’s the point, Amos? What am I supposed to do with this word about the great injustices of the world? I can’t solve them on my own. But then I realize, God doesn’t depend on us doing it on our own. God just wants us to know that God is against injustice. Famine or not, whether we hear God’s word or not, God’s word is resurrection; God’s word speaks new hope for the hopeless; God’s word creates new light when the night is most dark.
Do you remember a few minutes ago when I said that ignoring our relationship with God was like ignoring a friend’s calls and emails and invitations and then expecting that friend to be there when a crisis hits? Well, I bet that there were some of you who thought of a really good friend that you’ve had for a really long time, and you thought to yourself, that image doesn’t work. If life came crashing down, my friend would be there for me even if I’d been a bad friend for the past few weeks, months, or even years. Some of you did, didn’t you?
And isn’t God more faithful than our most faithful friend to whom we have shown no faith? Isn’t God the kind of creator who will restore life to a people even after they have been careless with life? Isn’t God the kind of parent who welcomes the prodigal sons and daughters home after they have destroyed their own inheritance and abandoned their homes?
Amos knew all this about God. Amos knew that God does not let devastation have the last word. Hold on, Amos says, because God isn’t done. We need to hear this from the end of the book of Amos: “On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old… The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when …the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God. (Amos 9:11-15, selected).
Those are the final words of the book of Amos. Those are the words given to people who had forgotten how to hear God’s word. God restores our lives even when we have made a mess of them. This is the word that became flesh in the man from Nazareth, who saw the same things that Amos had talked about. Jesus saw injustice and violence. And he saw the sun turned to darkness in the middle of the day, a day when the evil of the world seemed like it was too much, when it seemed like the word of God, the very living word of God, would be forever silenced.
When it seems to us like the word of God is silenced, when it seems like the sun is blackened and we will be forever in darkness, forever hungry for the goodness of God, then remember how bad it looked on that day. Remember that the word of God cannot be silenced in a tomb. The word of God cannot be silenced by greed or cruelty or injustice of any kind. The word of God lives even when the world does it’s best to bury it. And the word of God will restore this world.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Column - The World Cup Final
This past Sunday afternoon, while Betsy, Sam and I were on vacation with my extended family in northern Michigan, we went to a restaurant to watch the final of the World Cup. Allow me emphasize, because a part of me can’t believe that this happened: On a gorgeous afternoon, we left the cottages we were renting on a lakeshore, drove into town, and went inside to watch a soccer game between Spain and the Netherlands, two teams about which we knew next to nothing.
Why did I do it? It was partly because I had missed almost every other World Cup game during my summer class schedule, and partly because it seemed like a memorable afternoon for us to spend with my brothers, and partly because it was the last chance for a World Cup game until 2014, and maybe just a little bit because LeBron James had just announced his departure from Cleveland, and I needed to show that my interests are bigger that local sports.
Soccer is a cool sport. The action is non-stop: no commercials, no huddles, no signals between pitcher and catcher, and hardly any substitutions. These players run almost continuously for the entire ninety minutes of play (and, in this case, the thirty minutes of overtime). The scores may be low, but the action is great. You really just never know when that vital goal is going to be kicked (or headed) past the goalkeeper. Also, although there are star players, soccer seems to be more dependent on teamwork than many other team sports in which star players more easily dominate.
In other words, soccer is a community effort, sustained with steady energy over a long period of time, with only occasional tangible results.
Now, doesn’t that sound like our lives? A community effort, sustained by steady energy for a logn time with only occasional tangible results. Doesn’t that sound like raising children, or improving living conditions, or overcoming prejudice? It sounds to me like the Christian faith. We are a community, sustaining energy in our worship, our service, and our spiritual growth. It is a lifelong journey, and only occasionally do we reach those thin places where we catch a glimpse of God, where we enter into mystical communion with the divine. In the meantime, isn't it great to be on the field?
Why did I do it? It was partly because I had missed almost every other World Cup game during my summer class schedule, and partly because it seemed like a memorable afternoon for us to spend with my brothers, and partly because it was the last chance for a World Cup game until 2014, and maybe just a little bit because LeBron James had just announced his departure from Cleveland, and I needed to show that my interests are bigger that local sports.
Soccer is a cool sport. The action is non-stop: no commercials, no huddles, no signals between pitcher and catcher, and hardly any substitutions. These players run almost continuously for the entire ninety minutes of play (and, in this case, the thirty minutes of overtime). The scores may be low, but the action is great. You really just never know when that vital goal is going to be kicked (or headed) past the goalkeeper. Also, although there are star players, soccer seems to be more dependent on teamwork than many other team sports in which star players more easily dominate.
In other words, soccer is a community effort, sustained with steady energy over a long period of time, with only occasional tangible results.
Now, doesn’t that sound like our lives? A community effort, sustained by steady energy for a logn time with only occasional tangible results. Doesn’t that sound like raising children, or improving living conditions, or overcoming prejudice? It sounds to me like the Christian faith. We are a community, sustaining energy in our worship, our service, and our spiritual growth. It is a lifelong journey, and only occasionally do we reach those thin places where we catch a glimpse of God, where we enter into mystical communion with the divine. In the meantime, isn't it great to be on the field?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Sermon - The Call of Wisdom
Preached on Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-32
John 16:12-15
Dedicated to the new High School Graduates of this congregation; and always to the glory of God.
Do you remember Robert Fulghum, the Unitarian minister who wrote that book called Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten? Here is what he wrote in that essay about wisdom:
“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. …
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.” (All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, p 6-7)
There’s not much there to disagree with, is there? But this wisdom gets complicated. Think of Fulghum’s list in terms of big adult issues like foreign policy and war, the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, the derivatives, credit-default swaps, and bundled mortgages on Wall Street, the priorities of our nation’s budget, or the priorities of our own budgets. Wisdom seems easier to apply in kindergarten.
In a poetic section of the book of proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman who partnered with God to create all things in the world. God created wisdom first, and then she assisted God in the creation of everything else. Ever since, she has been standing at the busiest intersections of the world, calling out to all who live. This image suggests to me that our Jewish ancestors saw the world as a place governed and ordered by wisdom, and that this wisdom was a creation of God and a gift to the world. Now, this doesn’t mean that if you are wise then everything will always work out for you (see the book of Job to dispel that misguided idea). It just means that wisdom is the principle of creation, and it is available to everyone.
You don’t have to be smart to have wisdom. You don’t have to be educated, or know a lot, to be wise. This is a strange thing to say on a day when we are giving thanks for education as a gift from God. Today we celebrate our high school graduates, and we offer our support for higher education. But there is a difference between wisdom and knowledge. You can be wise without being smart or knowing a lot of things. And you be smart and educated without being wise. We value education because we want the tools of knowledge to be wielded by people who also have wisdom. Some of the best, most creative and innovative works have been done by smart, well educated people. But the most awful, destructive things have also been done by smart, well educated people. Education is not, in itself, a promise of wisdom.
The call of wisdom is a message to all who live. You don’t have to be approved to receive it; you don’t have to travel to a holy shrine, or discover ancient scriptures in a desert cave, or attend secret ceremonies to receive it. You don’t even need to belong to a certain religion to receive it.
This past Monday, the New York Times published a column written by the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who lives in exile in India. He wrote about how people of all faiths have discovered the same wisdom of living with compassion. When he was young, he used to think that Buddhism was the only religion with wisdom, but as an adult he met with people like the Catholic monk Thomas Merton, and talked about the centrality of compassion in both Christianity and Buddhism. He wrote about similar conversations with Jews and Hindus…and Muslims – Muslims who point out that in the Koran, the very name for God is the “Compassionate and Merciful.”
God’s wisdom calls out to all people. She speaks to us about what we choose to value, how we shape our relationships, and how we live in the world with compassion. Wisdom is available to everyone because it is woven right into the act of creation. And wisdom is simple enough to be distilled from what we learn in Kindergarten. So…what gives? If wisdom is so obvious, why do we so often live foolishly, rather than wisely? Why do we so often live with self-centeredness instead of compassion? Why do we live with bitterness rather than wonder? When you put the choices like that, they seem like no-brainers. No one wakes up in the morning and says “today I’d really like to be foolish, selfish, and bitter. That seems like a good way to spend the day.”
But let’s put the questions differently, and see how they sound. Why do we so often choose what is easy instead of what is difficult? Why do we so often try to fit in, instead of acting from our convictions? Why do we live in a way that makes us feel safe and secure, rather than living in a way that faces our fears and self-doubt with courage, even if we aren’t sure of the outcome?
Doesn’t it turn out that God’s wisdom takes us away from lives that are easy, comfortable, and secure? No wonder we have trouble with it.
Wisdom is not something we can learn one day in kindergarten and master over the weekend, certainly not on our own, anyway. We need help. In the gospel according to John, Jesus is speaking with his disciples on their last night together before his death, and he says to them “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Could this mean that wisdom (what Jesus called truth) is a process, something that we aren’t ready for all at once? Could it mean that we don’t have to achieve wisdom all on our own?
As Jesus said to the disciples, so God says to us: receive the Spirit of truth, that you may hear the ongoing call of wisdom. Remember that you do not have to do it on your own. Wisdom will be challenging. It will demand all of our attention and energy, and we will need the strength of God working within us. If we were athletes, our coach would tell us that when it comes to wisdom, leave it all on the field; give wisdom everything you’ve got.
The Reverend Frederick Buechner wrote that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Beyond Words, p 405) So, to our graduates, our scholars, pursue your interest, in science, the arts, business, religion, health, mechanics, or whatever it may be. Learn all about it, and then match your knowledge and your intelligence to a place where you find the world’s deep hunger.
Remember that our lives are like the seeds we grew in cups as children: our lives are mysterious gifts…and they don’t last forever. God has given us the wisdom we need, so “share everything. Don’t hit people. Clean up your own mess. And when you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together.”
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-32
John 16:12-15
Dedicated to the new High School Graduates of this congregation; and always to the glory of God.
Do you remember Robert Fulghum, the Unitarian minister who wrote that book called Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten? Here is what he wrote in that essay about wisdom:
“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. …
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.” (All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, p 6-7)
There’s not much there to disagree with, is there? But this wisdom gets complicated. Think of Fulghum’s list in terms of big adult issues like foreign policy and war, the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, the derivatives, credit-default swaps, and bundled mortgages on Wall Street, the priorities of our nation’s budget, or the priorities of our own budgets. Wisdom seems easier to apply in kindergarten.
In a poetic section of the book of proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman who partnered with God to create all things in the world. God created wisdom first, and then she assisted God in the creation of everything else. Ever since, she has been standing at the busiest intersections of the world, calling out to all who live. This image suggests to me that our Jewish ancestors saw the world as a place governed and ordered by wisdom, and that this wisdom was a creation of God and a gift to the world. Now, this doesn’t mean that if you are wise then everything will always work out for you (see the book of Job to dispel that misguided idea). It just means that wisdom is the principle of creation, and it is available to everyone.
You don’t have to be smart to have wisdom. You don’t have to be educated, or know a lot, to be wise. This is a strange thing to say on a day when we are giving thanks for education as a gift from God. Today we celebrate our high school graduates, and we offer our support for higher education. But there is a difference between wisdom and knowledge. You can be wise without being smart or knowing a lot of things. And you be smart and educated without being wise. We value education because we want the tools of knowledge to be wielded by people who also have wisdom. Some of the best, most creative and innovative works have been done by smart, well educated people. But the most awful, destructive things have also been done by smart, well educated people. Education is not, in itself, a promise of wisdom.
The call of wisdom is a message to all who live. You don’t have to be approved to receive it; you don’t have to travel to a holy shrine, or discover ancient scriptures in a desert cave, or attend secret ceremonies to receive it. You don’t even need to belong to a certain religion to receive it.
This past Monday, the New York Times published a column written by the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who lives in exile in India. He wrote about how people of all faiths have discovered the same wisdom of living with compassion. When he was young, he used to think that Buddhism was the only religion with wisdom, but as an adult he met with people like the Catholic monk Thomas Merton, and talked about the centrality of compassion in both Christianity and Buddhism. He wrote about similar conversations with Jews and Hindus…and Muslims – Muslims who point out that in the Koran, the very name for God is the “Compassionate and Merciful.”
God’s wisdom calls out to all people. She speaks to us about what we choose to value, how we shape our relationships, and how we live in the world with compassion. Wisdom is available to everyone because it is woven right into the act of creation. And wisdom is simple enough to be distilled from what we learn in Kindergarten. So…what gives? If wisdom is so obvious, why do we so often live foolishly, rather than wisely? Why do we so often live with self-centeredness instead of compassion? Why do we live with bitterness rather than wonder? When you put the choices like that, they seem like no-brainers. No one wakes up in the morning and says “today I’d really like to be foolish, selfish, and bitter. That seems like a good way to spend the day.”
But let’s put the questions differently, and see how they sound. Why do we so often choose what is easy instead of what is difficult? Why do we so often try to fit in, instead of acting from our convictions? Why do we live in a way that makes us feel safe and secure, rather than living in a way that faces our fears and self-doubt with courage, even if we aren’t sure of the outcome?
Doesn’t it turn out that God’s wisdom takes us away from lives that are easy, comfortable, and secure? No wonder we have trouble with it.
Wisdom is not something we can learn one day in kindergarten and master over the weekend, certainly not on our own, anyway. We need help. In the gospel according to John, Jesus is speaking with his disciples on their last night together before his death, and he says to them “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Could this mean that wisdom (what Jesus called truth) is a process, something that we aren’t ready for all at once? Could it mean that we don’t have to achieve wisdom all on our own?
As Jesus said to the disciples, so God says to us: receive the Spirit of truth, that you may hear the ongoing call of wisdom. Remember that you do not have to do it on your own. Wisdom will be challenging. It will demand all of our attention and energy, and we will need the strength of God working within us. If we were athletes, our coach would tell us that when it comes to wisdom, leave it all on the field; give wisdom everything you’ve got.
The Reverend Frederick Buechner wrote that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Beyond Words, p 405) So, to our graduates, our scholars, pursue your interest, in science, the arts, business, religion, health, mechanics, or whatever it may be. Learn all about it, and then match your knowledge and your intelligence to a place where you find the world’s deep hunger.
Remember that our lives are like the seeds we grew in cups as children: our lives are mysterious gifts…and they don’t last forever. God has given us the wisdom we need, so “share everything. Don’t hit people. Clean up your own mess. And when you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together.”
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Sermon - How To Find What Can't Be Found
Preached on May 23, 2010, Pentecost Sunday and day of Confirmation, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:14-17
Dedicated to the Confirmands, who confirm their faith and join the congregation today; and always to the glory of God.
How do you find out who you are? How do you find what brings you deep and meaningful happiness? How do you find what you need to complete your life? And what if these things cannot be found by looking for them?
One of our enduring hopes for our children is that they will be happy. “Do what makes you happy,” we say. But when people study this, it is actually very difficult for researchers to figure out what makes you happy. They are very good at figuring out how to get you to buy things, how to get your vote, and what makes you scared. But what makes you happy is a tough question. To illustrate the problem, here is a typical experiment. Randomly chosen people are asked to keep a beeper and a notepad. Whenever the beeper goes off, they quickly note what they are doing, and then rate their present level of happiness on a scale from 1 to 10. So, the beeper goes off, and you write down “family picnic: 8; at work: 4; frantically trying to get the kids out of bed and out the door on time for school: 1.” Then they would average the numbers, and see where people stand on a balance sheet of happy hours and unhappy hours. Think about how your days would average out: maybe a bunch of low or middle numbers for things you have to do, and then a couple high numbers for things you enjoy, at least on the weekend.
Here’s the problem, and I bet you’ve already spotted it: when we change the experiment and ask people to look back at the times in life that were full of those less happy moments related to having children at home, or stressful hours related work or a volunteer project, people will often say that those days, those months, those years were times of deep happiness because they were deeply meaningful. By contrast, people who had built up a lot of individual happy moments (eating out: 8; watching baseball: 9; napping: 10) tended to be so free of commitments and responsibility that they look back on those years as more or less forgettable and wasted. In the big picture, it turns out that when we pursue happiness directly, we end up with a lot of shallow moments. You will not find happiness by looking for it moment by moment. There is no manual on how to find what can’t be found.
Have you ever heard people say that they needed some time to find themselves? It usually has to do with not being sure about the right path in life, what career to pursue, where to live. Somehow, we get the idea that the point of life is to figure out who we are, but that makes life rather a lot about ourselves, and I remember something about those who try to save their own lives only end up losing them. It may be that another thing that can’t be found is myself.
No one can tell you how to find something that can’t be found, because there are some things that can only be received at the moment when we stop looking for ourselves. In the land of Oz, the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion, were all convinced that they were lacking something that would make them complete: a brain, a heart, and courage. And perhaps you are just now thinking “well, they found what they wanted! When they conquered the wicked witch and unmasked the wizard, he gave them a brain, a heart, and courage. Doesn’t that story make the point that we should look for what we want until we get it?” Or, maybe you have a more specific memory of the Wizard of Oz, and you know very well that the wizard did not give them those things. The wizard gave the scarecrow a diploma; he gave the tin man a testimonial to his compassion; and he gave the lion a medal for his courage. All the wizard did was to celebrate what they already had, because, along the way, they forgot what they were looking for and focused instead on helping Dorothy. And they did that by using their brain, heart, and courage. The wizard was only celebrating something that was already true.
So it is on Confirmation Sunday. In a few minutes we will lay hands on these young people who are confirming their faith, and we will welcome the older class as new members of the church. The laying on of hands recognizes the gift of the Holy Spirit, just like the church received on Pentecost, just like Jesus himself received when the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove when he was baptized. But I don’t think that we should be so foolish as to say that these people are receiving something they didn’t have before. We have seen the Spirit of God in them for a long time, since they took their first breath. We are celebrating something that is already true.
They were created in the image of God, as were all people created in God’s image. In the very first chapter of Genesis we read how the spirit of God hovered over the deep, and then spoke and created light, and stars, and land and trees, and fish and animals, and finally humankind in God’s own image. They already have the Spirit of God, as do we all, only we tend to forget.
We spend so much time searching for our identity because we have forgotten that we already have one. We are children of God, and therefore we are people whose best work is to love, to create, to forgive, to restore, to be compassionate. All those things are the business of God, and you inherit the family business when you’re in God’s family. But we forget. Made in the image of God, yes, but the image has become distorted.
Still, there are moments when we can see the image clearly. One of them is this morning, in worship. Worship is so much about remembering what we tend to forget. Remember your baptism; remember at the communion table, the presence of Christ in the bread and cup; be confirmed, and remember who you are.
People remember on a mission tour, when we get away from the habits of our lives to spend a week in service for others. Never are we more like God than when we go to the trouble to be of service to others in the human family, and to our fellow creatures on the earth. We have 14 high school students and 11 adults who are giving up a week this summer, taking time from their jobs, missing their families and friends, and they’re going to work all day. And isn’t it amazing that so often on these trips, people will discover deep happiness. It sneaks up on us when we finally stop looking for it. Happiness always comes indirectly, through the backdoor when we are focused on relationships and giving with compassion. And we also remember ourselves. We don’t find ourselves, we remember ourselves as children of God, inheritors of the family business.
Those of you in the past weeks who have walked in the middle of a “relay for life” in any community, when people of all kinds come together to ease the ravages of cancer. Think of that night, and tell me if you can’t see the image of God in the crowd of human faces.
Paul wrote that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”
For today, I offer my own updated translation of that passage:
The Spirit of God tells us that we are children of God. It is the opposite of the spirits that pull us into selfishness, consumerism, addiction, or fear. The Spirit of God adopts us back into the family of God when we have forgotten. We can sense the Spirit working in us whenever we stop focusing on finding what we want, and focus instead on God. That is when we remember that we are children of God, and if we are all God’s children, then we will receive the same as Christ: true joy, deep happiness, and our inheritance of God’s business and all its fortunes. Jesus showed us how to be God’s children by loving others no matter the cost, rather than trying to find for ourselves what can’t be found.
Call off the search.
Step off the merry-go-round that spins round and round the center of yourself, never seeing anything new.
You don’t need to find yourself.
You don’t need to figure out what will make you happy.
You don’t need to find anything to make you complete.
Could it be that you already have more than you know?
Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:14-17
Dedicated to the Confirmands, who confirm their faith and join the congregation today; and always to the glory of God.
How do you find out who you are? How do you find what brings you deep and meaningful happiness? How do you find what you need to complete your life? And what if these things cannot be found by looking for them?
One of our enduring hopes for our children is that they will be happy. “Do what makes you happy,” we say. But when people study this, it is actually very difficult for researchers to figure out what makes you happy. They are very good at figuring out how to get you to buy things, how to get your vote, and what makes you scared. But what makes you happy is a tough question. To illustrate the problem, here is a typical experiment. Randomly chosen people are asked to keep a beeper and a notepad. Whenever the beeper goes off, they quickly note what they are doing, and then rate their present level of happiness on a scale from 1 to 10. So, the beeper goes off, and you write down “family picnic: 8; at work: 4; frantically trying to get the kids out of bed and out the door on time for school: 1.” Then they would average the numbers, and see where people stand on a balance sheet of happy hours and unhappy hours. Think about how your days would average out: maybe a bunch of low or middle numbers for things you have to do, and then a couple high numbers for things you enjoy, at least on the weekend.
Here’s the problem, and I bet you’ve already spotted it: when we change the experiment and ask people to look back at the times in life that were full of those less happy moments related to having children at home, or stressful hours related work or a volunteer project, people will often say that those days, those months, those years were times of deep happiness because they were deeply meaningful. By contrast, people who had built up a lot of individual happy moments (eating out: 8; watching baseball: 9; napping: 10) tended to be so free of commitments and responsibility that they look back on those years as more or less forgettable and wasted. In the big picture, it turns out that when we pursue happiness directly, we end up with a lot of shallow moments. You will not find happiness by looking for it moment by moment. There is no manual on how to find what can’t be found.
Have you ever heard people say that they needed some time to find themselves? It usually has to do with not being sure about the right path in life, what career to pursue, where to live. Somehow, we get the idea that the point of life is to figure out who we are, but that makes life rather a lot about ourselves, and I remember something about those who try to save their own lives only end up losing them. It may be that another thing that can’t be found is myself.
No one can tell you how to find something that can’t be found, because there are some things that can only be received at the moment when we stop looking for ourselves. In the land of Oz, the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion, were all convinced that they were lacking something that would make them complete: a brain, a heart, and courage. And perhaps you are just now thinking “well, they found what they wanted! When they conquered the wicked witch and unmasked the wizard, he gave them a brain, a heart, and courage. Doesn’t that story make the point that we should look for what we want until we get it?” Or, maybe you have a more specific memory of the Wizard of Oz, and you know very well that the wizard did not give them those things. The wizard gave the scarecrow a diploma; he gave the tin man a testimonial to his compassion; and he gave the lion a medal for his courage. All the wizard did was to celebrate what they already had, because, along the way, they forgot what they were looking for and focused instead on helping Dorothy. And they did that by using their brain, heart, and courage. The wizard was only celebrating something that was already true.
So it is on Confirmation Sunday. In a few minutes we will lay hands on these young people who are confirming their faith, and we will welcome the older class as new members of the church. The laying on of hands recognizes the gift of the Holy Spirit, just like the church received on Pentecost, just like Jesus himself received when the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove when he was baptized. But I don’t think that we should be so foolish as to say that these people are receiving something they didn’t have before. We have seen the Spirit of God in them for a long time, since they took their first breath. We are celebrating something that is already true.
They were created in the image of God, as were all people created in God’s image. In the very first chapter of Genesis we read how the spirit of God hovered over the deep, and then spoke and created light, and stars, and land and trees, and fish and animals, and finally humankind in God’s own image. They already have the Spirit of God, as do we all, only we tend to forget.
We spend so much time searching for our identity because we have forgotten that we already have one. We are children of God, and therefore we are people whose best work is to love, to create, to forgive, to restore, to be compassionate. All those things are the business of God, and you inherit the family business when you’re in God’s family. But we forget. Made in the image of God, yes, but the image has become distorted.
Still, there are moments when we can see the image clearly. One of them is this morning, in worship. Worship is so much about remembering what we tend to forget. Remember your baptism; remember at the communion table, the presence of Christ in the bread and cup; be confirmed, and remember who you are.
People remember on a mission tour, when we get away from the habits of our lives to spend a week in service for others. Never are we more like God than when we go to the trouble to be of service to others in the human family, and to our fellow creatures on the earth. We have 14 high school students and 11 adults who are giving up a week this summer, taking time from their jobs, missing their families and friends, and they’re going to work all day. And isn’t it amazing that so often on these trips, people will discover deep happiness. It sneaks up on us when we finally stop looking for it. Happiness always comes indirectly, through the backdoor when we are focused on relationships and giving with compassion. And we also remember ourselves. We don’t find ourselves, we remember ourselves as children of God, inheritors of the family business.
Those of you in the past weeks who have walked in the middle of a “relay for life” in any community, when people of all kinds come together to ease the ravages of cancer. Think of that night, and tell me if you can’t see the image of God in the crowd of human faces.
Paul wrote that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”
For today, I offer my own updated translation of that passage:
The Spirit of God tells us that we are children of God. It is the opposite of the spirits that pull us into selfishness, consumerism, addiction, or fear. The Spirit of God adopts us back into the family of God when we have forgotten. We can sense the Spirit working in us whenever we stop focusing on finding what we want, and focus instead on God. That is when we remember that we are children of God, and if we are all God’s children, then we will receive the same as Christ: true joy, deep happiness, and our inheritance of God’s business and all its fortunes. Jesus showed us how to be God’s children by loving others no matter the cost, rather than trying to find for ourselves what can’t be found.
Call off the search.
Step off the merry-go-round that spins round and round the center of yourself, never seeing anything new.
You don’t need to find yourself.
You don’t need to figure out what will make you happy.
You don’t need to find anything to make you complete.
Could it be that you already have more than you know?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)