God's Answer to the World

Sermon

Jan. 28, 2018

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany – B

Based on Deuteronomy 18:15-22

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            “Who will speak to God for us when you are gone?” That was the question on the minds of the people as Moses, the one who had led them out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, was getting to where he wouldn’t be around much longer. Mortality was catching up with him. And they were faced with the reality that soon Moses would no longer be with them. Who will fill his shoes?

            The people believed they needed someone like Moses who could represent them before God. They were there when God came down upon the holy mountain, with fire and smoke. It frightened the people. They were too afraid to come before God. Someone had to go for them. And that someone was Moses. He had the courage and the capacity to stand in the presence of God and to speak with God. He was able to receive from God the Ten Commandments. He was able to receive from God the instructions God had for the chosen people, so that they would know how to serve and worship the God that had chosen them. Moses was able to be the mediator, when God was angry with the people and the people were complaining about God. But what will happen when Moses dies?

            God answers their concern by saying through Moses that God will select among the people one who will be a prophet like Moses. This prophet will not be an outsider, nor an angel. It will be someone they know. And this person will be able to receive instruction from God and pass that word along to the people. God will make sure that someone fills Moses’ shoes.

            God was not only going to take care of picking the next prophet, God also set up a system of accountability. God said that if the people do not listen and follow the words  spoken by the prophet, that God would hold them accountable. If the prophet speaks words that God did not give, the prophet would die. Yikes! Of course, if the prophet speaks God’s word and the people listen and obey, all is well. Any other course of action, God will hold accountable those who mess up. The people won’t take it on themselves to police the prophet, nor the prophet carry out the punishment on the people. God’s the one who will maintain accountability. And that’s a good thing, because God knows what God wants to say and God sees all that is happening in the world. God is just. If anyone should be in charge of maintaining a system of accountability, it should be God.

            The people wanted to know, who will take Moses’ place? God answered their question by declaring that God will select the replacement and God will make sure everyone is held accountable. The people have nothing to fear. All will be well.

            That was then. But what about now? Is there any way to take this passage from Deuteronomy and apply it to our time and our situation? I believe so. And if this application I have come up with has any level of truth to it, then the answer that God gives to the question of who will speak for God is an answer that impacts all of us.

            First of all, who speaks for God today? Who has God chosen to take the place of Moses in our day? I doubt if you have ever wondered that. Remember that the role of Moses was to be a mediator between God and the people. Moses and God could have a conversation with each other. God couldn’t talk directly to the people because they were too afraid to be in the presence of God. That’s because in Moses’ day God’s presence was fire and smoke.

            But we don’t experience the presence of God like that these days. In our time, God’s presence is more like light. It’s everywhere. It envelopes us like a blanket. God is present in our hearts, in our souls. We can’t help but be in God’s presence. God is always with us, whether we sense God’s presence or not.

            And God speaks to us if we are still and listen for that voice. We can have a conversation with God through the practice of prayer. We can hear God call us by our names and invite us to go and tell others what God has spoken into our hearts.

            So who speaks for God today? You could say that’s the preacher’s job. I have received a call to preach, a call that has been validated by the church, who has given me the authority to stand before you on Sunday morning to share a word from God. But I’m no Moses! And although I am careful about what I say and do my best to speak with clarity what I have been able to interpret from Scripture, I would never presume to say to anyone, “Thus says the Lord.” Besides, there are a lot of preachers in the world, many of whom are much better at the craft than I am. There isn’t just one person God has appointed to replace Moses in our day. If there were, who would it be?

            This got me to thinking. I wonder if God no longer calls someone to fill Moses’ shoes any more. And that’s because God did select someone long ago to fulfill the role of Moses and this person is still fulfilling that role. What I mean is; could Jesus be the last person to fill the shoes of Moses?

            The writer of the gospel of Matthew seemed to think so. It’s in Matthew where we read of little baby Jesus having to flee to Egypt with Mary and Joseph, and then later to come out of Egypt back to Israel, just as Moses went from Egypt to the promised land. Moses went up to the mountain to receive God’s teaching. Just so, Jesus went up to the mountain to give his teaching to the people in his sermon on the mount.

            The writer of the gospel of John sure saw Jesus as filling the role Moses filled of speaking the word of God. All through the gospel Jesus says that he only speaks what the Father has told him to speak. Jesus said that no person comes to the Father except through him. Jesus is the mediator, just as Moses was a mediator. Of course, Jesus took it to the next level, being fully human and fully divine. We believe that Jesus is constantly interceding for us. We believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection cleanses us from our sin and gives us the promise of resurrection. It is because of what Jesus has done that we are saved.

            So, since Jesus is alive, does he not continue the function of Moses? There is no need for another Moses because that’s part of who Jesus is, like a new Moses. Jesus is the one who leads us out of the slavery of sin and into freedom, the one who leads us from death to life, the one who delivers us from hell and ushers us into the Promised Land, the new heavens and the new earth. And he is the one who reveals to us, both in word and by the example of his life, what are God’s commandments for us. Jesus does not just speak the word of God, Jesus is the incarnate word of God. Moses was a type of who Jesus is. We no longer need a Moses figure. We have Jesus.

            So, who speaks for God? Jesus. But how does Jesus speak? You could say that Jesus speaks through the Scriptures. But what about you and me? Could Jesus speak through us? Back in the days of Moses, God selected people to speak the word of God. And God would pour the Holy Spirit out upon that person so that the prophet could speak. But we read in the Acts that after Jesus ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured out on lots of people. In his first sermon, Peter, who had just been filled with the Holy Spirit, quoted from the prophet Joel who said, “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” Has this prophecy not been fulfilled? And if it has, what does this mean for us?

            As I see it, the Spirit of God has been poured out on you, and you, and you, upon all of us gathered here, and even on me. That means that all of us have the potential to prophesy. And by prophesy I mean speak on God’s behalf, to be the voice of Jesus in the world. After all, are we not the body of Christ? We are. All of us. All of us.

            We live in a world that is full of falsehood. Fake news is just one symptom of the lies we are told and the lies we tell ourselves. People are crying out for truth. People are asking the question, “What is true? Is there any such thing as truth?” We can talk about having facts. Facts are facts. We hear the phrase, “You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.” But if you don’t have all the facts you don’t have all the truth. It’s just partial knowledge. We may never have all the facts in any given situation. It does seem sometimes that truth has the consistency of smoke. People want to know, what is the truth of the matter?

            Maybe you and I are God’s answer to that question. I’m not saying you and I know the truth about if there was Russian collusion in the Trump campaign. We don’t know all the facts about everything that’s going on in the world. But we do know something of what is true. We do know Jesus. We know what Jesus taught and how Jesus lived. We know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Our life can speak what is true. If people are looking for truth, can we show them? Can we answer their question of what God may have to say about the times in which we live?

Go and Speak

Sermon

Jan. 21, 2018

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Based on Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            Jonah was not the greatest prophet of all time. Today we are going to spend some time looking at this great story that we find in the scriptures. It is an amazing story, full of lively characters, of incredible and memorable scenes, and some deep questions about the character of God, the one who is both a judge and full of mercy, the one who can be persuaded to change course, a God who responds to us. So much could be said about this story. But I want us to focus on Jonah, his attitude, the way he went about responding to God’s call on his life to go and proclaim God’s message. I want us to focus on this because this series of sermons I am preaching are building on each other. A few weeks ago we reflected on how God is with us always, surrounding us as light, whether it be the bright light of the sun or the softer light of the moon, the light of God’s presence is with us. Last week we looked at the call of Samuel, and how Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” We thought about how God speaks to us, but we have to listen for what God may be speaking into our heart. God is with us. God speaks to us. Today, we will think about how God calls us to go and speak God’s message. What is that message? What attitude should we have when we go forth and speak? Jonah gives us an example of how not to go about this. Sometimes we learn from bad examples, and Jonah is one of those bad examples.

            When God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry out against it because their wickedness had gotten God’s attention, Jonah’s response was to go the opposite direction of Nineveh. Now Jonah is not the first person to resist God’s call. Moses is a great example of those who tried to avoid it. He came up with all kinds of excuses. But God patiently negotiated with Moses to get him to finally get to the point that he was willing to do what God wanted him to do. Isaiah also pleaded with God that he wasn’t able to go and proclaim the message, famously saying, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Then the angel took a live coal from the fire on the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips with the burning hot coal, saying “now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then, God calls again for volunteers to go and speak God’s message, asking the question, “Who will go for us?” And Isaiah answered with the words, “Here I am, send me!” In both of these examples, Moses and Isaiah, they had their argument with God directly and worked it out.

            But Jonah was different in his resistance to God’s call. He did not argue with God. Instead, he just got up and went in the opposite direction, hiring a boat to take him across the sea. But God wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. God sends up a strong storm that threatens to sink the boat. The crew and passengers are panicking, doing everything they can to save their lives. But what is Jonah doing? He’s deep in the hold sleeping. He apparently could care less what happens to him or everyone else on board. His detachment and hard heartedness is astonishing. So our initial impression of Jonah is that he is not interested in engaging with God or anyone else. He’s going to do what he wants to do, no matter whose lives are put in jeopardy, including his own. Not good.

            The crew finally get out of Jonah that he is the cause of the problem and that they should just throw him overboard. There’s no point in arguing with God. There’s no reason to figure out some way to make sure everyone makes it out alive. Not only does Jonah not really care about their lives, he doesn’t care about his own. I just get the impression that Jonah just doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to be obedient to God’s call on his life. And if that means getting tossed into the sea and drown, so be it. Wow.

            How little does Jonah know that in spite of his bad attitude, God still hasn’t given up on him. God is persistent. God won’t let up when God has in mind for someone to do something. This is where we get the unbelievable situation where a big fish swallows up Jonah preventing him from drowning. Jonah spends three days and nights locked up inside the fish’s stomach. During that time inside the fish, Jonah prays an amazing prayer. There’s more to Jonah than his stubborn disobedience and lack of caring for anyone. He also has the capacity to come to his senses, to realize that God is his deliverer, that God really cares for him. And God responds to Jonah’s change of heart by whispering into the fish’s ear to cough him up.

            Now that God has literally saved his life, Jonah decides to go to Nineveh now that God has asked him a second time to go do it. Jonah realizes that would be pretty sad if, right after God saved his life, that he should keep on resisting God’s call to go and speak. So, Jonah goes to Nineveh and proclaims the weakest prophetic message in the Bible. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That is only five words in Hebrew. No, “Thus says the Lord.” No, “Unless you turn from your wicked ways, God’s wrath will destroy you.” He just tells them that in forty days they will be overthrown. Saying it would be in forty days is interesting. It’s possible that Jonah meant a literal forty days. But the phrase “forty days” was a common rhetorical device that means “a long unspecified period of time.” In other words, Jonah could have said, “It will be awhile but one of these days you are going to get wiped out.” Not exactly a sense of urgency in that message. It’s almost as if Jonah is sort of hoping that the Ninevites won’t act on the warning, thinking to themselves, “so I guess we have some time to keep doing what we do. We don’t have to change right now. We’ll just put that off.” It’s like he doesn’t want them to repent, that he would rather the Ninevites get wiped out. Whether that was in Jonah’s mind or not, he definitely gave a dud of a message of judgment.

            Nevettheless, the people immediately responded to Jonah’s message with an unbelievable amount of urgency and singleness of purpose. The people responded so quickly that it got the king’s attention. And he responds by calling for all the people and animals to not eat or drink and put on sackcloth and repent of their wicked ways right now. I mean, it’s just unbelievable the immediate and dramatic response. In spite of the lamest prophetic message ever given in scripture, the response is the most sudden and total. In spite of himself, Jonah’s message was a spectacular success. And God, who saw this unbelievable response, was persuaded not to wipe out Nineveh. God changed God’s mind. It would not have been just for God to wipe out a whole group of people, 120,000 people plus much livestock, if they all repented. And let me add, they did this without any assurance that God would be persuaded. The king said, “We are going to do this. Who knows? Maybe God will change God’s mind and relent.” They didn’t know how it would turn out. But they did what they believed was the right thing to do and then hoped that God would do the right thing. And, of course, God relented because God is more interested in being loved and worshipped than wiping people out. God is love. God is merciful. That’s just who God is. God’s patience is long and it takes very little for God to forgive. And that is good news for sure.

            But instead of being impressed by the success of his message, and relief that all those people didn’t get wiped out, Jonah is angry! What he wanted to happen didn’t happen. He wanted the no good wicked Ninevites to be wiped out. He did everything he could to manipulate the situation to get what he wanted. But guess what? The Ninevites were more than ready to respond with repentance. And God was more than ready to forgive. Even with the weakest prophetic message ever, things worked out great for everyone. And Jonah was not happy about it. He just could not shake his bad attitude.

            Why did Jonah have such a bad attitude? We are left to guess. Maybe he just didn’t like the Ninevites. Maybe he just felt that God should just wipe out everyone else so that Israel could be at the top of the heap. Maybe he was just self-centered. He only cared about what made him comfortable and when faced with times of discomfort he is quick to shut down and give up. He didn’t want the hassle of going to Nineveh and proclaiming the message so he bailed. When everyone’s life was threatened on the ship he said, “Just let me die.” When the plant that God had given him to provide him shelter was then suddenly taken away and he started getting hot he just called out to God to kill him now. It’s so strange. If Jonah isn’t comfortable but is put out in any way, he just wants to blow everything up. He was happy if he got saved from destruction but he could care less about anyone else and if things don’t go the way he wants he throws a tantrum and wishes he could die. Pretty sad. You may even wonder why God would have anything to do with Jonah. That says something about God. He knew Jonah’s heart. He knew Jonah wasn’t perfect, that Jonah had an attitude. But in spite of all his flaws and lack of maturity, God called him anyway. God told him to go and proclaim the message anyway. And if God persistently calls on Jonah, could he not be calling on us to go and proclaim the message? I think so. But what is the message? What is God calling us to go and proclaim?

            I don’t believe the message we are sent to deliver is what Jonah gave. We are not called to give out a lame message that one of these days in the long off future God’s going to wipe everyone out. That’s a bad message. It’s woefully inadequate. The basic prophetic message is better than what Jonah said. The basic message goes something like this: “God sees your wicked ways, how you abuse and take advantage of the poor, how you cheat one another, worship false gods, and the like. And God will not hold back God’s wrath forever. God will deliver the oppressed from your oppression. So unless you repent, change your ways, and go back to love God and neighbor, you will suffer God’s wrath. Your choice.” That’s the basic prophetic message. Should that be our message?

            I think so. I think it is our responsibility to speak up for those whose voices are not heard. I think we should call out what is wrong, even evil, in these days. But our words of condemnation need to be balanced with an assurance of God’s steadfast love and mercy. God is just but God is also merciful. What God desires above all else is a world where people love and care for one another. Yes, God gets angry. Yes, God hurts when God sees people getting hurt. But God is love. God loves us, all of us, and not just us but all that lives. God is the source of life itself. So the message that people need to hear is that no matter how much you have messed up you are loved by God. It is possible for you to change your ways. You can make better choices. And you are not alone in this struggle to do the right thing.

            So what should our message be when we are prompted to go and speak to others? I can’t tell you specifically what that would be. Every situation is different. The person you find yourself in conversation with has their own sets of challenges. Maybe you have heard the phrase that we should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That might sound good but it misses the mark. It comes across too simplistically, that there are good people and bad people. The truth is, each person is a mixture of good and bad. We are all made in the image of God so we are fundamentally good. But we also have the capacity to fail at being our best selves in any given situation. People are complicated and life isn’t always black and white. We have to muddle our way through somehow.

            So what we say in any given situation is going to be different. There isn’t a tract, or a stock phrase, or a memorized speech, no cookie cutter answers or tried and true sayings. We have to try to listen for what God is putting on our hearts to say. But whatever it is that we are prompted by God to go and tell, that message will be consistent with what Jonah himself said about God in the midst of one of his temper tantrums: “God is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” That is who God is and whatever we say on God’s behalf should be consistent with who God is.

Listening for God

Sermon

Jan. 14, 2018

Second Sunday after Epiphany – Year B

Based on 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            “I don’t want to hear it!” Have you ever said that? Sometimes we say it when we are tired of hearing the same excuses. “I’m sorry I forgot to pick you up from work again. I just lost track of time.” “I don’t want to hear it!” One of my new year’s resolutions was to stop watching MSNBC and Fox News. Maybe most of you gave up on cable news a long time ago. I just had to stop watching because I didn’t want to hear it anymore, the opinions and half-truths posing as news, reporting that tried to spin narratives. I was tired of it and so far I have kept to that resolution and have not missed it. All of the shouting, the verbal attacks, the name calling, the nastiness, bullying and bravado, no one wants to hear it!

            Who do you want to listen to? It seems like a lot of people wish Oprah had her daily show back on after that speech she gave at the Golden Globes last week. People were expressing hope that she would run for president. It was a powerful speech. We want to listen to people that are good story tellers, who are honest and real. We want to listen to people who are hopeful about the future, that things will get better.

            We want to listen to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is tomorrow. He would have turned 89. And as you may recall, he was assassinated 50 years ago this coming April 4^th. King’s preaching was not just oratorical flourishes and well-practiced cadence. King spoke from a deep place, with the certainty of what was right and what was wrong. King had a moral clarity and he was able to communicate that clarity even as he acknowledged that the human condition is complex, that people are not cartoon characters. King spoke from his heart and his soul. He spoke truth even when people who respected him didn’t want to hear what he had to say. For example, 50 years ago yesterday King called for an anti-war rally at the nation’s capital for Feb. 5-6. The New York Times quoted him as saying the following:

“This next year, from today until Nov. 5, may well be the most fateful one that we shall have to face for the rest of this generation…During this year, it will be the war that will decide whether our country regains its balance in world politics and its sanity at home, or turns to more bombs abroad and more arrests at home…The choice for America is clear: Either we will end the war in Vietnam or many of our most sensitive citizens must be sent to jail.”

           

            There were a lot of people who supported King when he was fighting for civil rights. But they were not on board with his views on the Vietnam War. There were a lot of people who didn’t want to hear it. But there were others who were encouraged to stand up for what they knew to be right, even if it cost something, because King’s words gave them their moral backbone. That’s what great speakers can do. They inspire us to be our best selves.

            I suspect that maybe sometimes we even want to listen to God. We would love it in times of uncertainty, when we are trying to make a difficult decision, if God would just tell us what to do. “God, will you please tell me the right answer?” A common definition of prayer is that prayer is a conversation between you and God. That sounds good. But my hunch is that for most of us we talk to God more than we listen to what God might say back. We run through our prayer list. Or we read the daily devotion with the little prayer at the end and then move on to the newspaper. Let’s be honest, a lot of the praying we do on Sunday morning is us saying words, and precious little silence to see if God might say something back. In fact, I’m not sure if you all would want even five minutes of silence in our worship service. A bunch of people being silent together can get a little awkward. Unless of course you are with Quakers because that’s what they do.

            Does God even talk to us? What does God’s voice sound like? I think we would all agree that God’s voice does not sound like James Earl Jones, although that would be pretty cool if it did. Is it a voice you hear or is it just your own voice you hear in your head and you decide that was God speaking to you?

            As the story goes, God spoke with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God and Moses talked to each other all the time, like two friends. Moses would go into the Tent of Meeting, and a pillar of smoke would come down onto the tent. After a while, the smoke would go back up to heaven and Moses would head out and go on with his day. We hear the accounts of how God through angels spoke to Abraham and Sarah. God spoke to Isaac and to Jacob.

            But as we hear this morning, in the days of the elder priest Eli and his good for nothing sons Hophni and Phinehas, it was a time when the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread. Why was that? Was God not talking or was no one listening? I guess it could go either way. Perhaps God was calling out to Eli but Eli was distracted or simply not paying attention. Or maybe God was frustrated with the way things were going among God’s people and God had decided to go silent for a while. Maybe God just didn’t have much of anything to say.

            Whatever the reason, we are told that early in the morning, before dawn, as the lamp of God was about to go out, God woke up the boy Samuel from his sleep, calling out his name. God did not wake up Eli, the elderly priest, but Samuel, the young apprentice. How come Eli didn’t hear the voice? He and Samuel weren’t that far apart. Scholars suggest that there was merely a curtain dividing the two spaces where they were sleeping. Surely the voice had to be loud enough to awaken Samuel and that Eli may have heard it as well. Maybe not only was Eli’s eyesight going his hearing was slipping as well. Why after the second time Eli didn’t get out of bed and go walk around the temple telling whoever was pranking Samuel to knock it off and go home? Maybe he was too tired. Or maybe Eli started to get a hunch that the voice Samuel was hearing was a voice Eli used to hear but hadn’t for a long time. It wasn’t the voice of another person, a voice that echoes across a room, but instead a voice that echoes in your heart.

            After the third time, Eli’s hunch seemed to be confirmed. So he taught his apprentice how to respond the next time he heard the voice call his name. He said, “Samuel, if you hear your name called again, this is what you say: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” That’s what Eli had been taught to do. The attentive student heard what Eli told him to do. And when his name was called a fourth time, Samuel sat up and said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

            There is a lot in this phrase, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” First of all, it begins with the command “speak.” Instead of saying, “Hello?” or “Who is this?” the assumption is that it is God that is calling your name. So you tell God to speak. But then you follow it up immediately with “your servant.” You take the posture of a servant being addressed by your master, your Lord. You are awaiting instruction. You say, “your servant is listening.” There is a difference between hearing and listening. Kim will tell you. There have been some times where I heard Kim tell me something, but I wasn’t really listening. To listen means to pay attention. But not only that, to listen is to be open for what is about to be said. Selective listening doesn’t count. Also, when God is speaking, you don’t say, “Speak Lord, and tell me what I want to hear.” To listen means to have an open mind and an open heart, prepared to take seriously what is about to be said, even if it is something you don’t want to hear.

            So maybe before we decide to get quiet and listen for God, we need to decide if we are willing to listen to what God might have to say. Maybe what God will say to us is a word of affirmation, that you are on the right track. Maybe it will be a word of comfort: “You are my child and I love you. All will be well.” But maybe that voice is telling you a hard truth, that the better choice is the harder choice, that you said a hurtful word, or you were insensitive to your friend, or you need to let go of that cherished idea of yours. Are you willing to hear what God has to say to you if what God says is uncomfortable?

            But then again, who else do you want to hear from, besides Oprah? Surely whatever God speaks is just what needs to be said. Surely what God tells you will not lead you astray. Surely God’s word is a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.

            Just keep in mind that God decides when God will speak and what God will speak. You can be still and listen for that voice but there is no guarantee that God will speak to you. And you certainly can’t dictate to God what you want God to say. Just as we are free to speak or remain silent, so God is free. Also, sometimes God speaks without words. What I mean is, sometimes things are said without words. A feeling says something. Being together says something. There’s a story about two elderly monks who met for an hour. They said nothing to each other. They simply sat together in silence. Then, after the hour passed, they parted company. They just wanted to be in each other’s company. That was enough. And so maybe just sitting for a while in God’s company without speaking is enough.

            Be assured that what God speaks into your heart is truth. God is the fount of all truth. Know that whatever God speaks into your heart comes from a place of love and compassion, for God is love. And know that whatever God speaks into your heart is a word of hope for our God is the God of all hope.

            I believe God can speak to us through poetry. I want to end with this poem by Andrew King entitled “The One Whose Heart is Searching”. I invite you to still your mind and listen to these beautiful images, and see if it speaks to your heart.

           

Samuel on his bed beside the lamp,
its flame describing in slow pulses

the flickering hope
of a lonely, quiet yearning;

the hollow stillness
like a silent pond where

a searching voice could be heard
like a dropping pebble.

And in the dark and in the emptiness
the One who is doing the calling,

the One whose heart is searching,
is the unheard God.

*

Nathanael on the ground
under the fig tree, looking

up through its leaves at
an empty sky.

The leaves sift the sunlight,
its harshness is filtered,

but the shade over his soul
shows little gleam of joy.

His heart nearly closed
in its quest for truth,

his horizons have dimmed,
no corners of hope discerned.

But there is One who
remains watching and looking,

and the One who is searching for him
is the unrecognized God.

*

You and me on our beds,
our couches, you and me by our lamps.

You and me under spreading trees,
or peering at the sky through windows;

you and me at our office desks,
fingering the plastic of keyboards;

you and me in our living-rooms,
or sitting at our kitchen tables;

you and me, so yearning for hope,
so longing for meaning, truth, or joy –

may we become aware of the One
who is searching for us;

awake to the One
who knows and calls our names

longing for us to listen:
the God of promise and of invitation.

Arise and Shine

Sermon

January 7, 2018

Based on Isaiah 60:1-6

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            Has anyone experienced the post-holidays blues? It’s that let down after all the Christmas cheer, when the decorations have been, or soon will be, put away for another year, family have gone back home, the radio doesn’t play any holiday music anymore, no more Christmas movies on TV. Things have gotten back to normal. We have gone back to work. The credit card bills will be coming around soon with all our extra charges on them. And it’s cold!

            There is something about turning the calendar, of letting go of 2017 and entering into 2018 with fresh resolve, a clean slate, a new year of possibility and potential. At the same time, as my middle son reminded me when we were driving back from Florida, nothing changes on New Year’s Day. Everything is still the same. We still have the same problems and challenges, the same anxieties, the same issues and struggles and responsibilities. The holidays are great, don’t get me wrong. But they also have a tendency to mask our realities. And when the mask is removed, we discover that nothing has changed. Honestly, it’s quite likely that 2018 will be as much of a mixed bag as 2017 was. Singing the Christmas carols, lighting our candles and singing “Silent Night”, celebrating the birth of Jesus, in the end, doesn’t really change anything. Throw in this brutally cold weather we have been having lately and that can be a bit of a letdown.

            In spite of our best efforts to celebrate up a storm these past few weeks, Isaiah 59:9-11 still is descriptive of the world we live in:

Justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We wait for light, and lo, there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead. We all growl like bears, like doves we moan mournfully. We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us.

            The prophet who wrote these words was speaking on behalf of Israel, the people of God who had returned from exile. They had left Babylon and returned to Jerusalem with great anticipation. They were returning to the land of their ancestors. Their grandparents had told them the stories of Jerusalem in its glory, when it was the destination of kings, a cosmopolitan capitol. They had visions of the restoration of Jerusalem, the seat of God, the center of the world. But when they got back, they saw Jerusalem in ruins. Their present reality was far from what their hopes and dreams were. It was a gap that seemed like a canyon. And it was depressing. It was a depressing, sad sight, the state of things when they returned from exile. They were downcast, discouraged, depressed, and uncertain about their future. They looked around and could not see how Jerusalem would ever return to the former glory it had which their grandparents had told them about. Things looked pretty hopeless, even dire.

            So the prophet offered a word of hope to these depressed and discouraged children of God. He wrote, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!” This is what God has already done. The light has come, the glory of God is here. Sure, it may look depressing and discouraging. But all this ruin and mess is a veil. God is here too. The light of God is present and it is piercing through the darkness. Open your eyes and look around! Can’t you see it?

            Well actually, it seemed hard to see. Apparently the prophet had to speak this into existence because the light and glory of God piercing the darkness was not obvious. If the people could see the light of God shining on them, the prophet would have had no need to name it and draw their attention to the light. They would not need to look up and look around because they would have already noticed it.

            So, why was it so hard to see? Why was the glory of God’s presence not obvious to the children of God? Maybe because the light was subtle, a light that you had to actually look for and take note of. It wasn’t like the sun shining through your window that wakes you up from your slumber. Instead, it was more like the moon softly lighting up the night sky. If you happen to be up in the night and look up into the sky you see the light of the moon. Otherwise, you miss it. Maybe that’s what the glory of God was like which the prophet was trying to describe.

            This past Tuesday morning, the boys didn’t have to go back to school but Kim had to go back to work. There was no way I was going to keep sleeping if she had to get up and go to work in this brutal cold. So I got up too and made my way out as if I was taking the boys to school. I just kept driving, skipping the school as I made my way to the gym. If any of you were also up and about the morning after New Year’s Day, you would have seen a huge, gorgeous full Wolf moon in the lower half of the sky. It was so bright, illuminating the night sky. I kept glancing up at it every chance I got while I was driving down the road. Now, of course, the light the moon was reflecting back to the earth was not bright enough to wake anyone up. And it would have been possible if you were out to not bother to look up at the sky and see the moon. But if you did choose to get out in the cold and look up, you would have seen the moon in all its glory. You would have seen how that light softly embraced everything around you. If you pulled your glove off your hand your skin would have reflected back the soft glow of the moon. The light of the moon was there, whether you saw it or not. And I think that’s the kind of light that the prophet was talking about.

            So maybe we can see the light of God shining upon us if we know to look for it. If we follow verse 4, “Lift up your eyes and look around,” we will see the light. And what does that light look like? The prophet described it in ways that does not describe it for us. When we look up and look around we are not going to see our sons and daughter’s coming to us. We won’t see the abundance of the sea, or the wealth of the nations, or herds of camels. What might we see? We could see the light of children laughing, or the light in the eyes of people who have seen many winters. We could see the light of offering someone a helping hand or the outpouring of support for a family that lost everything in a fire. We could see the light of friends laughing so hard it starts to hurt. We could see the light of a room of sports fans celebrating a victory. I am especially thinking of the fans of the Buffalo Bills who celebrated the victory of the Cincinnati Bengals last week which put their team in the playoffs for the first time since I think the 1990s. I mean tears were streaming down the cheeks of grown men. Maybe we see the light of God’s presence in the soulful singer whose music stirs your heart. Maybe it is the light of the dawning sun on a snow swept frozen lake.

            I think love opens our eyes to see the light of God all around us. I wonder if the Spirit of God can open our eyes, cure it of its blindness, in order to more clearly see God’s presence all around us. Maybe it’s like the Spirit gives us a special kind of glasses that helps us see the glory of God all around us. I’m not talking about rose-colored glasses. I sure don’t have in mind sunglasses. No, it’s as if the Spirit gives us glasses that help us see more clearly, where even in the mess and brokenness of this world we can see the light of God shining through the cracks. They are glasses that help us see what God sees, to see hope, to see love, to see compassion, to see grace, to see possibility, to see glory, to see God’s light.

            I wonder if sometimes we don’t see the light of God’s presence because we are looking down or looking in the wrong direction. You might know what it’s like. When hiking in the woods on an unpaved trail, it’s a good idea to keep your eyes down so you don’t accidentally trip over a tree root. But if you spend the whole hike looking down you miss the scenery. So it’s good to stop frequently and look around so you can see the glory and majesty of the fragrant pines, the tall elm and ash, and the broad oak and maple. Our daily lives can sometimes be like those forest paths. It’s good to keep your eye on where you are going so that you don’t get tripped up. But it’s also important to stop now and then and look around, to see the glory of God’s presence all around you.

            Leslie Newbingin is an evangelist who did much of his work in India. He tells of a time when he and a group of others went to the top of this mountain to pray all night. When the sun began to rise, that was their cue to head back down the mountain. So they gingerly made their way down along the rough path, watching their step in the darkness of early dawn. It was hard to see where they were going. As they were walking down, another group of pilgrims were making their way up. While Leslie and his group were going down, the sun was at their back. But the group going up were facing toward the sun. He remarks how the faces of the group going up reflected the light of the sun. Their faces were glowing in the darkness because they were facing the light.

            That’s the other thing about the light of God’s presence. This light is reflected. We are reflectors, mirrors of God’s glory, shining out into the world. The glory of God is revealed in the world to the extent that the world reflects the light of God’s glory. Look at verse 1 again, “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” We are being asked to stand up and shine with God’s light and glory into the darkness of the world. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the beautiful full moon we experienced earlier this week brightly reflected light to us. Those people going up the mountain were reflecting the light of the sun off of their faces. We are meant to reflect the glory of God that shines on us.

            But how do we reflect the light of God out into the dark world? We do it by joining in on what God is doing in the world. It is by our actions, acts of justice, compassion, mercy, the things God does, it is by these actions that God’s light is reflected out into the world. And, of course, worship reflects the light. A joyful heart reflects the light. Helping those in need reflects the light.

            During this cold snap we have been experiencing, a few churches found themselves in the position to open their doors to their community to be places of warmth and shelter. One such church is in Lancaster. There was one homeless veteran who found his way into the church to get warm. People at the church helped him get connected to the VA in order to arrange more permanent housing. When he was talking to the news reporter, his face was lit up with gratitude for the church opening their doors. But it wasn’t just some of the homeless in the community who came to the church. Other churches in Lancaster chipped in by providing hot meals. People in the community brought over donations of extra shoes and boots, coats, and lots of blankets. What these churches in Lancaster did was reflect the light of God’s presence. The light they reflected was seen by a lot of people, not just those in Lancaster, but everyone like me that watched the news that night on TV. This is one way we reflect the light of God’s presence into this cold, darkened world.