“Who
Do We Not See?”
Based
on Luke 16:19-31
First
delivered Sept. 29, 2019
Rev.
Dr. Kevin Orr
For several months, due to road
construction…seems like there’s always road construction somewhere, doesn’t it…I
had to make a detour to get home. I took a road behind the convention center
and then hopped on the onramp to I-670 Eastbound. As the fall turned to winter,
and the falling leaves revealed what was hidden among the trees, I noticed that
in the grove of trees along the onramp there were several small tents tucked between
the onramp and some train tracks. It was a homeless camp. I had driven past
that encampment for months and had no idea it was there. Every now and then I
see someone walking around out there. If I really wanted to, there is a little
parking area just before that grove where I could pull in, get out of the car
and walk over to that small encampment. I could introduce myself, strike up
some conversation, build some relationships, offer my help. But I never have.
And I don’t think I ever will. I just keep on driving. The people who live in
that homeless camp might as well be behind a wall. People who drive by might
see them but there will be no engagement, no relationship building, no offers
for help. The people in the cars go flying by while the people that live in the
camp are left behind.
The story of the rich man and
Lazarus, only found in Luke, is a powerful story. Luke making the point earlier
that the Pharisees were lovers of money, he places here in his gospel this story
Jesus told of an incredibly wealthy man who feasted every day while wearing
purple silk robes and an incredibly poor man named Lazarus, which, in Hebrew,
means “God helps,” who lies at the rich man’s gate clothed with open sores. All
Lazarus wants is some crumbs from the rich man’s table, but he gets nothing. Lazarus
dies and is carried up by angels to heaven to sit at the banquet table with
Abraham. The rich man dies and is buried. All he wants is a drop of water to
cool his tongue as he is tormented by the raging flames in Hades, but gets
nothing. The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn
his brothers, but Abraham says that if his brothers won’t listen to Moses and
the prophets, they won’t listen to anyone else even if that person comes back
from the dead.
This story triggers all kinds of
questions and can take us down many roads of reflection. It is amazing that the
rich man, with all his excess, did not even give a few scraps to Lazarus. Did
he not even see him? How else to explain his not giving Lazarus anything?
Surely the rich man was not so hard hearted that he couldn’t even have one of
his servants occasionally fix a small plate and carry it out to Lazarus. He
didn’t even have to invite Lazarus inside. He didn’t even have to physically waddle
over to Lazarus. Maybe he didn’t even know Lazarus was there. But that seems
hard to believe. Still, maybe the rich man was so much in his little world that
he was completely oblivious to a desperately needy person literally lying at
his doorstep.
I just can’t get that gate out of my
mind. It was just a hunk of metal taking up a sliver of space. Yet, it may as
well have been a twenty foot wall or a wide gaping canyon. It was just a gate
that separated Lazarus from just a little bit of food. And that gate was
sufficient to keep Lazarus out and to contribute to his dying of starvation.
Why couldn’t Lazarus just get over
the gate on his own? I wonder how tall that gate actually was. You would think
if a person gets desperate enough, they would eventually take the initiative to
just come in and get the rich man’s attention and beg for some bread. But probably
Lazarus laid at the rich man’s gate because he had been dumped there by
someone. He was unable to walk or even to crawl. He was stuck there in his
misery. Unable to bathe. Unable to get a drink of water. Unable to take shelter
from the rain. Unable to go anywhere private to relieve himself. He was
abandoned right there. How is it that no one walking by gave him a hand?
Couldn’t anyone open the gate for him and help him inside the rich man’s house?
Couldn’t anyone have brought Lazarus some food or taken him somewhere to get
treated and cared for? Someone could have done something to relieve this man of
his suffering. It wasn’t just the rich man with the hard heart oblivious to
Lazarus’ need. No one saw him. Everyone neglected him. I wonder if Lazarus
sometimes wondered if he was invisible. I have read stories written by homeless
people who beg on the streets who watch so many people walk past them without
even looking at them, as if they were invisible. Lazarus seemed to be invisible
to everyone. No one really saw him.
I wonder what kinds of gates we have
in our community that keep people out; gates that people won’t or can’t open; boundaries
that people don’t cross; places that people won’t go.
Since I started this new
appointment, I decided to take the bus during the week when I’m coming in to
Westgate or Parkview. I do that partly to save gas and wear and tear on my car.
Don’t have to deal with traffic either. I can check my emails and get some
reading done while someone else is doing the driving. And it’s one less car on
the road, one small effort to reduce pollution. When you take the bus, you see
parts of the city you miss when you usually drive around on the interstates.
Most of the time the bus isn’t on the interstate but sticks to surface streets.
Instead of I-270 and I-670 and I-70 you are on Cleveland, High, and Broad. It’s
on the surface streets, at a much slower speed, that you can see people and you
see the businesses they go to and the houses and apartments they live in. You
often see people that struggle every day to get through the day. You see people
walking down the sidewalk who probably don’t own cars or for whatever reason
are unable to secure a driver’s license or auto insurance. You don’t see these
people, where they shop and where they live, when you are flying down the
interstate. It’s almost as if those interstates that weave their way through
the city are like gates that block drivers from seeing the people that live in
poverty all around us. We just drive over and around those areas as we hurry
from one place to another…unless we are stuck in traffic. Then all we get to
look at are the cars and trucks that are surrounding us. We won’t be able to
see the people that live just a short way from the interstate.
Through the summer, the last Saturday
of the month, Grandview hosts the Grandview Hop. In the evening, Grandview
Avenue is shut down so people can walk down the street visiting food trucks and
booths, hang out with friends and just do some people watching. And dog
watching. But as I think about the people I saw walking up and down Grandview during
the Grandview Hop, you would be hard pressed to see some of the people that
walk up and down Broad Street. And it’s not like folks who live along Broad
Street couldn’t get to Grandview. The 31 and the 5 will take you there. But for
whatever reason, there are some folks you won’t see at the Grandview Hop;
people who are living in poverty, struggling day by day to make ends meet.
There’s no gate that keeps folks like that away. You just don’t see them at the
Hop. Why?
George Buttrick, a well-known preacher,
commented on the story of the rich man and Lazarus, saying that the rich man’s biggest
sin was his failure to be a good neighbor. Neighbors have a responsibility to look out
for one another and to lend a hand. Good neighbors know each other. They
recognize who belongs and when things don’t look right. Neighbors take care of
each other. Lazarus was the rich man’s neighbor. Not only does he fail to care
for Lazarus, we wonder if the rich man even noticed he was there. The rich man
was the worst neighbor possible. You can’t be a good neighbor if you don’t even
see your neighbor.
We don’t know anyone who fits the
role of the rich man. I am pretty sure none of us have ever seen anyone who
wears fine linen clothes and has a huge dinner party at their house every single
night of the week, year in and year out. Heck, even kings and queens don’t have
dinner parties every night of the week, day by day, all year long. We don’t
know anyone as poor and diseased as Lazarus. We see some pretty poor people
from time to time, but no one who is crippled, covered with open sores, and
left to rot in front of the gate of a rich man’s house. Trust me, in our
society no one will be allowed to just lay down in front of a mansion in an
upscale neighborhood for long. Someone will jog by or cruise by in their BMW
and call in the cops to check it out. Poor and sick people spending the night
in front of a rich person’s house just doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen it.
We haven’t seen rich people like this
rich man, and we haven’t seen poor people like Lazarus. The question this story
leaves us is, who else do we not see? That’s a hard question to answer. How do
we know if there are people we don’t see? Just like driving past a homeless
camp tucked away in a grove of trees along a busy highway, people may be there,
but you can’t see them when they are tucked among trees while you are flying
down the road at 70 miles per hour. We may see people on Broad Street that
appear to be struggling to make ends meet, but we don’t see homebound folks who
live down Burgess or Yale. What are the gates, the fences, the barriers that
block us from seeing certain people? Who knows, maybe there are people who are
Lazarus-like right around us and, for whatever reason, we don’t even see them.
Because there is a gate, a fence, a barrier, a highway, that keeps us apart
from each other. I wonder what barriers there are around us that need removed,
or barriers that we need to cross over, so we can better see our neighbors, so
we can have the opportunity to be good neighbors.
Based
on Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
First
delivered Sept. 22, 2019
Rev.
Dr. Kevin Orr
Jeremiah has traditionally been
called the “weeping prophet.” This common nickname is inspired by some of the
scripture we heard read this morning. Jeremiah cried out, “Oh, that my head was
a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!” Jeremiah was not a cool and
stone- faced man. He was not hardened, detached or aloof. No, Jeremiah wore his
heart on his sleeve. He really cares about his people. He has skin in the game.
He is invested. And as he watches the suffering that his people endure, he is
right there suffering with them.
Why is Jeremiah so emotional? What
has triggered his tears to flow so freely, yet wished his tears were like a
water gushing fountain? Even for someone who cries easily, this is pretty
extreme. There must be something that Jeremiah is seeing that is prompting him
to cry like he has never cried before. Not just a shed tear. Not even a good
cry. He wants the kind of cry that makes you bend over, put your head in your hands,
and heave and tremble and wail. It’s a cry that most of us only experience a
handful of times in our lives, a cry that you will never forget. Whatever
Jeremiah was seeing must have been absolutely heartbreaking. What was it?
A few weeks back, I talked about
what Israel was doing that prompted God’s anger and the threat of punishment. At
the time, Israel was under foreign occupation. We may also speculate that the
people were struggling a little to make ends meet. The crop yields weren’t
keeping up with demand. We can guess this because the leaders of Israel, who
were not happy about the state of affairs, began discussing among themselves
what could be done to make things better. They came up with the idea of learning
about and then worshipping the gods native to the land they were inhabiting.
They weren’t going to give up on God. They just thought that if they also
worshipped the local gods, maybe that would help assure a prosperous harvest.
After all, the local deities had authority over the land. Why not appease them?
In the minds of Israel’s leaders, it was worth a shot. Worshipping God was
fine. But something more was needed just to make sure the crops would be good.
And, who knows? Maybe the gods will do something about the foreign power that
was oppressing everyone.
Well, look what happened. We hear in
the scriptures that it was the end of summer, the harvest had passed, and the
people are not saved. Sure, this language may be metaphorical. It may only be
saying that the people had been waiting for God to deliver them from their
oppressor, but God has not saved them. Another way to say it is that the people
have had all year to return to God and be saved but have chosen not to repent
and now the year is up, (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, falls around Sept.
29-Oct. 1) it’s still status quo, and God does not deliver them. Or maybe this
was the literal truth. The summer is over, the harvest time has come, and there
is nothing to harvest. God has not saved them. It will be months until the next
crops can be planted, and there will be little to nothing for the people to
eat. Winter is coming. Hunger, and even starvation, awaits them. It will be a
long and painful winter. And Jeremiah, who will share in the suffering and
hunger, breaks down and cries. This didn’t have to happen. But the people were
stubborn. Status quo was too powerful. And the consequences for their inability
to repent will be brutal. Jeremiah imagines the children groaning and whining
for something to eat, while their mothers and fathers sit listless, their cold
eyes lost in their gnawing hunger. The prophet weeps.
Whether the people are suffering
massive crop failure or it is some other kind of suffering, Israel was grieving
and fearful for their future. They are desperate. Their plan to include worship
of the local gods backfired. Things had only gotten worse. In their angst they
cry out, “Is the Lord not in Zion?” They were actually wondering if God had
abandoned them. How else is it that the people are suffering so? It must be
because God has given up on them. What about the local gods they were
worshipping? The people aren’t wondering about that. They think God has abandoned
them. Unbelievable.
This was part of their problem. Like
I said, they didn’t stop worshipping God. They still read the scriptures. They
still participated in the rituals. They still kept the festivals. But for a
little insurance, they decided they could also worship the local gods, just to
make sure that everything would be fine, or maybe with the idea that things
would get better. They were covering all their bases. But when things went
south, they question God’s faithfulness.
I mean, did they think that somehow
God would overlook their lack of faithfulness? They already had a God, the great I Am, who
chose them to be God’s people. They were the chosen ones. The God who created
the heavens and the earth could have chosen any people to be their God and God
had chosen them. All God asked was that they be faithful only to God and follow
God’s commandments. They just had to stay loyal to God alone. But instead the
people decided not to be faithful to God alone. They decided to worship the
local gods as well. And they are surprised that it seems God has abandoned
them. Amazing.
There is an excellent documentary on
PBS that started this past week produced by the great Ken Burns on the subject
of country music. If you didn’t get a chance to catch it, you can go to pbs.org
and find the page where you can watch the previous episodes to catch up. In one
of the episodes we learn about Kitty Wells who sang a song that spoke to a lot
of married women who had to put up with their cheating husbands. The song was called
“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” This was a song that came out in
1952 in response to a Hank Thompson tune called “The Wild Side of Life” which
was wildly popular that year. It was like Kitty Wells had had enough of all
these songs about women who are floozies and flirts that tempt men to be
unfaithful while their wives are supposed to always be there at home waiting
for their husbands to stumble home from the honky tonk. The wives were supposed
to stand by their men while their men went carousing. So, Kitty sang:
As I sit here tonight the jukebox's
playing a song about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying it brings mem'ries when I was a
trusting wife
It was't God who made honky tonk angels as you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
Well it's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame
As I thought about Israel’s
relationship with God this song seems to resonate. It’s like Israel thought
they could have a relationship with the local gods but, when things go bad,
that God would still be there for them at the end of the day, to comfort and,
frankly, to bail them out in their time of need.
If you were God, the jilted lover,
in the relationship with Israel, how would you respond? One way would be bitter
rage. You may aim to inflict maximum punishment on your cheating spouse or
partner. Another response may be “the silent treatment.” You move out or make
them move out. And it goes radio silent: won’t return calls, unfriend on
Facebook, incommunicado.
But how does God respond to the
unfaithfulness of the people? Jeremiah’s response may be a clue. See, the prophet
is the voice of God. God speaks through the prophet. There’s other ways to
communicate than words. Could it be that the way Jeremiah responds to Israel’s
ongoing unfaithfulness reflects God’s heart? I wonder if Jeremiah’s tears and crushing
sorrow reflects God’s tears and sorrow. I wonder if Israel’s unfaithfulness,
and the suffering they experience as a consequence, breaks God’s heart? As God
sees the broken relationship God has with Israel, God wants to cry a river.
When we go through heartache and
betrayal, what we need is healing. We need something to soothe the pain. One
way we get that relief is through drugs and alcohol so that we don’t feel
anything. I came across this video interview this man had with a homeless woman
in Detroit named Amber. She had been back out on the streets for about eight
months, feeding her addiction to heroin and crack. She had been clean for five
years. But then she broke up with her girlfriend and it threw her into a manic
depression. She turned to alcohol to self-medicate. She lost her apartment,
lost her job, and lost her brother to an overdose. She fought with her mom all
the time. And it broke her. She left her daughter with her mom and dad and went
back to the hood to get high. And eight months had passed since then. She said
it, she couldn’t take the pain anymore, the heartache, so she chose to try to
numb her pain with heroin and crack. All alcohol did to her was make her sick.
So that was Amber’s response, which a lot of people choose in the experience of
loss and heartache…to numb the pain so they won’t feel anything.
Others choose to turn to friends and
family who are there for us when the pain is too much. There is a musical being
performed right now at the Ohio Theater called Dear Evan Hansen. Without
getting into all the details of the story, Evan is carrying a lot of pain and
anxiety. He copes with his pain by telling lies upon lies. He even lies to his
mother. But the lies come crashing down all around him. He has nowhere to turn.
He has broken everyone’s trust. So, he goes home. And there is his mom. His dad
left when he was seven, when his parents divorced. Evan knows he is messed up
and that he is broken. He knows he has hurt his mother and treated her badly. But
he has no one to turn to. In a touching scene near the end of the musical, his
mom tells the story of when the U-Haul truck pulled up in their driveway on the
day Evan’s dad moved away. That night, as his mom came to tuck him into bed, he
asked her if tomorrow another U-Haul truck would come to move her out. And she
told him there would be no U-Haul truck. She would stay with him, no matter
what. She would always be there for him. And she kept her promise. When there
was no one else Evan could turn to, he had his mother and her love.
And, of course, we can always turn
to God in our times of heartache. God is as close as a prayer, or the cry of
the heart. The psalms are full of laments, where the psalmist cries out about
the suffering, rejection and heartaches of life. But the psalmist testifies
that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in time of need. God
is there to renew our strength. We can fly on wings like eagles. The psalmist
says, “I will yet praise God, and worship Him; for God’s love endures forever.”
In that dark night of the soul, when nothing is going right and the future
looks grim, we can rest in the presence of God, trust in God’s grace, and assure
ourselves of God’s everlasting love. This can bring relief to the pain in our
hearts.
But what if it is God that you have
betrayed? What if it is this betrayal that is the source of your heartache?
Jeremiah wants to know, on behalf of his unfaithful people, is there a balm in Gilead?
Maybe there isn’t. Maybe God refuses to comfort and heal the people in their
suffering and pain. And who would blame God? The people deserve maximum
punishment for their continued infidelity and their apparent inability to
acknowledge their unfaithfulness. So, God will just let the people lie in the
bed they made for themselves. It is hard for us not to blame God for not coming
to comfort and heal the Israelites who had treated God so badly. I wonder if we
would want a different response from God when we are in Israel’s shoes?
Or maybe there is a balm in Gilead.
God is ready to comfort and heal the sin sick souls of the people if they would
at this late hour turn back to God in humility, confess their sin, acknowledge
the error of their ways, and recommit anew their singular faithfulness to God
alone. But they haven’t done this so far. They don’t even realize they are
doing anything wrong. I wonder if we are ever like that?
Regardless of how the people respond,
or fail to respond, in their time of suffering and heartache, if it is so that
God weeps over the people, this suggests how God will respond if the people
choose to turn back to God and forsake the other gods. God’s relationship with
the people really matters to God. Their continual lack of faithfulness breaks
God’s heart. God longs for the relationship to be restored. I am convinced, as
I think Jeremiah would be, that if the people would finally wake up and realize
what they are doing, and make the turn back to God, that God will rush to them,
embrace them, and bless them.
It makes me think of the father who runs
to his prodigal son. How often, I wonder, that the father sat on his porch,
looking out toward the horizon where his younger son had gone when he took his
half of the inheritance and abandoned his family to strike out on his own. Until
that late afternoon, as he rose from his chair to go inside for supper, he
noticed someone walking down the road. And as the traveler got closer, it
became clearer to the father that that was his son. And he leaped down the
porch and ran to his son, embracing him, kissing him, and with tears running
down his cheeks whispering into his son’s ears, “Oh son, it is so good to have you
back.”
That’s what God is like when we turn
back to God in our times of unfaithfulness. There is a balm in Gilead for us. When
it comes to making things right with God, we only have to turn back and God
will close the gap. God is always ready to love on us, to claim us as one of God’s
own. God will never choose to load up the U-Haul and move out. God will always
be there for us.
Now, that doesn’t mean our heartaches
are suddenly healed and our problems go away. Israel could have turned back to
God in humility and asked for forgiveness, recommitted themselves to God alone
and God would have welcomed them back. But they still had no food laid up for
winter. They would still be hungry and have to contend with a long winter. The
consequences of unfaithfulness and rebellion toward God don’t magically
disappear when we repent. The price still has to be paid.
But as we suffer the consequences of
our actions and work to make things right, we can count on God to be with us
through it all. It takes time to repair relationships, whether that be with
other people or with God. Repentance is hard work. Healing and restoration take
time. But if we turn back to God in the midst of our hurt and heartache, we can
trust that God will always love us, no matter what and that God will never give
up on us. God is always at home waiting for us. God will tell us the truth of
the matter. God will hold us accountable. There is no cheap grace with God. But
God has promised that God will be with us always, even to the end of the age.
God will never leave us or forsake us. No matter what.
Based
on Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Luke
15:1-10
First
delivered Sept. 15, 2019
Rev.
Dr. Kevin Orr
I have a friend who posted something
on Facebook that made me chuckle. She wrote about how when she was young, she
was afraid of bees. But now when she sees a bee, she wants to make sure they
are comfortable and offer them a drink if they are thirsty. She has come to
understand how critical bees are in the process of pollination, and how if bees
are decimated it will significantly harm our capacity to feed ourselves. There
have been some scares about the collapse of bee colonies that has come to the
attention of lots of people. It even inspired an animated film back in 2007
called The Bee Movie. It was a cute film that dealt with the serious topic of
the importance of bees in agriculture. Whether it’s the use of certain
pesticides or some other factor, bees need protected because if we lose bees
that would make a catastrophic impact on agriculture. I have heard that the
collapse of bee colonies lately has not been as bad as it was a few years ago,
so that’s good news. Still, it is concerning if bees are not thriving.
When we were kids, we spent a lot of
time outside playing. And we caught all kinds of critters: fire flies,
crickets, lizards, frogs, toads, garter snakes, turtles, grass hoppers,
crawdads, tadpoles. Where I grew up the biggest catch was a horny toad. They
are technically called horned lizards that live in the western U.S. and down
into Mexico. They look like toads and they have little horns all over their
bodies. They are the coolest. They look like tiny Stegosaurs. We would catch
all these creatures we found in our back yards and put them in shoe boxes with
a piece of carrot or something for food and see how long we could keep them
alive, or until mom or dad told us to let them free, or they got loose on their
own when we weren’t looking. And the rolly polly’s. We had so many at our house.
But what about now? I’ll admit, I’m
not outside as much as I used to. But I don’t remember the last time I saw a
snake. There just doesn’t seem to be as many critters in the back yard anymore.
Maybe they are there and I’m just not seeing them. In fact, it’s a little
unsettling sometimes to be outside, even in a park, and not see any animals.
What’s the cause of it? Why does it seem there is less wildlife these days?
Back in 1962 came out a book by
Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. It was inspired by a friend of hers who
wrote a letter to the editor about how she had dead birds in her yard which she
traced back to the use of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT to kill mosquitos.
Carson presented her argument that the use of synthetic pesticides was having adverse
effects on the environment. She invited her readers to imagine the coming of
spring, as everything is supposed to come back to life, but instead all the
fish were dead. There were no birds singing. It was a silent spring. Of course,
the chemical companies put up fierce resistance to her scientific findings. But
her book helped kick off the environmental movement that eventually led to the
creation of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Nixon. DDT was
banned throughout the nation for agricultural use. Her vision of what it would
be like without living things, and the scientific basis of her research, was
enough to trigger people to action. The argument can be made that since the 60s
we have cleaner air and water and more responsible use of pesticides and
herbicides. But still, it seems like spring is quieter than it used to be. And
we didn’t have so many people with nut allergies and lactose intolerance and gluten
intolerance like we do now. Some blame the increase of gluten sensitivity and
even celiac disease with the use of Roundup. It makes you wonder if in some
ways the environment isn’t as good as it seems.
We hear in Jeremiah this morning a
poetic representation of a silent spring. God is looking over the land that God
gave to Israel. And what does God see? It’s a reversal of the creation story. The
earth is formless and void. There is no light in the heavens. The mountains and
hills are shaky. All the birds have flown away. The fruitful land is now
desert. There are no people. All the cities are razed to the ground. What is
described is a wasteland, an environment that is on the brink of total collapse.
A silent spring to be sure, with the exception of the howling and scorching wind.
This poetic description of the
apocalypse portrays God’s judgment on the people for their inability to do
good, their rejection of God and their worship of false gods. God had warned
them that they would be destroyed if they did not turn from their wicked ways.
And they did not turn back. So, they are destroyed as well as the land they
lived on.
But this destruction was not the
consequence of environmental degradation. It was the result of a foreign army
invading the land and wiping everyone out, destroying everything in sight. The
foreign invasion was the means God used to punish Israel for their ongoing
failure to repent and turn back to God. It was a technique used by armies in
those days, if the goal was to do maximum damage, to go in and not only destroy
the towns and villages and to plunder everything that was valuable but even to
pour salt on the fields so that the soil would no longer be able to produce
crops. It was the scorched earth policy of those days. And this was the image
Jeremiah expressed to Israel, to get them to wake up and turn back toward God
or this would be their future.
This image of apocalyptic
destruction may bring to mind the total destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
when our country dropped nuclear bombs over those cities. The photos of those
wiped out cities can’t do justice to what it must have been like to go there
after all the radioactive dust settled. I can only imagine all you would have
heard was the wind as you looked all around you and saw nothing but
devastation: no buildings, no people, no birds, no nothing. Yes, Japan
surrendered days later. World War II came to an end. And the threat of nuclear
annihilation was upon us. The mad foolishness of war can now lead to the
destruction of the planet.
In 1945, there was a group of atomic
scientists from the University of Chicago who participated in the Manhattan
Project, the super-secret program that constructed the atomic bomb. They began
to meet and discuss the ramifications of nuclear power as a weapon. And in 1947
they made up a symbolic clock which they call the Doomsday Clock. They set the
time based on what they believed were the conditions in the world that could
lead to total annihilation. Midnight marks the destruction of the planet. Every
year since they put out a bulletin that expresses their concerns, not only
about nuclear destruction but now they have added the threat of climate change
to human civilization. As of this year, as it has been for the past few years,
the clock is set at two minutes to midnight. To these scientists, as the
message God spoke through Jeremiah, the threats to our survival is real and the
need to change course is critical.
So, what are we to do with this? We
would all agree that God’s message for Jeremiah was for the people to respond,
to give up their foolish ways, learn to do good, and be faithful to God alone.
The consequences for not repenting and living right were truly perilous. But
what about now? I am not going to make the claim that God is speaking through the
scientists who warn us about the dire consequences if we don’t end the spread
of nuclear weapons or take the steps necessary to adapt to climate change.
Whether the warnings come from God through the scientists or not, the threats
are there and the threats are real. As Christians, as children of God, as those
who are called to bear witness to the love of God made known in Jesus, are we
not to respond to these threats to human civilization? Don’t we want to do what
we can to turn the world away from the brink of destruction?
I suppose some would say that as
Christians the state of the world is not our concern. All we have to worry
about is getting saved so we can go to heaven and avoid hell. This world is
passing away. So why should we be concerned about nuclear war or a warming
climate that threatens to displace millions and millions of people, bring about
widespread famine and perhaps bring about a widespread extinction not seen
since the days of the dinosaurs?
It seems to me that love requires
another response. And if you think about it, if we are guided by the Spirit of
God, following the teachings of Jesus, and respond with love and creativity to
the challenges in front of us, whatever they be, that this will surely move the
world away from nuclear annihilation and climate catastrophe, if even by a
little bit. It seems to me that, as followers of Jesus, our best response to
the challenges that threaten our planet today is to live in ways that are
opposite to the precursors of war and environmental destruction. We would want
to live our lives that would contribute to peace and to stewardship of this
beautiful and life- giving earth that God made.
The good news is that there is
always hope with God. Even in this apocalyptic warning that God speaks through
Jeremiah to the people, God says in 4:27, “The whole land will be ruined,
though I will not destroy it completely.” Just like God didn’t completely
destroy the earth in the Great Flood, so God will not destroy the land when the
foreign army comes in to invade Israel. Our hope is that in the face of nuclear
war and climate chaos that somehow God will prevent the earth from being
destroyed. We can’t join with those who despair of the future of the earth and
who instead have their eyes set on the life to come in heaven. God hasn’t given
up on us. God has not given up on God’s wonderful creation that we call earth.
God is a savior and redeemer, not a destroyer. As God’s children and as
stewards of God’s creation, our responsibility is clearly to do everything we
can to care for the earth we now call home. And we can live our lives
responsibly, doing good and being faithful to God, day by day, one small act at
a time, with the confident hope in God’s saving and amazing grace.
I also can’t help but think of the
woman searching her house for the missing silver coin. When she discovered she
was missing a coin, she didn’t just shrug her shoulders and think to herself,
“What can I do? I still have nine. No big deal.” No, she wanted that missing
coin. Was she greedy? No, it seems to me that her motivation was one of stewardship.
There was a coin laying around somewhere and it was worth something. It did no
good being lost. It had purpose. It needed to be found. So, she set about to
find it.
And when she was looking all through
her house for that coin, I can imagine she was busy tidying things up along the
way. She probably cleared off her desk. Put the pile of clothes away. Got out
the broom and started sweeping under the furniture in hopes of pulling that
coin out from underneath the couch. She was restoring order to her house while
looking for that coin. She found the coin and, as a bonus, had a nice, tidy and
clean house. Easy to invite friends over to celebrate now that the house is all
picked up!
We know what God’s desires are for
the world. God desires harmony, beauty, and life. God is the source of all
these things. And God longs for the world to reflect back who God is as the
creator of the world. So, we know what we need to be about in our lives as
children of God. We want to contribute to the grand project of creating harmony
and beauty and life. This is what we create when we follow the teachings of
Jesus and stay in love with God and one another. This is what discipleship produces.
And we live in a world that is a
mess, with a lot of lost people who need to be found. The mess is daunting.
Where to begin? With what is in front of you. What can you do today as a
steward of God’s creation? Who do you know to be lost? I am talking about
people who don’t know Jesus. But I’m also talking about people who are
disconnected from society, who feel like they don’t belong or don’t have a
purpose. They are lost too.
But I wonder if finding what has
been lost is not just about finding people. I wonder if we can cooperate with
God in the work of restoring harmony, beauty and life in our lives, our
communities, our world, that along the way we will find what has been lost:
playfulness, adventure, wonder, humility, generosity, compassion, joy,
innocence.
“Creating
with God”
Based
on Jeremiah 18:1-11
First
delivered September 8, 2019
Rev.
Dr. Kevin Orr
Creating something is a process. It
begins with an idea, an image, a vision. And then the idea moves into the
design phase, to turn the idea into something on paper: a sketch, a blueprint,
an outline. Then comes the construction phase, turning the design into
something you can see, hold, manipulate. And the construction process is rarely
a straightforward process. You discover that the original design doesn’t hold
up. Modifications are called for. Or, you have to go back to the drawing board.
The design is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Finally, you have
a working model. Time to tweak it until your idea has become reality, the
finished product. Or, it never reaches that stage at all. The whole project
gets shelved, the idea never goes beyond the dream stage. The creative process
is often long, messy, and sometimes never reaches completion.
Then sometimes the process never
ends because of the quest to make a good product better. “New and improved” is
the watchword for laundry detergent. Sometimes the quest to make something
better backfires in a big way. When the makers of Coca-Cola came out with New Coke
the backlash was astounding. It seemed people were buying New Coke for the
purpose of coming up with ways to inflict their disgust of the product,
creating new ways to destroy the cans. Boycotts were arranged. Graffiti sprayed
over ads. Coca-Cola finally gave in, bringing back the original formula so
people had an option between Old Coke and New Coke. It was a matter of time
before New Coke faded away. Of course, that didn’t stop Coca-Cola from
continuing to create options, like Coke Zero, or Coke blended with different
fruit flavors.
The creative process in a way never
ends. There will always be new songs, new books, new poems, new paintings. New
products are coming out all the time. Coaching staffs are always laboring to
design new football plays. Bureaucrats are always coming up with new forms for
people to fill out. It just never ends, the creative process.
Since God is the creator, God is
always engaged in the creative process. Creating is what God does. God didn’t
just kick everything off at the Big Bang and now sits back to watch how
evolution unfolds. God is intimately involved in the emergence of life. God is
always influencing natural processes toward the direction of beauty and
harmony. Each flower, tree, puppy, and mountain carry the fingerprints of God’s
creativity. We read in scripture that each of us were knit together in our
mothers’ wombs by God. Obviously, this does not describe physical reality. That
is not a scientific statement. But it points to the belief that wherever life
emerges, wherever beauty and harmony is present, God has a hand in that coming
to be. God is the one who inspires the artists, the architects, the inventors,
to turn ideas into reality. The creative process is how God engages with
creation. And it never ends. God is always about the process of creation, of
making all things new as we sometimes say.
Because God created us in God’s
image, we are creative. As God, we are always engaged in the creative process.
We have the capacity not only to create things, we also create the shape of our
lives and the communities we live in. By our own choices and actions we shape
our character, we develop our abilities, we establish our values. By our
collective choices and actions we shape the character of the communities we
live in, enhance the quality of where we live, establish the values we want our
community to adhere to. Of course, there are many other influences on the kind
of people we become and the kind of community in which we live and work and
play and worship in. But you have a lot to do with the kind of person
you become. And all of us together have a lot to do with the kind of church family
we have and what kind of community we live in. The process of becoming, of
becoming who you are and of what community you and I live in, is an ongoing
process. For as long as people are making decisions and acting on those
decisions, there will be something new about you and about the community in
which we live. The emergence of something new never ends. When you and I die,
of course, who we become ends, at least in this world. But the community in
which we live doesn’t die with us. Community life goes on and on, constantly
changing, being created anew, by the decisions and actions of people. And God
is always around influencing those decisions and actions.
Because we have the capacity to
create, we can cooperate with God in the creative process. We can partner with
God in the process, not only in the ongoing creation of who we are as persons
but also in the ongoing creation that is the communities in which we live. We
know that God’s creative goal is for beauty, harmony, and wholeness. What that
looks like in flesh and blood reality is where you and I come in. Through
prayer, the guidance of the Spirit, living by the teachings of Jesus, you and I
can work with God in making all things new. We have the privilege to join with
God in bringing about new creation, heaven on earth, or, at least, a small step
toward that grand project that will continue long after you and I have drawn
our last breath.
Or, we can choose not to cooperate
with God. We can make poor choices, be jerks, reject God and disregard the way
of Jesus. It is this choice, to cooperate with God or to reject God, that lies
at the heart of this prophecy from Jeremiah we hear this morning.
Jeremiah is told by God to make a
visit to the local potter. It is there that Jeremiah gets the inspiration that
God is the potter and we are like clay. But Jeremiah isn’t the only one who makes
this comparison. Isaiah also calls God the potter and us as the clay. If we go
back to Genesis 2, we read that God scooped up dust and shaped a man with it,
breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
being. Paul talked about how we are like clay pots that carry the light of
Christ. When trying to talk about God as the creator and us as the creation,
the metaphor of God as potter and us as clay works pretty well.
God had an idea for what God wants
Israel to be like, what shape this pot would take, its texture, its function,
its presentation to the world. Israel would be to the world God’s chosen
people, the community that would be a light to the nations, to demonstrate to
all the nations of the world Who is the true God, the one who is the creator of
the heavens and the earth, the chief potter of creation. But Israel had other
ideas. Like we talked about last week, Israel had chosen to worship the local
gods rather than remain faithful to God alone. Yes, they still read the
scriptures, they still kept the religious festivals. But they also sought to
appease the local gods native to the land they were living on to see if that
would better assure their prosperity and perhaps even get the gods to fight for
them so that they could get Assyria off their back. What Israel was doing was
creating for themselves a community that was out of shape from what God had in
mind. So God, through Jeremiah, gave Israel a warning through the image of a
potter reshaping a pot. If Israel decides to keep doing what they are doing,
then God will destroy them and start over, just as a potter will smash down the
clay and start over. But, if they change their ways, make different choices,
return to their singular faithfulness in God, then God will change God’s mind
and instead keep working with them to bring about what God has wanted to see
all along. The choice is theirs to make. Will they cooperate with God or not?
See, this is the big difference
between an actual potter working with clay and God as a potter and us as the
clay. Actual clay is just dirt. It doesn’t have any ideas. It doesn’t make
choices. It doesn’t shape itself. It is a simple mass with no critical
thinking. Clay lays there to be worked with. It does not work on itself. Clay
cannot resist the deft hand of the potter. But we have ideas, we make choices,
we do shape ourselves and the communities we live in and we can resist the deft
hand of God. We don’t have to go along with God’s shaping influence. We can
bend to the influences of others. We can stubbornly pursue our own ambitions
and designs. We get to choose if we will work with or work against God’s
purposes for us and for the world. We are like clay except we have minds of our
own.
I was at a presentation on Catch
Court. This is a special court in Franklin County where, when a woman is
arrested for prostitution, she is given the option to go through the Catch
Court program. It is an intensive program where she receives treatment to get
off whatever drugs she may be on, counseling and group work to start addressing
the trauma she carries, and a safe and supportive community of people who have
been where she is when she enters. The presenter showed these mug shots of a
repeat offender. The first shot was when she was first arrested as a teenager.
In each progressive shot that stretched over a period of just a couple years
you could see how the woman appeared to have aged by ten years. She looked
increasingly disheveled. And worse of all, her eyes looked empty. She was dying
inside. And then, after she completed the Catch court program, they show a
picture of her in which she looks almost like a completely different person. What
is most powerful is the spark you see in her eyes. By the choice she made to go
to Catch Court, and by the actions of a team of people who loved on her and
cared for her through the process, she was remade.
I have a friend about my age who
grew up in Grandview. He still gets a chuckle when he hears about how people
all over the city will go to Grandview for dinner or just to hang out because
he remembers what Grandview Avenue was like when he was a kid. He remembers it
being a seedy place where no one would want their kids to be. But a restauranteur
chose to open up a place called Spagio’s. And he committed himself to recreate
downtown Grandview. Many people thought he was crazy. But he did the work. He
found others who were willing to put their energy and their money to transform
Grandview. And that’s what they did. It is nothing like it used to be.
Grandview was remade.
I recently read about this community
in Maryland where city leaders, with the support of the community, made a
decision to change their zoning ordinances to require that any new housing
developments must be mixed to include housing options across all financial
levels. Rather than having neighborhoods that only rich families could live in
and high concentrations of section eight housing somewhere else, all the income
levels were zoned to occupy the same space. And because of these political
decisions, the quality of life for all the residents of this town are so much
better than the regrettably common pattern across our nation, including
Columbus, of housing segregated by wealth. This community made choices and
acted on them to remake their community to reflect the values of diversity that
they said they held.
In all these contexts, God was
active, like a potter, working to shape lives and communities toward God’s vision.
Through God’s influence, a judge decided that something needed to be done that
actually changed women’s lives who had been caught up in addiction and
prostitution. Through God’s influence, women chose to remake their lives
through Catch Court. Through God’s influence entrepreneurs took up the
challenge to remake Grandview into a thriving downtown. Through God’s
influence, the people and their political leaders in a community in Maryland
revisioned zoning laws to remake their community to more clearly reflect their
values. God’s vision of beauty, harmony, and vitality was shared by all these
people, who decided to cooperate with God, whether they knew it or not, to recreate
lives and communities.
I admit, these are extreme examples
of God and people collaborating to create something new. I know that none of us
are in the position to pull off something similar to Catch court or the
revitalization of a downtown area or change zoning laws to better reflect our
values. But the truth is we can’t avoid making a difference in our lives or
making a difference in the communities we live in. Creativity, making a
creative difference in our lives or in our communities, is part of what it is
to be human. Every decision and action you and I make makes a difference, ever
so slightly, in the shape of our lives and of our community. By simply being
alive and present we are influencing our life and our surroundings. It cannot
be avoided.
So, the question for all of us is
this: will we collaborate with God in the shaping of our lives and communities?
God has a vision for each of us and for the community in which we live. God
wants to see all of us live our lives to the fullest, with zest, with beauty,
and in harmony with one another and with the rest of creation. God wants to see
a community that is full of life, of diversity, and harmony. I think we share
God’s vision. So, will we, day by day, decide to cooperate with what God wants
to do in our life and our community? Will we allow God to shape us into the
kind of people God wants us to be? The decision is ours to make.
Based
on Jeremiah 2:4-13
First
delivered Sept. 1, 2019
Rev.
Dr. Kevin Orr
Where do you turn when things aren’t
going well? Customers aren’t coming in like they used to and sales are down. The
pancake and sausage supper used to be the big event everyone came to in
October. But now people don’t come like they used to and it’s becoming a
struggle to get volunteers. Your investments were having an excellent return
but now the losses are mounting. You and your spouse used to get along pretty
well, but lately it hasn’t been so good. Your relationship is on the rocks. What
do you do when you hit obstacles, or even hit a wall?
Consultants make their living by being
called on when things aren’t going well. They come in with their years of
experience, their questions and assessments, and their strategies for turning
things around. When relationships aren’t going well, counselors are ready and
able to help couples bring the issues out on the table and improve their
communication, all in the hope of restoring a happy relationship. Financial advisors
are willing to help you rethink your investment strategy and perhaps, for a
fee, manage your money for you in the hopes of getting a better return. Or
maybe you can go to a seminar, take a class, read a book, get a life coach, ask
for advice from your friends. When things aren’t going well, there are a lot of
options that we can turn to get things back on track. People are there for you
and, often for a fee, are ready to give you advice and tips, to help you take
back control of your life.
Things weren’t going so well for
Israel. When God first led them to the Promised Land, things were pretty easy.
They were able to eat from the fat of the land, enjoying the fruits of the
crops planted by the people Israel displaced when they moved in. Remember, the
Promised Land wasn’t empty. People were living there. God gave Israel land that
was already populated. But that’s another story. The point is that as the years
went by, things weren’t as great as they used to be. Sometimes the harvests
were plentiful, but other times they weren’t. The Assyrians were always
threatening Israel and, in fact, invaded Israel and forced God’s chosen people
to pay a tribute to the Assyrian king. They knew the legends about the glory
days of David and Solomon. But those days had gone by. Things just weren’t the
way they used to be. Who would Israel turn to when things weren’t going well?
In those days, every nation had
their own gods and goddesses. Egypt had theirs, the Greeks had theirs, which we
all learned about when we were in school as we read those old Greek
mythologies. The Phoenicians had theirs, the Persians had theirs, the Assyrians
had theirs. When Israel entered into the Promised Land, the people that lived
there had their local gods. Your national gods and goddesses had the job of
providing for the health and prosperity of the people who lived on that land.
The job of the people was to perform the necessary rites to appease the gods so
that the gods would in turn provide for the people with a good harvest and
protection from their enemies.
So, the leaders of the Israelites,
the priests, the prophets, the rulers, started getting this idea. Maybe they
need to get to know the gods native to the land they were living on. This was,
after all, the territory these gods are responsible for. Maybe the Israelites
need to practice the rituals that the natives did in order to appease the gods.
Then maybe the harvests will be better and they will be liberated from the
oppression of the Assyrians. Things will be better if they turned to the gods
of the land upon which they currently lived. Yes, the God of their ancestors,
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had got them there, delivering their
ancestors from slavery in Egypt and leading them through the wilderness to the
Promised Land. But maybe now the people need to turn to the local gods because
things aren’t going so great. It’s like God got them there but now they need to
make a break from the God of their ancestors and instead cast their lot with
the local gods. They needed to take control of their situation and do what they
thought was the best available option to make things better.
Well, Jeremiah isn’t going to have
it. As a prophet through whom God speaks, Jeremiah calls out Israel for their
wrongdoing. What Jeremiah is challenging is how Israel responds to their
challenging times. It’s not the first time that things weren’t going well for
Israel. Time and again they had experienced famine and invasion and oppression.
And the classic response during those times of suffering was a collective
lament, a crying out to God. “Where are you, God?” We see that cry all through
the Psalms. Job airs his complaints toward God in the face of what is clearly
unjust suffering. There are plenty examples of Israel calling out to God for
help in times of need. When things are bad, Jeremiah gives the appropriate
response in verse 6. In this time of suffering, Israel was supposed to say,
“Where are you, God? The one who brought us out of slavery in Egypt and led us
through the wilderness to this Promised Land of plenty?” Israel was supposed to
ask God for help, acknowledging what God did for them in the past, how God had
provided for them. And they want to know from God what God’s plan is for
restoring them. The correct response is to expect God to do what God does,
which is to redeem, restore, renew. God is a saving God. So Israel ought to
have turned to God and called out to be saved.
But that’s not what Israel did.
Jeremiah calls them out for forsaking God and instead attempting to appease the
gods of the natives. Rather than stick with the traditional response in times
of need, the leaders of Israel came up with a new idea. And this sets Jeremiah
off. He asks Israel if they know of any other nation that forsakes their own
gods? Does the Egyptians? The Greeks? The Assyrians? The Phoenicians? No, they
do not. Israel has a god. In fact, Israel’s god is the only true God, the
source of life, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Or, as Jeremiah puts
it, the fountain of living water. But Israel has forsaken the fountain of living
water and instead has chosen to dig their own cisterns, cracked cisterns that
don’t hold water. They chose to appease the local gods which are no gods. They
think that by appeasing the local gods that they will be assured of bountiful
crops and perhaps even liberation from their oppressor as the local gods fight
for them. Incredible. Jeremiah says, “Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be
shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord.” It is inconceivable that Israel
would forsake their God, the only true God, who has always been faithful to
Israel, in some crazy idea that they can take control of the situation by
appeasing the local gods instead. What were they thinking? Of all the ways to
make their situation better, the One who can actually help them, their God, the
source of living water, they turn their backs on. They choose their help from
other sources. When times were tough, and things weren’t going so well, they
turned elsewhere.
So, tell me. What do we do again
when things aren’t going so well? Do we turn to God, the faithful one, the
savior, the source of living water? Or do we turn to counselors, consultants,
advisors, and motivational speakers? I wonder if there is something about
Jeremiah’s warning to Israel that we need to hear.
Now, maybe I’m not being fair. I am
confident that most counselors, consultants, advisors and motivational speakers
would take issue with me saying that if people use their services that those
people are turning their backs on God for help. It’s true, that doesn’t seem
fair. And I don’t mean to say that it’s a binary choice: either look to God for
help or look to others for help. Obviously, the way God helps us is through
people. It may very well be that when you are facing a financial problem, it is
prudent to seek out a financial advisor. If your relationship is on the rocks,
it may be a good idea to see a counselor. If it appears your business needs to
change direction in order to meet shifting consumer demand, it is probably a
good idea to reach out to a consultant. We can do both. We can turn to God for
help and turn to others for help. You don’t have to choose one or the
other.
But the question is this: when
things aren’t going well, do we tend to turn to God and to others, or do we
ignore God and go straight to the advisor, counselor, consultant or
motivational speaker? It has been my experience that when problems come up, or
things aren’t going well that used to go well, the tendency is to problem
solve. People get together and start brainstorming ideas. People call mentors
or experts for advice. People ask around and see what other organizations have
done in similar situations. People scan the internet for resources that address
the issue, or go read articles or books. And maybe somewhere along the way
someone thinks to bring the concern to the Lord in prayer. Or not. Honestly, in
my life it seems that more likely than not when facing difficult times, crying
out to God for help is an afterthought. It seems more prudent and practical to
go straight to researching for answers and problem solving, coming up with
creative ideas, digging our own cisterns.
But this is the worst thing
that I’ve seen happen. Things aren’t going well. The problems facing us are
real and seem insurmountable. The future looks grim. And there is no one that
can help. There are no consultants or advisors available. No one will
understand. No one really cares. We are on our own. We are alone. That is a
scary place to be. To feel like there is no one you can turn to, or there is no
help available anywhere is a truly frightening spot to be in. It is just one
small step to despair, to giving up, to deciding that things just aren’t going
to get better and nothing can be done. Can you imagine a worse feeling? To
believe that not even God can help?
But is that true? Is there ever a
time that God is not willing and able to be our help in time of need? I can’t
conceive of any situation where God is not present and not already doing
everything God can to restore, renew, and make things better. God is love. God
is the creator. God is life. Lovingly creating life is what God does. We are
never alone. We are never without God’s assistance. No matter how bad things
are, or how dire the situation, God never abandons us. God never forsakes us.
God never gives up on us. Jesus said that he will be with us always, even to
the end of the age. So, the fact is that whenever we find ourselves in
situations where things aren’t good, we can always turn to God. We can always
cry out to God and say, “Where are you? You are the one who created us, who
called us and claimed us as Your children, who has delivered us from the power
of sin and death. You are our deliverer, our savior, our rock, our living
water. And we need You. We need Your help. We need Your deliverance. We need
You to act.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with turning to God for help
when times are tough, and even to demand for God to help us. You can scan
through the scriptures and find examples of Israel crying out to God for help,
and even demanding God’s help, because they know they can’t save themselves.
They know there is no one who has the power to save and restore than God. And
they act on their faith by calling out to God. If we have faith in God to help
us and to make things better, then we can call out to God for help and not be
shy about it.
But then we reach out. We are not alone,
not only because God is with us but also because we are members of the body of
Christ. We have brothers and sisters in the faith literally around the world.
And every Sunday, over 1 billion of our siblings gather together for worship.
The truth is, if we are in need of help to address whatever problems we face,
we don’t have to look far if we have the eyes to see. And it’s not just fellow
Christians we can turn to for help, much less fellow United Methodists. We have
people who practice other religions or no religion at all, but are people of
good will. They can provide help and insight and access to resources. The
potential web of relationships that we have just among ourselves is vast. So,
we can cry out to God in our time of need and we can reach out to other
Christians, others with expertise, others of good will, and ask for help and
support. We don’t have to figure things out or make things better all by
ourselves. We have God and we have our community.
This morning, as we receive
communion, let this be a reminder for us that we are well supplied in our
relationships. Communion reminds us of our relationship with God through Jesus
Christ. And the act of receiving communion is something we do together and is
being done in churches all around the world. It is a global action. Communion
reminds us of our relationship with Christians all around the world. Communion
reminds us that in our time of need, we don’t have to search far to find help.
Our help is in the Lord and in our relationships with our Christian siblings.
We all know that not everything is
going well. And I’m not just talking about our church, or the United Methodist
Church at large. I don’t need to give you the litany of problems that plague
our community, our city, our nation and our world. Things could definitely be
better than they are. This, right now, is not as good as it gets. But I am
convinced that if we continue to trust in God and strengthen our relationships
with our neighbors, fellow Christians, and the wider community, that we will be
ok. With God and with the community we find ourselves, we have all we need.
There is no need for us to dig our own cisterns that will only crack and won’t
hold water. God, the source of living water, is with us. And the fountain from
which this water flows, the community of God, is ours to enjoy. So, let us turn
to God in our time of need, turn toward our community for help, and trust that
somehow, someway, what we need will be supplied. For truly, with God and God’s
people, we have all we need.
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