Lent 2012 - The Covenant Journey: Snakes in the Desert

Numbers 21:4-9

Legend says that St Patrick after converting to Christianity returned to Ireland, the land in which he had suffered horribly as a slave, to bring the truth of Jesus Christ to those who had harmed him so much. He walked all across Ireland teaching the truth of the Gospel as he went. Legend says that at one point during his work among the people of Ireland he went to the top of hill and to spend 40 days praying and fasting before the Lord. As he was praying a snake began to harass him, annoyed by the snake, Patrick turned on the snake and using the staff which he used as he walked, to drive not only that snake but all of his kin found throughout the island down into the sea. And thus, according to the legend, Patrick healed the land of Ireland from all snakes for all time.

Now there is much speculation about what exactly this legend speaks, because due to the islands location and the fact that it is an island and geographically separate from the neighboring lands, there have actually never been any snakes on the island of Ireland. But most people agree that due to the prolific use of the snake as a symbol among the Druids, which was the predominant religion prior to the island’s conversion to Christianity under the teachings of Patrick, that the story is actually speaking metaphorically of how Patrick was able to drive out the druid religion as he brought Christianity to the people, thus healing the land and her people of the serpent of pagan druidism.

The serpent or the snake is such a loaded symbol in Christianity. The serpent is the one who speaks to our first parents and convinces to partake of that which God had forbidden. Moses’ staff becoming a serpent which in turn gobbled up the serpents which the Egyptian magician’s were able to produce, was one of the first signs with which God sent Moses to Pharaoh when Moses was petitioning Pharaoh to let the people go. The symbol of the serpent is often used throughout the Old Testament to reference that which is evil, or dishonest. The snake represents all that has gone wrong in this sinful world, its venom is feared, its presence is abhorred and it is something to be crushed or driven off wherever it is found. Two of the most prominent imageries of the world being set right, where things are restored to their peaceful, perfect created order are the lion lying with the lamb and the other is the image of a child playing with a serpent or that of world where the snake does not bit at our heels.

As we look at this little episode with the snakes here in Numbers, it is an excurses into the traveling life of the Israelites, and is sort of a little detour as we follow the path of God’s covenant relationship with humanity through the Hebrew Scriptures. So perhaps a little background on where we are in this story would help. The Israelites are traveling through the desert toward the promise land after having agreed to the covenant. About a chapter back Aaron, Moses’ brother and the leader of the priests died. But before he died God provided for Moses’ son Eleazar to follow him as the leaders of the priests. God made preparations for a smooth transition of leadership so that the people were spiritually provided for. Nothing was left to chance. God has shown that God will act to make sure the people are provided for in rough times.

After that, the king of Arad decided to come against the Israelites. He took some of the Israelites captive. When this happened, the Israelites turned to God. They called out for God to help them. And God delivered their enemies into their hands. God once again shows that God is faithful to uphold God’s end of the covenant agreement. God will be their God, will guide, and protect them, and will be their strength and their shield.

And that brings us to our passage here. The people are traveling around the desert. God is protecting them from their enemies. God is providing a peaceful transition in leadership from one spiritual leader to the next, which is no small feat mind you. And every morning and every evening God is providing for the people’s immediate needs by giving them manna and quail to eat. On all points God is proving to be faithful and trustworthy.

But as time passes the Israelites get tired of eating manna and quail. In fact they are so tired of it, they become disgusted with it. They begin scorn that daily miracle, God is doing in their midst. They begin to grumble that there is no food. Well there is food but it is disgusting. Every morning a bread like substance, which they call Manna, a Hebrew word which literally mean “what is this,” and the quail that land in droves in their camp ready for them to scoop up, and roast (I mean the only way this could be any easier is if arrived plucked cleaned and already on a spit), that has become kind of annoying the people don't like it.

They sound like whiney little children who can’t be happy with anything. I am sure anyone who has spent much time trying to feed children has run into days when even the most well behaved child turns up their nose at any food that is provided. The steak is too chewy, the Mac and cheese is too soft, the salad to leafy, the lasagna too cheesy. It is almost expected from a child but it is nearly intolerable in an adult, and this is not just one adult who has become a picky eater this is a whole camp of adults who are complaining about miraculous food which God is giving them daily. They are all acting like whiny children who are over tired and really just need to go to bed.

So they whine to God about this disgusting food which God is giving to them and so God allows their encampment to be infested with snakes, but not just any snakes. These are not nice little garner snakes that are kind of fun to catch and completely harmless, these are venomous snakes, poisonous snakes.

The snakes are a nuisance, but they are more than just a nuisance, they are deadly.
The snakes are biting people and people are dying. This is terrible, what can they do? The people realize their mistake. They realize they were wrong in complaining about the food, they were wrong to whine to Moses to turn their noses up at the very food God was providing them. So they call out to God telling God they know they are wrong and ask God to come to help them. Well, they speak and then send Moses to intercede before God on their behalf.

God hears them and talks to Moses. God does not react as St Patrick in the story driving the snakes from their midst. In fact, God will not remove the snakes from among them at all. The snakes will continue to live, but instead of riding the people of the consequence of their grumbling, God will provide a way for the people to be healed. Moses is to fashion a bronze snake and put it on a poll. When one among them has been bitten by one of the snakes, all they need to do to be healed is to look up from the snakes on the ground and look up at that snake on the poll and believe that God will heal them. And the text tells us all who looked upon the snake and believed in God were healed.

We don’t necessarily have problems with real snakes in our lives but since throughout the Bible snakes are used as signs and symbols of all that is wrong in this world, of the trials and the woes that abound in this world due to sin and evil running rampant in this world. It is not very far fetched to see that we all have the serpents of sin our lives; trials, troubles, woes, things with which we struggle on a regular basis. We have problems in our lives; we have things with which we wrestle. There are hardships we face. Evil is manifest in sickness, in disease, in being hurt by those we love, in working to make ends meet, in struggling in relationships at work and at home. We struggle with addictions, with unwholesome aspects of our own personalities, with the baser side of our natures. We wrestle with impure thoughts and with unholy attitudes. In some way shape or form we all face the consequences of evil and sin in our lives.

Some of the snakes with which we struggle are self made, they are a result of own sins and mistakes; are a result of the choices we have made. Other serpents in our lives are caused by others, surely not every last one of the Israelites in the camp were grumbling about the quail and manna but all suffered because of the consequences of the sin of those who did. There are times when we are affected, damaged, our lives are torn apart by the sins of those around us. Others people sin and we live with the consequences other peoples’ sin against us and our lives are devastated by the evil consequences their sin brings to our lives. People make mistakes, misstep, misspeak, and we are left to deal with the fall out. We did not do anything to deserve this but we often deal with the unintended consequences of the sins of others around us. And many times we are simply faced with the general consequences of sin and evil in our world.

These are snakes in our lives and they are biting our heels. They are real problems that cause real hurt and turmoil in our lives. It is easy to get fixated on these things. To focus on them, to even allow them to define who we are, to define our relationships with those around us, it is easy to allow these serpents in our lives to be the central focus of who we are, to be the central focus of all we do.
When the Israelites were surrounded by serpents, the consequences of sin in their lives, God provides for them a way to be healed but the healing is not intuitive. When there is something striking at your heel it is your tendency to train all your focus on your feet, to focus on where the snakes are and where they are going to strike next. But God asks for the people to look away from the snakes, to take their focus off the snakes and put their focus something else. God calls for them to look up at the snake and believe.

When the serpents of life are snapping at our heels, threatening us with their deadly venom, the hard part is to take our focus off of what is harming us, what is hurting us, off the threat, the danger, and the struggle and instead focus on what God calls us to focus on, which is ultimately our belief in God. Our focus needs to be drawn away from at the problems at hand, the issues, and the hurts in our lives and instead needs to be on God, who is the sources of our healing, and our strength in times of struggle.

Before God can heal, before God can give us strength in our struggle, we have to learn to train our focus on God. We have to take our eyes off the ground and look up to God. We need to learn to look away from that which is plaguing us, take our eyes off of these things and instead look to God; to Trust God.

It important to note, God did not take the snakes away. God did not remove that which was plaguing the people, the snakes were not driven from amongst them, ala St. Patrick, but instead God gave them a way to deal with the snakes. God gave them what they needed to make it through. The healing they needed to live among the snakes. Their belief and reliance on God allowed them to have the strength they needed to withstand the venomous and deadly bite of serpents.

When God is with us, when we trust and rely on God, when we allow our belief in God to become our focus instead of all that is plaguing us, we are given exactly what we need to survive, to be healed, to live. The hurt may remain, we may continue to struggle, that which bites at our heels and causes us harm may not go away, but when we remove our focus from all that is plaguing us and turn our focus to God, our belief in God, our trust in God, we are then given what we need to make it through, to deal with the struggles and hardships that we face due so sin and evil in our lives and in our world.

Lent 2012 - The Covenant Journey: The Covenant at Siani

Exodus 20:1-17
When I was in fifth grade, if we memorized Exodus 20:1-17, our Sunday School teacher promised to give us a 1lb Hershey’s chocolate bar. It is amazing what a fifth grader would do for a 1lb bar of chocolate. Thinking back on it she was probably aiming pretty low, many of us might have memorized 5 chapters of the Bible for that much chocolate. There are few things in the Bible that our greater society at large knows about. Even if a person is disconnected enough from the Old Testament that they are unable to list even one of the commandments, they should know - assuming that they are following recent events in the last 10 years - that they at the very least exist and that there is controversy over whether or not they should be displayed at the local court house. If you grew up in the church even, if someone did not bribe you with chocolate to memorize them in their entirely, I am sure that somewhere along the line you were asked to recite at least some shortened version of these 17 verses as part of some Bible School, Children’s church, or VBS push.
This is the point in the Biblical narrative that God comes to the nation of Israel, which God has already sent Moses to, performed the plagues on their behalf, freed from Egyptian slavery, led safely across the sea, fed with manna and quail and have finally led them to the foot of the mountain, so that they can meet this God who has chosen them, rescued them and taken care of them up ‘til this point. They have come to this point so that they can come to an understanding as to what it truly means for God to be their god and for them to be God’s people. And God gives them these 10 commandments as the heart of the covenant.
These are the great commandments, this is the heart of how a community desiring to join together and join themselves with God will live. As I mentions last week, a covenant is a legally binding agreement where both parties agree to certain guidelines and stipulations. These 10 commandments are not suggestions, guidelines, or statements; they are the articles of the covenant God is making with these people. God says, “This is how a community living with me will live.” This is what your half of the agreement looks like. I will be your God, I have shown you what that looks like, I have worked on your behalf to bring you to this point and here is what I require of you. These are the legal guidelines of the relationship which God is building with these people. These commandments are in a sense legally binding on the community which desires to join itself in relationship with God.
It is interesting that not quite half of these covenant stipulations are not about the people’s relationship with God, actually just over half of them deal with their relationships with each other. Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets, Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. And this is indeed true in that most all of the law are expansions of these basic commands and the heart of these commandments are just simply about loving God and loving each other.
The things most gods asked of their adherents had to do mainly about what the people needed to do to get the gods to do what they wanted/needed the god to do. If you bring me honey cakes and your first born son, then I might make the crops grow. I you dance around in a particular fashion and give up one your daughters to the temple, then, if I am in a good mood, I might make it rain. If you anger me, if you displease me, if I woke up this morning and ticked about what my consort did, then I might rain fire and hail down on you, your animals and your crops, deal.
But that is not what God is like. God hears the cries and pleas of the people of Israel, when many of them don’t know God or have ever heard of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God calls one out from among them to be God’s voice to their oppressors and God comes to them and works on their behalf to free them and take care of them. And instead of proving to be a capricious or selfish God, God asks that they worship God and God alone, take one day out of every seven to set aside for worship and rest and to be nice to each other. This really does set God apart from the gods of Egypt and the gods of the other communities of the ancient near east.
God cares about them, in fact God love them. God wants what is best for them. So God set up parameters that not only their relationship with God, but their relationships with each other. God was not merely giving them rules about how to worship, rules on how to sacrifice. Being the people of God was harder than cutting of a nearly unnecessary part of their body that nobody could see anyway. The covenant stipulations might be simple but they are far from easy. Being the people of God meant that they had to change the way the lived their lives, all of their lives.
Being the people of God did not merely affect their “spiritual” life, how they worshipped, where they worshipped, who they worshipped and what they did when they worshipped, it affected every part of their lives. It affected how they spoke, what they said about others, their familial relationships, what and who they wanted, and what they did about what and who they wanted. It affected how they lived in relation to God and it affected how they lived in relation to every other person around them. This was not just making an agreement about which God they choose to worship, this was about adhering to a new way of life.
These covenant stipulations are not simply about how we worship or act toward God. Nor are they a check list that allows us to know if we have done all the proper things to get God to love us. God does not call us to live by a new set of rules. God does not call us to come to church on Sundays and make nice with the people of God we encounter there. God does not just care our spiritual lives. God does not merely want our worship. God wants us to completely change our whole lives. To change how we interact with each and every person we encounter, when we are at church as well as when we are not.
God cares about who we worship, why we worship and when we worship, but God also cares about how we treat each other. God does not want us to speak wrongly about God, but neither does God want us to speak wrongly about others. God loves us and desires our honor and praise, likewise God expects us to honor our parents. God love us and is a jealous God, God will not share us with other gods, and thus God wants us to assume that other people are just as jealous about those whom they love and that they do not wish to share those whom they have covenanted to love with us. Nor are we to desire their stuff, or take it. And on no account are we to haul off and kill them for just any reason. God does not merely care about who we worship, and when we worship, God cares about all our relationships, who we are when we are not worshipping, how we treat others when it is not the Sabbath, these things matter just as much to God as our focused allegiance and love.
What it looks live to live in covenant relationship with God is not easy. A check list is easy. Rules about how to properly worship God are easy. Things that tell us what we need to do to get God to do what we want God to do, sound a whole lot more appealing. Even if God is asking us to do things we don’t really want to do. At least then we know there is a pay in the end. God asks for more than adherence to a set of rules. Covenant relationship with god is more than just adding another checklist to our lives; or something else on our daily “to do.” God wants more than that. God wants all of us. God wants every part of who we are, every part of what we do.
These ten commandments; only worship God, do not have and idols, keep the Sabbath holy, do not speak wrongly about God, honor your parents, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not speak wrongly of others, do not murder, and do not covet. Sound easy, but they are more than just a check list, they are a way of life. They are the backbone, the heart, the inner workings of a relationship with God. This is about loving God and loving neighbor, as a way of life, a complete and utter change that requires us to wholly commit all aspects of who we are and all the relationships in our lives, whether they be who we worship, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, they guy who pumps our gas or that lady we pass every day on our way to work, all our relationships, every part of our lives is handed over and given over to a new way a life, a way of life that may not be easy but a way of life that is what living a community that is in relationship with the God of the universe is.
I am not against memorizing scripture, but I am not sure memorizing these 10 commandments in fifth grade did anything to help me truly understand what God was asking of me. Recently one of my friends on facebook said something to this effect in their status, “When I tell my children what to do, do not expect them to come back later and recite what I told them.” Memorizing the 10 commandments is not what it takes for them to take shape in our lives and change who we are. Memorizing these 17 verses probably makes it easier to see them as rules that help us earn God’s love. Simply calling them commandments, instead of seeing them as the heart of a covenant relationship, probably leads them to becoming a checklist to proving our worth before God.
In fact, I don’t know about you, but for many years, I thought these to be a list of what we are to do and not do in order to be Christians. And I would venture to say for many years they were are checklist for me, a part of my daily to do list. By doing these things, I was doing what I needed to do, so that God would look favorably upon me, so that God would love me. God does not ask for just part of us, God does not ask that we live by a set of standards, God asks for all of who we are. God asks for all of our relationships, all of our interactions, God asks for all of who we are. God wants to be in loving relationship with us and for us to in turn be in loving relationship with everyone else. God does not ask for much, but what God asks for is everything.

The Covenant Journey: The Covenant with Abraham and Sarah

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17
Many of us who grew up in the church, who were nursed on the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are probably familiar with the story of Sarah laughing. In the timeline of the lives of the fore-parents of our faith Sarah’s mirth occurs after the events we just read. Sarah being chastised for her lack of faith occurs in the year just prior to her giving birth to Isaac. I don’t know about in your life, but in my life Sarah has received much flak for the lack of faith which her mirthful outburst reveals. In light of Abraham’s response here in this passage, I am going to have to say that our singling out of Sarah and calling her faithless for her reaction and not mentioning Abraham’s reaction here is a might bit unfair to Sarah.

As I read the passage I see an amused Sarah who chuckles at the quaint nature of this “God” who kept promising a child over decades but had yet to do anything to make this happen. In this passage on the other hand, Abraham falls over laughing at what he sees as a hysterical joke which God seems to insist on playing.

Whereas Sarah is chuckling in the way one might when a child who continues to tell the chicken joke and must chuckle because there is nothing else to do, Abraham breaks out in a raucous guffaw that causes him to fall on his face. I can see him on the floor before the divine nature of God, arms holding his sides, tears streaming down his face, laughing so hard he can barely stop. If you read a little further, at some point Abraham pulls himself up off the floor, gets himself together and wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes, asks God if there is any possibility that this promise is to be fulfilled through Ishmael. No, no God has every intention for the geriatric Sarah, as she has just been named, to bear the son through whom God plans to make a great nation out of Abraham. At this point, in the movie reel in my mind, Abraham who is still wiping the laughter tears from his face and struggling to get his composure at the hilarious nature of God stops dead. His face goes from horribly amused to deadpan. God is serious. God is not teasing, God is 100% serious. Sarah, his Sarah, 90 some-odd-year-old, Sarah is going to bare a son. God firmly believes this and is continuing to promise it.

That is where this passage ends, but where this passage begins is with God coming to Abram to establish a covenant with him. A covenant is a legal agreement between two people that is binding. God comes to Abram and proposes to make a covenant with him. As with all legally binding agreements, there are terms to the agreement, and there are things which are expected of both parties involved. First of all God calls for Abram live a blameless life. God begins with what God expects of Abram. God expects Abram to be blameless, to live a life that God would consider right and good; a life of love, loving God and loving those around him. God never really asks for much, just right living, just living, love for God and all humanity; simple things that are all encompassing; simple things that affect how one lives every part of their life.
If Abram is willing to live life as God calls him to live it, then God will do several things as well. If Abram is willing to live a blameless life, according to the call of God, then God will make Abram fruitful. God will provide Abram with children, heirs, descendants and not just A child, but a child who will have children, who will have children who will have children. Abram will not merely be the father of a son, not just the father of a family, or a clan, or a tribe, but the father of a family of Tribes, not just the father of a great nation, but the father of a multitude of nations. Abram who has lived his whole life heirless, with out a son to remember his name to the next generation will not only be remembered but he will be remembered from generation to generation because he will not be the father of just one son, but the father of nations of sons.

The finally the last thing God makes known about this covenant is that is it is an eternal covenant. It is not a covenant which is only good for a season or expires when Abram does, but it is a covenant made with Abram and all of his descendants for all times, for always. There is no expiration date. There is no time limit on God’s faithfulness, as long as Abram and his descendant uphold their end of the covenant, God is willing to up hold God’s end.

As one of the signs of this covenant, God changes both Abram’s and Sari’s names. Abram’s name is changed to Abraham and Sari’s name is changed to Sarah. Abraham goes from a “great ancestor,” which was the meaning of his name to “Father of nations.” And Sari goes from having a name that has no discernable meaning (as far as we can tell) to being called “Princess” which is what Sarah means. Both of them are given, by God, names of promise, names that look to the future and mark them as people who belong to God. These names let them see who they are, who they will become and as whom they will always be remembered.

Abraham will not merely be a great ancestor to small Bedouin clan but he will be a father of nations, he will be a father king and Sarah will be his princess, a mother to the nations he will father. These two who are in danger of never being remembered because they are old and have no children to carry their story to the next generation will be remembered because from them and their offspring great and many nations rise up. They will not be forgotten. And they have not been, neither of them, I mean, even today after thousands of year, we are here talking about both Abraham and Sarah, who they are and what their story means for us and our story. In the simply act of discussing them here today, we are remembering them and they through scriptures are remembered daily by Christians, Jews and even Muslims all over the world. When God makes a promise, God makes a promise. Abraham and Sarah as the forbearers of great nations have never been forgotten and their children still live today. The promise God makes with Abraham in this covenant and in these names still stands.

God names them, God calls them God’s own and God gives them new names, names of promise which speak to who they are and who God is calling them to be. As Christians we see ourselves if not literal children of Abraham, we see ourselves as children of Abraham’s faith. In Christ, we have come to believe, worship and obey the God of Abraham. We see ourselves as spiritual children of Abraham, children grafted onto the family tree of Abraham through our faith in Christ the one and only son of the true and living God, who came to Abram, named him Abraham and entered into an eternal covenant relationship with him and all his children. We see ourselves as spiritual children of Abraham and spiritual children of this eternal covenant God makes here in this passage. Through our belief in God’s one and only son, we are able to see ourselves as children of this covenant, a part of the great nations God gives to Abraham as his descendants and as partakers in this covenant relationship God forms with Abraham.

When God calls for Abraham to walk blameless, we can see this as God’s call on each our lives as well. God will go before us, guide us through the wilderness of our lives, as he led Abraham. God will be almighty God for us, love us and fill our lives with the love only God can give, if we in turn and will live as God calls us to live, to love God, love one another, and to let these things dictate and determine who we are, our actions, our thoughts, our words, our attitudes, who we are to the very core of our being, then we truly are partakers of this covenant, participants in the promises God makes here in this passage.

If we do these things God will call us by new names, names of promise, names that speak of who God is calling us to be, names that speak to our future and speak to who each of us were created to be. I have already used that name a few times in this sermon already; it is a name we take up when we become members of God’s family, when we accept the truth of Christ’s life, teachings, death and resurrection. We call our selves by Christ’s name; we call ourselves Christ-ians. We identify ourselves by the one in whom we believe, we allow God to rename who we are. When we accept Christ we are named for more than just the name of the where we live, we are more than simply Americans, or Massachusians or Cambridgeites, we are named for the one whose life gives us life, and we are called by the name of Christ. We are marked as Children of God, we begin to become the people we are created to be and we are united with Christ in name, in word and in deed. As Christians we are marked with the sign and the name of covenant people in our baptisms. This promise made to Abraham becomes our promise, and through Christ we become children of that promise, called to live as God would have us live and blessed by the very promise that blessed both Abraham and Sarah. So let us go from here living as children of the promise, children of God, united to live, and reflect the light and love of the one in whom we find our name, Jesus Christ. Let us go from here this morning truly being named Christians.

Lent 2012 - The Covenant Journey: The Covenant with all Creation

Genesis 9:8-17

The whole flood story makes me think of
that sermon by Jonathan Swift, called Sinners
in the Hands of an angry God. We had to read
it and analyze it in my junior year of high
school. We looked at the picture of humanity
it painted and the view of God that it
presented, all as a way of understanding the
mindset of the puritans of the 18th century. I
don’t remember much about it other than that
it presented a bleak unrelenting view of God
where there seemed to be no grace, no mercy,
no love. I also remember being highly
thankful that preachers don’t preach like that
today.

The image of evil sinners in the hands of a
vengeful, angry God who can’t stand the very
presence of them anymore seems just about
right when you come to the story of the flood.
It seems that at this point God is so frustrated
at the perverseness of all of humanity that God
is done with the, and seeks to destroy us all.
That we are nothing but dirty nasty sinful
creatures and there is nothing left to do but
have a good go a destroying us all. But that of
course is not actually what is happening here.

As we come to understand the flood and
this covenant promise God makes after the
flood why don’t I give you a brief history of
humankind up to this point, or at least a brief
history of how sin filled the earth to such an
extent that everything is destroyed to give us
all a fresh start: So in the beginning there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, except God and
God made everything, the earth, the sky the
whole universe, everything. Last of all God
made a couple of humans whom God filled
with the very life/breath of God. God gave
them a beautiful garden to live in and they
were friends with God.

God had a pretty close relationship with
them until they decided one day that they
wanted to be like God and know all the things
God knows and in attempting to do so did the
one thing that God had asked them not do.
And by doing this and in attempting to be
who they were not, they introduced sin and
evil into the world. This is called the Fall.
God did not take kindly to this and kicked
them out of the garden and because of their
actions sin became apart of their lives and evil
became a part of the fabric the world itself.
If you work your way through Genesis
from the time of the fall through the time of
the flood each event given shows us that sin
was spreading and continually getting worse.
The first two people have two sons and one
kills the other, and things just go down hill
from there. Until we get to the point in
chapter 9 of Genesis that the forces of sin and
evil bring nature crashing down on itself. God
sends a flood in an attempt to wash things
clean.

When humanity sinned all of creation
suffered alongside of humanity. One of the
themes which runs through most of the Old
Testament is the fact that all of creation suffers
because of humanities sin. The flood is an
example of all of creation suffering because of
humanities’ sin. Sin started in the garden and
continued in the lives of all humans who
followed. Sin had become so rampant that the
forces of nature come crashing down in on
itself. The flood is the natural consequence of
humanities’ sin infecting the world, infecting
all creation. The sin of humanity floods all of
creation and so the world is covered in the
watery consequences of that sin. Humanity
drowns all of creation in their own sin, so to
speak. In many ways the world is washed
clean of sinful humanity and the infectious
nature of their sin. Only Noah, whom God
sees a righteous and unblemished by the
effects sin, and his immediate family are saved,
rescued from the consequences of humanities’
sin. Only Noah and his family remain safe
and dry inside the ark which God told him to
build.

Following the flood, God makes a covenant
not only with Noah, but with all creation. At
the point when we walk into the story this
morning, the flood waters have receded, the
land had dried out, and the world was once
again in habitable. Noah and his family step
tentatively out into the new world.
When Noah and his family get off the ark
God comes to Noah and makes a promise to
Noah, his descendants and the whole earth.
God makes a promise to not allow the world
to be flooded in this way again. The covenant
God makes is a promise made not only with
Noah himself but with all creation as well.
God makes a covenant with every living
creature and the birds of the air. God says that
never again will they be cut off from earth;
never again will the flood waters rise to
destroy the earth and all that lives.
This is a promise in which God says that
God will never allow humanity to be
destroyed by the waters of a flood again. God
will never allow the world to suffer as it did
with the flood. God will stay God’s own hand
and the world and nature will not collapse in
on itself in this way again and God places the
rainbow in the sky.

The rainbow in the sky above the ark,
Noah and all the animals is probably one of
the most iconic images of the Old Testament,
oddly enough it seems to be the favored image
for most children’s Bibles, but analyzing why
that is so, is a topic of idyll contemplation and
not this sermon. But instead I want us to think
about what the rainbow means. Why did God
put a rainbow in the sky? Why is that the
symbol of the covenant promise God makes
here in this passage? What is that rainbow
doing there?
First of all what exactly is the rainbow. The
rainbow was not something God created after
the flood, but God uses the rainbow as a
symbol of the covenant that God makes here
following the flood. The rainbow is a symbol
of God’s great war bow, you know as in bows
and arrows; the kind that archers would have
used in battle. God’s war bow could be the
bow which God has raised against humanity
and all the earth by bringing the flood. The
idea being that the bow that God uses to
bring the flood is a rain bow, a bow that brings
rain. The rainbow is a symbol of God’s rain
bow being placed in the sky as a sign to
humanity and all creation of the covenant that
God made when Noah and his family stepped
off the ark that day.
There are two understandings of what the
bow in the sky means. First of all it could be
that the bow in the sky is the rain bow which
God has laid down never to raise in battle
against humanity and all the earth again. God
is placing it in the sky so that we can see that
God has laid it down, that it is no longer
raised against us. It is placed in the sky so
that we know that God will never again raise
the war bow up again against humanity and
bring the waters of a flood down upon the
world.

It could be that the promise of the rainbow
is a promise of protection. God picked up the
rain bow and placed in the sky to protect us
from this happening again. In this case it can
be seen as a bow of protection. God had
raised up the great war bow to protect
humanity and the creatures of the earth from
the destructive forces of a future flood. In a
sense God is promising to protect us all from
the greatest consequences of sin. The flood
was an example of the worst that can happen
now that humanities’ sin has infected and
infested the world. God raised the bow to
protect the world from the worst that can
happen. God is moving to protect us from the
worst consequences that our own sin can bring
down upon us.

There are the two options and usually
when I see two options that are laying side by
side each other and not contradicting each
other I like look to see if perhaps we are to
come to the conclusion that both are correct.
Perhaps God is promising, by placing the
rainbow in the sky, to not only to not raise
the war bow against humanity and all creation
ever again, but ALSO promising to raise it to
protect us from the worst consequences of our
own sinful choices and the evil that affects the
world due to our sin. This is a promise from
God showing us that God will always move
on our behalf to mediate the consequences that
sin has in our lives and in our world.
That is really cool information. For many
of us it may give us a new way to look at this
story, but what does this mean for us today?
It means God loves us. This passage, first and
foremost, speaks of God’s love for us. God
loves us and does not desire for us to be
destroyed by our own sin and evil. God does
not desire for us or the entire world to be
completely destroyed because of the choices
we, as fallen humans, make to perpetuate the
evil that infects us and all of creation.
Secondly it tells us that God loves creation.
God loves the whole world. God cares about
this world, God cares about creation. God
does not wish for creation to be destroyed by
anything, much less by the consequences of
fallen humanity; either by our purposeful
actions, our actions that disregard creation or
by the unintended consequence our choices
and our actions have upon our world. God
created the world and everything that is in it.
As God created things, God stepped back and
saw that creation was good. God does not
desire that anything God created be destroyed.
Not by us, not by our sin, not by the evil we
have unleashed on this world. God cares for
all of creation because it is God’s creation after
all.

Lastly it tells us that God wants the best for
us. God will not rise up against us; God
promises to not raise up against humanity and
all creation. God’s desire is not to destroy us.
God’s desire is not to harm us, or bring
calamity to any of us individually or to
humanity as a whole. God’s desire is for us to
live apart from sin and evil and the horrible
consequence they bring to our lives and in to
our world. We are told here that God will
protect us from the worst that we bring upon
ourselves. God promises to protect us from
ourselves, to protect us from the worst of sins
consequences. God will not allow our sin to
so effect the world in which we live that world
will collapse in on itself in this way again.

We can look around at our world. We can
see the consequences of sin all around us. Bad
evil things happen every day, all these things
are consequences the sin of humanity and the
evil that we have unleashed in this world.
When we see these things happening every
day all around us, the rainbow reminds us
that God is protecting us from the worst
consequences of sin. We are being protected
from the worst things that can happen. God is
protecting us. The great war bow of God is
holding back the most horrible consequences
of sin and evil. God love us, wants to protect
us and save us from our own destruction.
This is ultimately played out in God sending
Christ to save us from our demise, to rescue us
from the consequences of the sin in which we
insist on living.

We have a God who is willing to go to
extreme measures to protect us from ourselves,
to show us love. Even here in one of the
earliest stories of the Old Testament we see a
loving God who is willing to come to us to
show us exactly how much we are loved. So
in many ways instead of us being Sinner in the
hands of an angry God we are actually to
sinners in the hands of a loving caring God,
who not only promises to not allow us to be
destroyed but promises to protect us, to move
on our behalf to mediate the worst possible
consequences of our own sin.

Encountering Jesus

Mark 1:21-28
Many people have a hard time connecting to passages like this one. We have a hard time making sense out of talks about unclean spirits or demon possession and don’t know how to wrap our modern logical scientific minds around concepts such as this. Even if we do not see people walking around appearing to be demon possessed, nonetheless the forces of darkness are at work in this world whenever anyone participates in actions that are contrary to the work and will of God.

Evil is still at work in this world in small as well a cosmic ways. People do horrible things. Evil is played out via the actions of people in every community, in every country each and every day. Somewhere today, a drunk will driver plow her car into oncoming traffic, a drug addict will take another hit after promising himself, his wife and his children that he would quit, and a family will be torn apart because the parents can’t seem to stop yelling at each other; a child will be harmed by an adult he loves, a woman will be beaten senseless by her husband or boyfriend and a man will be shot on his way home from work. Each and every day, children die of hunger, people are murdered and those in power misuse their authority to harm others. Evil is at work in this world in the actions, thoughts and reactions of people everywhere. Each and every day people all around us allow evil to be worked out through them. In this passage we what happens when evil in the form of this unclean spirit encounters Jesus.

We don’t know anything about this man or what he had done to allow an unclean spirit to inhabit his life and actions but we do know is how that spirit acted and reacted when it encountered the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Actually, the man and his unclean spirit are not the primary focus of this passage, but instead it is their and everyone else’s reactions when they are encountered by Jesus the messiah.
People at the synagogue have an encounter with Jesus. Jesus comes to Capernaum and when the Sabbath day came around, went to the synagogue to teach. We don’t know what he teaches. We know at other times he has gone into the synagogue, read and taught from Isaiah. We know in other places he has given proverbs type teachings. At other times and places he taught in parables. He might have used any one or any combination of these teaching methods that day, we simply don’t know.

What we do know is that the people are astounded at his authority when teaching. It must have been some pretty amazing bit of teaching. So you would think that it would be pretty important for Mark to include it in his gospel, but he doesn’t. And this is because it is not what he taught that astounded them. What astounds his listeners is not the content he taught but the authority with which he taught it. There is weight and meaning behind what he has to say. Jesus’ authority does not come from learning or adherence to the law but from an independent authority – his own divine authority, his own knowledge and understanding – out of his unfettered relationship with the one true living God. Jesus knew how to teach about the good news of God because he knew God. The people in the synagogue that morning had a divine encounter with Jesus.

Jesus is done teaching, the people are astounded and then suddenly something oddly disturbing happens – there is man there in the synagogue with an unclean spirit. We don’t know how he got there or from whence he came, whether he just wandered in at that very moment, or if he had been there all along but was silent until this point. Perhaps his spirit was dormant and mute within him and at this very moment cries out. We don’t know, but we do know that this man with this unclean spirit, at this time encounters Jesus, the messiah, God’s one only and eternal Son, the living word through whom God spoke the entirety of creation.
The man and his spirit ask three questions and then they end with a statement of fact. The first question is asked by the man himself. What are you going to do with us? These are the first words he says upon encountering Jesus. Do with us? The man and his unclean spirit- are together on this one – what are you going to do with us?

The Unclean Spirit, wants to know what will Jesus do with it (it probably only has terciary concern for the man, if any at all). As far as we know this is Jesus’ first encounter with an unclean spirit. The spirit probably has no idea what Jesus’ reaction to it will be. What does Jesus do to unclean spirits? This is the burning question to which this spirit needs the answer. It knows who Jeusus is, the Holy One of God. It knows who it is up against but it wants to know, what does the Holy One of God plan to do about this spirit’s existence in this man’s life?
The man also wants to know the answer to this question. He wants to know, what Jesus is going to do. How are you going to treat me? How will Jesus act toward me? Will he ignore me? Will Jesus cast me out of the synagogue to go live among the unclean? Sweep me under the rug so to speak – tell me to go live with all the other undesirables of society. Shunt me off to a mental ward. Place me in a “home” for “my own good.” What will Jesus do to me?

The second question is similar to the first and the man and the unclean spirit both want the answer to this question as well. What is Jesus going to require of us? The man wants to know, what will Jesus require of him. Will Jesus require him to get rid of the spirit? What would that mean in his life? Perhaps he has grown use to the spirit, he may not like it but it is apart of him and his life and it might be scary to get rid of it – it may not be something that he is prepared to do. Will Jesus require him to do something else? The man who was unclean with leprosy in the Old Testament Scriptures was required to bath 7 times in the Jordan river. Will Jesus require this man to do something so that he can be cleansed of the unclean spirit. What will Jesus require of him once the spirit is gone? He called these fisher men to give up everything and follow him. As the man encounters Jesus the one of the burning questions he has is, “what will he require of me?”

The unclean spirit also has a stake in this matter as well, it
wants to know, what Jesus is going to require of it. Will Jesus require it to leave? Where will Jesus require it to go? Is there anything it can to do maintain its existence after this encounter?

The last question they ask is, “Has Jesus come to destroy them?” The unclean spirit sees that there is nothing for Jesus to do but to destroy it. It knows more than anybody, standing in that room that day, exactly what Jesus was capable of and it knew Jesus could demolish it where it stood. It wanted to know what Jesus planned to it and wanted to know if it was facing its own destruction.

The man is also pretty anxious to know the answer to this question. The spirit was a part of this man and his life, he did not see life without it, and it had intertwined itself with who he was. He was allowing it to control his thoughts, his actions, and his words. Who was he without it? Would he be destroyed if and when Jesus cast it out and destroyed it. Was there any way to not be destroyed along with the unclean spirit? Here he was face to face with the Son of God and he did not see his life remaining the twisted unclean thing it had become, he knew Jesus was going to radically alter his life, and remove this spirit from him could that be done without destroying who he was? Could the demon be destroyed and there be a man left to go on living?

When the man and his unclean spirit encounter Jesus Christ they together come him with three questions and a declaration. The last thing they do is declare, “You are the Holy one of God.” Together they declare that they know who this Jesus is. They know he is the Holy one of God. It is because of this knowledge that they are engaging Jesus at all. All the previous questions were asked because of this knowledge, it is because of this one fact that the man and the unclean spirit stand before Jesus completely uncertain of their future.

This man and his unclean spirit have encountered the one true living God in Jesus Christ, what will become of man and spirit now? Jesus tells the unclean spirit to shut up and get out! And the spirit obeys him – he leaves kicking and screaming but he leaves nonetheless. The man is left free to live his life, free of the unclean spirit that he has allowed to bind and control him. Jesus gives him a new lease on life, a second chance, the ability to start fresh and make better choices, the ability to choose to love God and neighbor as the scriptures require.

This man has encountered the Holy one of God and because of that encounter he will never be the same. He allowed Jesus to cleanse him and rid him of all that bound him and held him captive, he allowed Jesus to take away that which he held onto too strongly, he allowed Jesus to cleanse and purify him from within. And now he has the ability to move forward and live life fresh and clean, to live an unblemished life. Jesus has cleansed him and set him on the path to having a right relationship with God. Jesus has cleansed him and given him the ability to live life the way God has created him to live it, he is now free to be the person that God created him to be.
“They” the gathered crowed have also encountered Jesus. The crowd that had gathered there in synagogue were watching. They heard Jesus teach and were astounded by the authority with which he taught, they saw the man and heard his words, watched as Jesus cast the unclean spirit out of him. And they are amazed. Amazed because he teaches with authority and amazed because unclean spirits obey him. They see that Jesus teaches a new teaching with authority – a new kind of authority that is different than any they have encountered before and are astounded and amazed by it. “He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.” They are amazed by this as well. The sentiment behind this thought is similar to “even the wind and the waves obey him.” People at this time put the ability to control spirits and the ability to control nature on the same level. This Jesus is amazing because he can command the forces that be, the powers that they did not understand or could comprehend and they obey him – Jesus’ authority was unique indeed. They are amazed and they tell other people, because of their amazement and Jesus’ fame spreads throughout the region
This crowd has encountered the Holy one of God and they go away changed as well, their lives may not be as radically changed by their encounter, as the man’s life was, but they are changed nonetheless. They are amazed by what they have seen and they go away from there with knowledge about Jesus they did not have before.

Each and everyone of them walk away with a choice, either to allow this amazement to change how they think about Jesus and what they believe about him. They can choose to believe that he truly is the Holy one of God or they can walk away and choose to believe differently. They can walk away and share what they have learned with others or they can keep it to themselves. The people in this crowd have encountered the Holy one of God in Jesus Christ, how will they allow this encounter to affect them as they walk away? Will it change their lives or will they go on living the way that they have always lived?

Whenever we come to church, whenever we bow our heads in prayer, whenever we see Christ in a fellow human being, whenever we open the scriptures, we are encountering the Holy one of God. Each and every time we encounter God we have the opportunity to allow that encounter to change who we are, change how we live. Each time is the opportunity to say, “Yes” to God and what he wants for our lives and say, “No” to living apart form him, say, “ No” to choosing ourselves over the things of God and to say, “No” to the unclean things that we allow to control our lives and how we live them.

When we encounter Christ it can be frightening – the man did not know what Jesus was going to do with him, he was afraid that Jesus might destroy him, he did not know what would become of him if he allowed his encounter with Jesus to change his life and the spirit he was allowing to live within him. Sometimes when we encounter Jesus it is scary, there are things in our lives that we know are bad, things that we really don’t want apart of our lives but we are afraid of what would happen if Jesus cleansed us of them. What will become us? Who will we be without them? It is almost as if we are afraid that we will be destroyed if we parted with these things and allowed Jesus to cleanse our lives.

Other times our encounters with Jesus are not so scary, not so radical, sometimes we just walk away with new knowledge, we have seen something miraculous that he has done, we have sat at his feet and been taught by him. We walk away with new knowledge of God and God’s kingdom. Even in these times we have choices about what to do with these encounters. Do we take what we have learned to heart, do we allow our new knowledge to influence the way we live, do we allow this knowledge to bring us closer to our God and help us to develop a deeper relationship with our Lord? Do we go away and share with others what we have learned in hope that they too can be changed and influenced by this knowledge, in hope that they can come to know Jesus as we know him?

We have come to church this morning, we have prayed, we have seen Christ living in each other and we have come to the scriptures this morning, we all have encountered Christ in all the many things that we have done here in this service.
Today we have encountered the God who speaks and the God who calls. What will we do with this encounter? What will I do? What will you do? Will you allow Christ to cleanse you of the unclean things that you have allowed to enter into and perhaps even control your life? Will you allow yourself to be taught by what you have learned today? Will you allow God’s words that you have encountered in this scripture and throughout this service change who you are? Will go you go from here today and share the good news of God with others so that they too might know God the way you do? You have encountered the Holy one God this morning, how will you allow this encounter to change your life?

Waiting Activities: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
Thessalonians is one of the first of Paul’s writings we have. The church at Thessalonica was one of the church’s of which Paul was most fond. In many ways all of his churches were like children to him, and in his family Thessalonica was the on who obeyed the rules and did all the things that would make a Daddy proud. When Paul writes this letter to them, they are a little discouraged. People are dying and it seems to them that Christ return, which was believed to be immanent was not quite as immanent as they might have hoped and this is bothering them. They don’t know what to do now. They are learning what it means to be a people who have to wait, waiting for Christ to come again, waiting for all things to be set right, waiting for the promise of God to all come to fruition.
Cidra was about two years old and Stella was still a tiny baby. We were traveling across country via plane and had a 3 hour lay over in someplace like Columbus. We had been lucky Cidra had slept the first half of the trip, but now, as we settled into our seats at the gate from which our plane would be leaving in a few of hours we had an energetic and awake child on our hands. We sat there for a little while taking some deep breaths and settling in as Cidra proceeded to run back and forth and climb all over the chair between us. We had placed ourselves in front of a window and fed her a snack while we tried to get her to watch the people on the tarmac below or the planes as they taxied around the runway, but as you can imagine, to a two year old Cidra, none of these things were interesting for any measurable length of time. So, I pulled out my magic bag. My magic bag was chock full of small toys, games, coloring books, and what have you all designed to keep one small toddler entertained while we waited. All of them gathered and a few recently purchased to entertain when all other forms of entertainment had failed. I pulled each thing out individually, without reveling anything else I might have up my sleeve, making sure that each toy, games or activity was used to its fullest before resorting to bringing out another. In this way, we whiled away the three hours we spent in that airport and they went by much quicker than we had thought they would. Cidra was entertained; to tell you the truth we were also entertained by entertaining Cidra.
In many senses we are living in a time of lay over. We are living in world in which Christ has already come but he is yet to come again. We are living in a time when Christ has begun to redeem the world but all things have not yet been set completely right. Heaven has come to earth in the form of a baby born in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago and Heaven comes to this world each time we act, react, and speak in ways which exemplify the love of God as seen in the life and teaching of Christ, but the Kingdom is not yet fully seen in this world and will not fully be seen until Christ comes again. In many ways we are between flights. The first flight brought the creator of the universe to earth and showed us the love God has for us and that that love can be lived out in our lives. We were shown what it looks like to live out the goodness of God in every moment of our lives. We saw what humanity can be when we are living our lives in relationship with our creator. And we saw in Christ the depth the lengths God will God to draw all creation back to the goodness and righteousness that was in the beginning. But that was the first flight. Right now we are waiting for the second flight. We are living a layover.
Paul is much like Mike and I with our bag of activities, entertaining ourselves and our antsy daughter while we wait. In this passage Paul is showing the Church the activities that can help us constructively pass the time while we wait. So as we are looking, as we are waiting at this terminal together, what do can we do with ourselves while we wait? What is in Paul’s magic bag of waiting activities?
So what should we do to fill the time we have while we are living through this layover between the Christ who has come and the Christ who will come again? We begin by being the Church, we take care of one another, lift one another up, help each other be better, encourage one another and help those among us who are weak. We are a family who helps each other be the best they can, are there for each other when those around us are in need and are an encouragement. Being nice to each other and helping each other out are primary to the kinds of activities with which we are to be keeping ourselves busy while we are waiting for Christ’s return. Living together as the body of Christ, supporting one another and being there for one another, learning from each other, and listening to those whom God has given us to teach us and guide us. This is what it means to be a family, to do life together.
But that is just the beginning. There are four things which Paul calls us to do always, or continually be doing. The first is a continuation of these first things. We are to always be good to each other and to everyone. Not only are we to be supportive of each other and encourage one another but we are to always be good to one another, but not to just each other to everyone. We begin filling our time by always doing good to everyone, treating everyone with the goodness, the kindness, the love which we experience in and through God. We bring the goodness of God to the lives of those within as well as without the church. Goodness is the mark of the love of God on our lives.
The second thing to which Paul calls us to always be doing is to be joyful. Being joyful is something we often want to make something that it is not. It is easy to believe that being joyful is about always being happy. Having a smile on your face and always sounding upbeat. Joy is actually not so much about our emotional state but more has to do from whence we gain our emotional reserves. Joy is a well of water from which you draw when the land is dry and parched, or even bitter cold. It is a fresh place from whence you pool your emotional sense of stability no matter what is going on, no matter what kind of day you are having, whether the events of the day, week, month or year are generally uplifting or depressing. Joy is a strength of emotionally stability that brings goodness and strength to even the most difficult and weighty situations. It is only when we have joy at the depths of our emotional beings that we are able to rejoice in all things, at all times and it is finding this sense of emotional stability in God that allows us to bring joy to all situations of life. And it is this joy, this rejoicing with which we are to fill our lives and our time as we are in this waiting period.
When joy is in the depths of our being, when that is the strength on which we rely, then we are able to fill our lives with the next thing with which Paul calls us to fill our time. We are to be thankful in all things, at all time. Even when our lives are filled with turmoil and chaos our lives are always filled with much for which we can be thankful. God has given us life and breath, redemption, love, grace. All goodness in our lives, all things that are pure, or wonderful, all these things have their roots in our lives because of the hand of God upon us, and our lives, working in and through our lives and the lives of those around us. And for these things we can be thankful. Living a live of thankfulness recognizes that the goodness, the beauty, the wonderful things around us are blessings for which we are to be eternally and continually thankful.
The last activity to which Paul calls us is to pray, to pray always. The activities to which we are called to live our lives as we wait are a lifestyle built on relying on God in all things at all times, finding our strength and joy in God and being thankful in all things. A life of prayer would just naturally flow from these previous things.
I was young mother, still on maternity leave, so Cidra was less than six weeks old. She was asleep in the stroller and I stood in the antique and tea shop that was just down the street from my house. Since I was on maternity leave, I had very little other than taking care this tiny little baby to fill my time and although she did fill much of my time, I still found that I needed to get out of the house and find other things to do. So I would go down the street to the little antique tea shop and talk with owner. She was a very kind and generous Christian lady who was an active member of the Disciples of Christ church in town. The particular day I have in mind we were talking about prayer life. I was telling her about my Orthodox friend and the ways she had worked to incorporate prayer into her daily life, the things she did and the ways she brought daily prayer into the mundane everyday parts of her life. There was another lady in the shop who had dropped in and out of the conversation. She had established for us that she believed herself to be quite the amazing Christian having corrected several of our misconceptions and have admonished us on things she saw as false beliefs of which we were speaking. To tell you the truth we did not know what to make of her. She had not participated much since we had been talking about my friend. Suddenly she piped up and said, that we really shouldn’t worry about having specific times of prayer, we should be praying continually. “I really don’t understand why people think it is so important to spend hours in prayer,: she explained to us, “Paul tells us our wholes lives should be a prayer. This whole idea of prayer time is completely unbiblical.” At that point I was shocked into silence. Never had I heard something so utterly bizarre in my life.
Paul does call for us to live lives of prayer, lives in which we are always praying, but this does not mean that we abandon a serious prayer life in which we spend significant time praying for the things which God calls for us to pray. No this means that we build prayer into our lives; that we take moments to pray as we go about our daily activities, that we take time in our down time to speak to God about the things that are heavy up on our hearts, bringing our daily struggles to God, sharing our joys and pleasures with God, taking our day to day activities to God; this means that we set aside special time where we spend time alone with God. It does not merely mean any one of these things, but instead means all these of these things. A life of prayer is a life where pray is at home in all parts of our lives. It is a life in which coming to God is a part of all parts of our lives. We live talking to God, we live spending time with God, and we live bathing the good parts, the bad parts, the exciting parts and the dull parts of our lives in the presence of God, speaking to God and bringing God into all parts of our lives.
This is living a life continually connected to God, drawing our strength from God, finding our joy in God, thanking God in all things and bringing every aspect, every moment of our life to God. As we are filling our time, waiting for Christ to return we are good to each other, our lives are filled with joy, thankfulness and prayer.

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

I was waiting in a line. It was a really long line. I looked at my watch. I had been there somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes and it did not feel as if the line had moved at all. I had been there far too long. I had not planned on just standing here for minutes on end. I wanted to come in get what I needed and leave, but instead I was waiting; waiting in a line that did not ever seem to move. I had looked at all the people around me, I had looked at everything in the room in which I was standing and not only was I waiting, but now I was board. It might have helped if I could have chatted with those around me; I did not know the language well enough to do so. I think it would have helped, if I could have at least entertained myself by reading the signs around me, but I could do little more than pick out one or two words. After all I was in the Pharmacia and although my tourist Romanian might have gotten me around the market quite well, I was not so good at pharmaceutical terminology. So I was board, waiting in line in a foreign country and I did not even know why I was waiting. Well, after I had waited 20 minutes all together, I came to know why I was waiting, it seemed the Pharmacist was late coming back from lunch and we were all just standing there while he had been chatting extra long with one of his friends over at the café. And it seemed I was the only one in the room who thought this was inconsiderate.

Thing is 20 minutes in line showed me one thing and one thing only, and that was that I was the only one standing in that not moving line who was becoming perturbed. Everyone else was just waiting. They were standing there chatting or thinking or doing, I don’t know what, but not a one of them was upset, or fidgety or anything. I was the only one shuffling and huffing and board and visibly disturbed by the situation. I could make my bets that they were all wondering, “What is wrong with that American? What is her problem?” At the same time I was noticing that not a one of them was upset or concerned or perturbed and they all seemed to take it in stride when we were told that the pharmacist had just taken an extra long lunch. Everyone else was just waiting. I was impatiently waiting.

When I told my Romanian friends about this occurrence they told me that Romanians simply don’t mind waiting in line or waiting for anything for that matter. In fact one told me a story that once she was going somewhere and saw a really long line for something and got in the line and waited with everyone else because if there was a line that long, it must be for a good reason. They lived in a society were you waited for everything. Nothing came immediately. Everything took time, so waiting was built into everything they did and they waited like pros. They did not huff or puff, or fidget or become impatient they just waited and accepted that waiting was a part of life. They knew something that very few of us here know and that is that it does not help things to get impatient or upset simply because you have to wait.
I was upset, I was perturbed and my upsetedness and my pertubitude did nothing. No matter how much I huffed and not matter how much I puffed that pharmacist did not come back from lunch any faster. No matter how much I tapped my foot and made loud deep sighs, my visible signs of impatience did not make that line move. If I wanted the medicine I was there to get (and believe you me, I wanted that medicine) I was going to have to wait in line. And whether I realized it or not, I could choose to wait patiently or I could choose to wait impatiently. I could use the time to think, to pray, I could have even broken out my poor Romanian and talked to the lady in front of me or I could wait impatiently and allow myself to get perturbed. I was going to wait either way, the question was, “How was I going to wait?” Waiting is a part of life and the sooner we learn to accept that the happier our lives will probably be.

Built into Paul’s understanding of Christianity, is the idea that we are all waiting. We are waiting for Christ to come. We are waiting to be made complete. We are waiting for the fullness of our salvation. We are waiting for the revealing of Jesus Christ. We are waiting for the end when all things will be set right and the world will be as it always should have been. We are a people waiting.
On Friday, we took our children to the tree lighting at the Royal Sonesta, which is a fancy hotel just a few blocks from the parsonage over in East Cambridge. We had hot chocolate, warm cider, gingerbread and sugar cookies, listened to Christmas music and the girls got this season’s first glimpse of Santa. As we headed home, Cidra turned to me and said, “Mommy, I am so excited, it is almost Christmas.” We don’t go to the malls much and don’t take the girls too many stores besides the grocery store, so they have not been inundated with Christmas since before Halloween. Friday was their first glimpse of Christmas and it was the first time we started talking about the fact that Christmas is near as a family. Yesterday they came here and helped decorate the sanctuary with all these beautiful advent decorations which we have here.

From here on out they will be living in anticipation for Christmas. Everyday will be a day of excited waiting. The most anticipated holiday of the whole year is soon upon us and they will spend every day between now and Christmas waiting. They have now joined the ranks of children, all across the country who are waiting; waiting with joy, waiting with expectation for their favorite day of the whole year, Christmas.

Our waiting is one of the things we are remembering during this time of advent. Advent is the season of waiting. During this time we look forward to celebrating the incarnation of Jesus on Christmas day, but it is also a season when we not only remember the time of waiting that occurred prior to the birth of Christ, while we wait for our own celebration of that glorious day, but we also remember that we are still waiting, waiting for Christ to come again, in all his glory and once and for all set all things right and restore this world to creation’s glory so that we all might be the people we were created to be and so that this world might be the world God had intended it to be.

But Paul is not concerned about the fact that we are waiting. The fact that we are waiting is a given. It is simply a part of the Christian life. What we do while we are waiting is what will define who we are. Christians will wait, but what will we do while we wait?

The church in Corinth, although not doing very many things well at this point in their history, are doing a few things right. They are waiting but they are not standing around, impatiently tapping their foot, looking at their watches, huffing, puffing and sighing deep sighs wondering when in the world will Jesus get around to coming back. They are not upset wondering why Jesus is wasting their valuable time and keeping them waiting. They are not upset or perturbed while they wait, they are using the wait and Paul is thankful for the things they are doing while they wait.
The people of the church of Corinth were people who called themselves Christians, they were people who had already chosen to follow Christ, to live their lives the way that God call them to live them and as such they realized that they were a people who lived waiting for Christ to return for Jesus to come again and set all things right but they were not sitting around waiting and wasting their time they were putting their waiting to good use they were waiting patiently and productively.

While they are waiting, Paul sees that God has gifted them and they are using they are using the gifts, that God has given them to allow God to strengthen them. God had provided the Church at Corinth with people who were gifted in many ways. In fact I would venture to say that God had gifted the Church at Corinth with the very gifts they needed to be the Church God was calling them to be. Paul is thankful that God has gifted them as such and Paul sees that among them they have all the gifts they need to be strengthened until the end. This means that the people of the Church of Corinth had the very gifts that the Church of Corinth needed to be the Church God had called them to be.

God gifts each and every church with the gifts that that Church needs to not only to survive but to thrive. The gifts that we have among us are the gifts we need to be the people God is calling us to be. The key is to see that we are gifted and figure out how that gifting is meant to strengthen the Church in which God has placed us and use that gifting so that the Church might be the church God has called her to be.
This is exciting, it means two things. First it means that God has gifted you, secondly it means that God has gifted us. God has gifted you. There are things that you can do that God has given you. Things that you are good at, things that you love to do things that you thrive in doing. And God has placed you here in this church because this church needs you. You are needed here. You belong here. God has called you and the very things that God has given to you to use to glorify and further God’s work and ministry in this world are the very things that this church needs. This means that your skills, your voice, your presence here matters. There are no unneeded or useless people in a church. Everyone whom God has placed in this church belongs here, has a place here and has something unique which only you can bring that we all need.

This also means that together God has gifted US so that together we can be the Church God has called us to be. We are not lacking. We are not less than what we need to be. If we all are using the God given gifts and talents, that each of us have then this Church will be the glorious Church God has called her to be. If we all are working together being the people of God, we are called to be, then this church will be the image of Christ’s love in our neighborhood, in this city and in the world. Together, we are the Church God envisions us to be, when we all are working together and being the people God has called us be, living out the giftings God has given to each of us.

But not only was the church of Corinth gifted but they were also active while they were waiting. While they waited for the Lord, they are doing all they can to enrich their knowledge and speech of Jesus Christ they are seeking truth and understanding, they were telling each other what they knew. They are seeking to know who Jesus is and what living for Jesus means. They are seeking to learn from one another; to be taught and to teach so that all may better know and understand. They were doing everything they could to know Jesus better, to know the story of the gospel better.
They were participating in what we call discipleship. They were essentially getting together and studying who Jesus was. They were listening to the stories of God. Learning what they could from the Holy Scriptures and from one another about how to be the people God was calling them to be. They were learning and teaching and becoming people who better understood who Jesus was, and who God is. This was important to them. They took time from their every day busy lives to spend with other people to grow, to learn and to teach one another so that they could all better understand and know the God whom they served and the savior in whom they believed.
These are people who are doing everything they can to allow God to use them to strengthen one another, so that the truth of Jesus Christ and the testimony of who Jesus is might be strengthened among them. They are teaching each other and allowing themselves to be taught by those around them so that they all might be strengthened, so that together they as the Church might grow and prosper. These are people who know that as Christians, coming to know Jesus better is a life long process and that God had given us each other in our church so that we might grow and learn. Everyone was teaching another and everyone was being taught. They were discipling each other. They all were mentoring and being mentored. No one was seen as unworthy to teach and no one was seen as being above needing to be taught. They were all growing, learning and becoming the people God was calling them be. And because they were all teaching and learning the testimony of Christ, the truth of the gospel, the work and will God was being strengthened among them, by them and through them. This was a thriving community of persons willing to disciple and be discipled.

In short they were attending Sunday school classes, they were going to Bible Study groups, they were teaching Sunday school, they were gathering in twos and threes teaching and learning from one another. They were never too busy to take time out of their schedules to spend time with other Christians learning and teaching about who Christ is and who it is we are called to be as Christians.

As Christians we are called to wait. We are called to wait, to wait patiently and to wait actively. We are to wait and while we wait we are to realize that we are gifted. We are all called to do the work and the ministry of God. Each of us have ways in which God has uniquely gifted us so that we might be the people God has called us to be, so that the work and ministry of God might be furthered in this world and so that the Church, in which God had placed us, this church, might flourish and be the Church that God has called her to be.

We all are to be willing to work together, all using the abilities that God has given to each of us furthering the work and the ministry of this church, so that together we may be the Church God is calling us to be. The church is only as effective and gifted as her members are willing to use their giftedness on behalf of the whole. Look at your life, think about the ways you are unique and special. Think about what you love doing. The small things that at which you excel, and think about the things that need to happen for this church to be the Church God is calling her to be. Think about the ministries we have here at this Church. There is some way that your gifts, your talents, your loves in life can be used to further the work that God is doing among us. God has placed you here because you have something to offer this church that no one else can offer.

But not only are we to work together in our giftedness to further the work and ministry of God in this Church but we are also to come together to learn from and to teach one another. None of us should go, from week to week without being taught and teaching. The truth of the gospel must be told, it must be learned. We cannot grow as disciples unless we are learning from one another and teaching one another. Each of us should have a group of at least two or three other Christians with whom we meet regularly to learn from and to teach. We all should have another stronger Christian from whom we are learning what it means to be a person of God and we all should be taking the time to mentor and teach at least one other about what it means to love Christ and to live the kind of lives of love to which Christ calls us.

We are called to be Christians waiting, but not waiting impatiently and most assuredly we are not called to wait while doing nothing. We are called to wait actively. Using the gifts and talents God has given to us and to learn and teach one another so that in all things we, the church might be strengthened until the day when Christ returns.