Happily Ever After

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 10/28/12

 

Scripture Job 42

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful step-daughter named Cinderella who lived with her step sisters and evil step-mother. Cinderella was treated badly and forced to do all of the labor in the house while her step-sisters prepared for a extravagant ball in which they hoped the prince would ask for their hand in marriage. With the help of her fairy God-mother, Cinderella was able to go to the ball, swept the prince off of his feet, but as the clock struck midnight she had to flee because all of the fairy God mother’s magic would wear off. In her dash she left her glass slipper, so the prince went around the village looking for the owner of that slipper. We all know that the prince found Cinderella they got married and the lived happily ever after.

            Or how about another one.  Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl named Snow White. One day the queen of the kingdom asked her magic mirror who was the fairest of all the land. Expecting to have her name uttered by the mirror, the queen was horrified when the mirror said it was Snow White and not her.  Bitter and angry the queen set out to get rid of Snow White and tricked her into eating a poison apple that put her into a deep sleep. The prince found Snow White in her deep trance and kissed her, and Snow White was healed because of the kiss from her one true love, and they lived happily ever after.

            Or one final one, one that is more to my liking. Once upon a time, In a galaxy far far away there was a young man whose family was killed by the evil empire. This young studied in the art of being a jedi and went to fight the evil empire and in particular one of the leaders of the empire Darth Vader. This young man, Luke, fought Darth Vader only to find out that Darth was his father. Craziness ensues, there’s a huge space station built to destroy the rebels and the Emperor of the Empire comes to oversee its completion. As the Emperor fights Luke, Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save his son, the Death Star was destroyed and they all lived happily ever  after.

             Happily ever after; if fairy tales taught us anything, or in my case if Star Wars taught me anything, it is that in the end everyone is supposed to live happily ever after.  There is a flow to the stories, starting with Once upon a time, where we are introduced to the main characters. Then there is some sort of conflict. Cinderella wants to go to the ball but can’t, Snow White is put into a deep sleep, and Luke Skywalker’s family is killed and a battle ensues between the Rebel forces and the Evil Empire. And then we know that in every fairy tale there is supposed to be a Happily ever after. The conflict gets resolved. Cinderella marries the prince, Snow White is awoken by the kiss of the prince, and the emperor is killed and the Death Star is destroyed. This natural flow of stories has been ingrained in us. So much so that it is not only what we expect from fairy tales, but it is what we expect in real life as well.

            For this reason when we read the book of Job we expect to find the very same pattern to the story, and for the most part we find it to be true. First we are introduced to Job, there is that moment of Once upon a time, and listen to the first chapter of the book and hear how similar it is. “There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”  This sounds almost exactly like beginning of fairy tales, where we are introduced to Job, and we are told that Job is the good guy. Then we know that there is supposed to be conflict, and is there ever for Job. We have the wager between the devil and God. We have Job losing his livestock, servants, and even his children. We have Job covered with painful sores all over his body, and we have Job’s wife and friends not believing that Job is an innocent man.  We find Job in an utter state of despair questioning God, and we have God responding to Job putting Job in his place. Yet through it all, when we read the book of Job we read it expecting and anticipating the moment when all is made right in the life of Job and he is able to live happily ever after.

            And so we come to that moment in our passage today.  After being scolded by the Lord, after  being put in his place, Job submits himself to the will of God. Job humbles himself, and says , “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.³‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.⁴‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.’⁵I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;⁶therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job even went on to pray for his friends, the same friends that had betrayed him. Job prays to God asking God not to punish them, And after this Job has his fortune restored to him. His brothers and sisters come and have a meal with him and comfort him, and in the midst of this each one of them gave Job money and gold. The Lord gave back to more livestock than Job had ever had before. Job had more children both sons and daughters, and we are told that his daughters were the most beautiful in the land. And then the scripture says, “After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations.¹⁷And Job died, old and full of days.”  And Job died old and full of days. That phrase alone sounds eerily familiar to and he lived happily ever after. So this is! We have the introduction, the conflict, and now finally here in the final chapter we have that happily ever after moment, right?   Well yes, but…….

            But what, you may be asking yourself.  This for sure is an instance of happily ever after; but if we only read the end of Job on this superficial level, then we set ourselves up for a very dangerous interpretation of the text. The temptation is to read this and to say that if we just endure any hardship that happens in our lives, then in the end God is going to bless us and help us prosper in this lifetime. Unfortunately this theology has been used for decades, especially by many televangelists. We know how it goes, a story will be told about a sweet, God fearing woman who was struggling and all she had left was $25, and she gave that to the televangelist’s church and then God blesses the woman with hundreds of thousands of dollars, a new house and a new car.  Then they ask you to send in your money and see how the God is going to bless your life. You may still be wondering, what’s wrong with that, but let us consider all of the people who are also in utter despair, who send in their money, who trust and believe in God, who continuously pray for God to bless their life, and yet they remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. How must they feel? They probably say to themselves if only I prayed more, I must not have believed hard enough, or I must have done something wrong to deserve this. After all this is the same theology that Job is fighting against throughout the whole book. It is his friends and wife who tell him that he must have doing something wrong. It is his friends and wife that tell him that he is being punished for not having enough faith. It is this type of theology that makes Job feel as though God is nowhere to be found, because Job has done everything right, and yet bad things are still happening to him. The danger in reading Job as a book that tells us to just endure the pain and God will make us prosper, is that we are able to see instances in which that simply is not the case.  We see people like Martin Luther King Jr., and we expect the story to play out the same way. Once upon a time there was a man, and because of the color of his skin his was discriminated against. This man stood up to the injustice and led a peaceful movement that spread the message that no matter the color of your skin we are all children of God. We know that the next section of the story is supposed to be the happily ever after, but as we know King was shot and killed. In the Bible we have instances of great Christian leaders killed for their beliefs as well. All of this throws a wrench into this understanding of happily ever after.

            And yet, the story of Job is a story of joy and peace in the end for Job. It is a story of happily ever after. But let us look more closely at where this joy comes from. We look at the end of Job and we are of course first drawn to the fact that he is given riches, that he is given more livestock than he had ever had, that he has more beautiful and wonderful children, and that he lives on for quite some time. Yet at the same time we are quick to forget that Job had other children that he lost, are these children supposed to simply be a replacement for them? We forget that his wife and his friends had questioned him and abandoned him in his greatest moment of need; does all of this wealth help heal those emotional wounds?

And yet, Job does live happily ever after, so what is it that really brought peace, resolve, and joy to the life of Job? In our expectation of happily ever after, in our experience of fairy tale endings, we jump right to the end and forget to look at the beginning of this chapter. What is it that really resolves the conflict. When we look closely at the beginning of this chapter we see two things happen. First after being rebuked by God for acting as if he were God, Job humbles himself, confesses that it really isn’t about him, and puts his full trust in the Lord. The second thing that happens, is that Job once again acts selflessly, and asks God not to punish his friends, even though they had abandoned him and spoken falsely about God. It is only after these acts that we read about Job’s fortunes being restored and it seems as if it is through these acts that Job truly finds joy. Remember as we read through the book of Job most of what was troubling Job, most of his complaints, were not about the loss of his family or fortunes, not even the abandonment of friends and his wife, but Job’s biggest struggle was why was God doing this, and why was it happening to him. Finally in the end, Job realizes that God is greater than he could understand, that God is merciful and that God is just, and that even though Job may not have understood why these things were happening to him, he realized that God had never left him. And then Job realized that everything is not about him. The whole time Job was wallowing in his self-pity, and all of us have to admit it was for good reason, but in the end Job humbles himself, becomes selfless, and despite everything his friends said to him, asks for God to forgive them. The joy for Job seems to come from the fact that the burden was off of his shoulders. God’s mercy and justice was no longer something he had to struggle with trying to figure out, because Job put his full trust in God. Job’s joy seems to stem from the fact that life is no longer a struggle of trying to figure out God, the primary goal of life was no longer to “do the right things” so that God will bless you, but instead it became about a true relationship with God. A relationship that involves trust, and not a trust that God will bless you with riches, but a trust that God truly loves you and looks out for you. A trust that that though you may not understand what is going on in your life, God does. This is the joy that Job experiences. A relationship that is founded on a principle of I will trust you if you will bless me in the future is not a good relationship, but a relationship founded on the principle of I will trust you because of who you are, is a relationship that brings joy.  The true love story, fairy tale ending starts with that commitment of for better or for worse, and when we make that commitment to God not even death can do us part. When we make that commitment, when we put that trust in the Lord, no matter what happens in our lives, even through good or bad, we truly can live happily ever after.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 10/21/12

Scripture- Job 38: 1-7, 34-41

When we last left Job, he was in a state of utter despair. He felt as though God was nowhere to be found. We talked about how often we feel as though we are not supposed to be angry at God or have any doubt, but that in fact it is perfectly normal. We discussed that for Job that though he did not understand why all of these horrible things were happening to him and though he felt as if God was nowhere to be found, though his faith was dwindling, his hope in the Lord remained strong. He had a hope that God had not abandoned him. He had hope that there was some reason for all of the things that were happening to him. He had hope that if only he could present his case before the Lord that he would be judged an innocent man.

            ….Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for.  In our passage today we finally see God responding to Job. Job gets his chance to plead his case before the Lord, but I don’t think that Job was prepared for how the Lord responded. And let me just say I love God’s response to Job. My friends and family know that I am actually a very sarcastic person, so when I first read the passage for today I actually laughed, because there is definitely a hint of sarcasm in the words of God. This is what God says to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.⁵Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?⁶On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone⁷when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?⁸“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb.” ““Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you?³⁵Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? There are  plenty more of these amazing rhetorical questions, in fact they continue on for a couple more chapters in Job. I love these questions because I can almost hear how God is saying them. This is because they remind me of some of the ways in which we sometimes respond to people questioning us. For example there is the backseat driver. We all love the backseat driver.  You’re driving along and all you hear is, Why didn’t you turn there? You should have taken this back road. You’re going to fast, get in this lane. Finally you just want to turn around and say, “I’m sorry, did you want to drive.” Or another example, you invited friends over to a cookout, and you and your friends are all gathered around the grill (because we all know you just can’t grill alone) and as you’re watching the burgers cook, your friend starts to tell you to “flip the burgers you’re going to burn them, put this one more in the center, turn down the temperature a little (that is if you have a gas grill), don’t open the lid so much.”  Finally you just stretch out your hand with the spatula and say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had culinary training, please go ahead and cook.” I can almost hear that same sarcasm in these words from the book of Job today.  It is almost as if God is saying to Job, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were God. Tell me how would you have created the Earth. How would you rule over it?  Please Job since you seem to know all about my job, how would you protect the lion cubs and the ravens? When God asks Job these series of questions of was he there when, does he know how to… what God is really saying to Job is, who do you think you are?

            Who do you think you are? Do you think that you are God? This is a question that we really need to ask ourselves. Do we think we are God? Of course we will be quick to say no of course we aren’t, but let’s truly think about it. How much trust have we put into our own intellect, our own ability to reason, our own understand of the world as it is, and our own understand of the world as it should be? At first we may still say no we don’t do that, but it really takes a story like Job, to help us see our faults. When everything in the world makes sense to us, when things go as we think they should, or if they don’t, if we have an easy explanation for why, then we can easily say that God is merciful and just. But when we have a story like Job, imagining that we were like Job and did not know about the nature of discussion between the devil and God, then we start to question the mercy and justice of God. If it doesn’t make sense to us as humans, then it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why this is happening, and therefore since I don’t understand there must be no logical explanation. Now do you see our folly? We as humans have become so absorbed in ourselves that we think that we are supposed to understand everything. After all the book of Job from chapter three to Chapter 38, our chapter for today, is a great debate between Job and his friends. The whole purpose of this debate was show who knew the way in which God acted. Here in our passage today God reminds us of how foolish it is to think we can completely understand God.

            The movie Bruce Almighty depicts idea extremely well. The movie is about a Buffalo city news reporter who is having a rough time in his life. After losing his job and being mugged by a gang, he yells out to God that God should have been the one who was fired. Later God responds to him, gives Bruce the ability to try his hand at being God. At first Bruce uses his new abilities for random purposes. He divides his soup like the dividing of the red sea, and then uses his power to get revenge on the gang that attacked him. While he was enjoying this great power he was all of the sudden overwhelmed by voices in his head. These voices turned out to be prayers. Overwhelmed by the voices he tries to find ways to organize the prayers. First he has them organized into files, but filling cabinets quickly overran his apparent. Then he tried something smaller, post it notes, but they too overran his apartment. Finally, he had the brilliant idea of organizing them all into emails. After he did this, he then realized that these prayers could not just pile up in his inbox unanswered, that he actually needed to answer the prayers. After reading and answering a few, he realized there were way more than he could handle, so he ended up creating a reply all of yes to all of the prayers, meaning he granted whatever the people were praying for. Time went on and all seemed to be well until everything started to fall apart. Sports fans prayers were answered and the Buffalo Sabers finally won the Stanley Cup. At the same time all of those who prayed to win the lottery won the lottery, meaning that the winnings were shared amongst them all and were very small. These and other events led to a riot in the city and Bruce, runs in fear to the place where he first met God. There they have a wonderful conversation.  Bruce in a moment of confessions states, “there were so many, I just gave them what they all wanted.” To which God responds, “Yeah, but since when does anyone have a clue about what they want?”

            “Since when does anyone have a clue about what they want? “ Yes these are words from a Hollywood production, and these are not really the words of God, but they sure do resonate with our scripture for today. Why do we think we know what is best. When our prayers are not answered in the way in which we asked for them, we claim that our prayers are not answered. We claim that there is no God. Sometimes we are like Job, questioning God, questioning why God is not working in our lives in a way that makes sense to us. Even worse, far too often we act like Job’s friends. We act as if we know all about God’s justice acting as if we know all about God’s mercy. We are quick to point fingers at others telling them when they are sinning, telling them that they are falling short of the Kingdom of God, telling them that we know where they will end up when they die, if they don’t change their lives. Too often we act as if we are the judges. But, it is Christ who sits on the throne of judgment separating the sheep from the goats. As we say every Sunday in the Apostle’s Creed, “He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. If this scripture today teaches us anything it teaches us that WE ARE NOT GOD!

            And yet, for however condemning this sounds, however much this sounds like God putting us in our place, which it is; at the same time the proclamation that we are not God is also a word of hope. In those rhetorical questions that God asks Job, we see the greatness of God. We see a God who created the earth and the stars, a God who takes care of all of the creatures of the Earth, and a God who put wisdom into our minds. It takes me back to the beauty of Psalm 8 which says, “Lord, our Lord,how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory
in the heavens.² Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. ³ When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, ⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?^{[c] 5} You have made them^[d] a little lower than the angels^[e] and crowned them^[f] with glory and honor. ⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their^[g] feet: ⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.⁹ Lord, our Lord,how majestic is your name in all the earth!

            When we hear these descriptions of the glory of God, a God who with just the work of his fingers  set the moon and the stars in place we can only stand back in awe. What a mighty God we serve. We like the psalmist ask ourselves what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? And yet we then here the amazing words of hope, “You have made them^[d] a little lower than the angels^[e] and crowned them^[f] with glory and honor. ⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their^[g] feet: ⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.⁹ Lord, our Lord,how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Such a mighty God, cares so much for us, us who when compared to God as so insignificant. The God of all creation, still heeds a listening ear to Job.  This passage reminds us that we are not God, and thanks be to God for that. Nothing we know, nothing we could do, nothing we could ever say, can ever come close to the glory, the mercy, the love, the justice, and the power of God. So when God reminds us that we are not God,  the only thing that I can say to that, is thanks be to God.

Where is God?

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 10/14/12


Scripture- Job 23: 1-9, 16-17

 

When we last read about Job, we were in the second chapter of the book reading about the little wager between the devil and God; the devil claiming that any human could be turned away from God, and God offering his servant Job as an example of one who would always be faithful. We learned that Job had lost his livestock, his servants, and even his children, and now Job was afflicted with painful sores all over his body, that he would have to sit and scrape off throughout the day. And then we have his wife, who believes that Job is being punished by God for some sin he must have committed. She tells Job to curse God and die! And then we had Job’s response, “Should we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” If after last week’s sermon you felt like things weren’t tidied up into one nice, easy, clean sermon, then you are correct. As we explore Job we are going to be focusing just as much on learning with Job than we will on learning about Job. In essence we are journeying with Job through his struggles, and forcing ourselves to address some of the issues that Job wrestles with. Each week we will learn a little more about God and about humanity, but the full picture will only be clear once we are able to look at the whole story. If you leave one Sunday feeling like you have more questions than answers, if you leave feeling more somber than joyous, that’s ok; That means we are truly wrestling with the book of Job, and have faith, just as Job has faith, that in the end the glory of God will be revealed.

            With that being said, let us now continue to journey with Job. What has happened between where we left off with Job rebuking his wife, to where we are today? The answer to this is rather simple, it has been a lot of dialogue. The story does not progress as excitingly as it did in the first two chapters, we do not hear much from the devil or God, there is not much narration of events happening in the life of Job. Whereas the first two chapters of the book of Job are comparable to a New York Times bestselling novel, the following chapters remind me much more of the tedious theological and philosophical readings from seminary. This is because what we have in the chapters up to our passage for today is a debate between Job and some of his friends. His friends, like his wife don’t believe that Job has remained a righteous man. The tell him that he is being punished for some sin that he has committed, and that Job needs to stop lying to them, stop lying to himself, and stop lying to God. They tell him that he should just confess before God and accept his punishment. Another friend speaks right before our passage for today. He tells Job that there is forgiveness and that there is repentance that all Job has to do is change his ways and he can be forgiven. This friend differs from his other friends, this friend recognizes that God is just and loving; not simply condemning, but a God that truly cares for his children and wants all to be close to him.

            While this friend’s offer of repentance is a healthier view of God and of God’s mercy and justice, we are still left with just one problem. Job is innocent! There is nothing that Job needs to confess, there is nothing that Job needs to turn away from. All of this leads to our chapter for today, where we begin to see Job express his frustration, his fear, and his despair. Job knows that he is innocent, he wishes that he could just go before the Lord and plead his case, but Job feels as though God is not there. He says, “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him;⁹on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.¹⁶God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; ¹⁷If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!” Here was have Job, a righteous man, a man who has always walked alongside God, a man that even God said the devil could not turn, and now a man who feels as though God is nowhere to be found. Job has hit rock bottom.

            We can all empathize with Job. Almost all of us have faced times in our lives in which things got so bad that we felt like God was nowhere to be found. Burdens continued to weigh down upon us, loss after loss was heaped on to us and we cried out to God and felt as if God was not there. It is a scary and lonely feeling, to feel as if God is not there. Usually after a while our depression subsides and we are filled with anger and doubt. We cry to God, “If you really loved me why weren’t you there for me?” We see tragic events such as 9/11 and we ask ourselves, or others are quick to ask us, “Where is God in this?” We search our souls, trying to find an answer to this question and we can’t figure out how God would allow these horrible things to happen in our lives or to our neighbors. All of this usually leads towards despair, doubt, anger and a whole array of emotions towards God.

            Then when we feel this emotion towards God we start to feel guilty. We say to ourselves, “ I am a Christian, I have been ever since I was a child, or I remember how God turned around my life, I can’t be angry with God. I’m not supposed to be angry with God. I’m not allowed to be angry with God. I can’t feel God in my life I am a horrible Christian, something must be wrong with me. I can see how God has blessed the lives of all of those around me, but I must be doing something wrong because I just cannot feel God in my life”. When we are faced with these times of doubt, times of despair, and times of anger towards God, we often start to feel guilty. We have been told that a good Christian always stands firm in their belief, we have been told there in no room for doubt or anger or despair because that is just allowing room for the devil to creep in. We have been told that if we don’t feel God in our lives then we are doing something wrong. Brothers and Sisters I tell you that this simply is not true.

            We find in scripture instances of people in the midst of despair, feeling as though God is not with them. The psalms for example are full of pain and despair. Take psalm 42, the psalm that we read in our responsive reading this morning. The psalm says, “¹As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.²My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? ³My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”⁴These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. ⁵Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” It goes on to say, “⁹I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”¹⁰As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” ¹¹Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God.”  Where is your God? Why are cast down O my soul, Why have you forgotten me? This psalm like many others expresses the pain and the despair that the Israelites were facing. This despair found in the psalms is so important that even Jesus quoted the psalms as one of his last  dying words saying, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” If the Son of God can cry out words like these in times of his pain, why do we act as if we are not allowed to? It is not something new to doubt God. It is not as if we are the only ones who have ever felt all alone. It is not as if we are the only ones who have ever cried out in anger at God. We have read the psalms and heard the deep despair in the hearts of the Israelites. We have heard the cries of Jesus on the cross, and in our reading for today we have felt and experienced the emptiness of one of God’s righteous servants, Job. Expressing or fears, our doubts, our pain, our anger, or despair, and our loneliness is something that is not only perfectly acceptable for Christians to do sometime in their life, it is also something that is completely normal.

            So why have we been taught that all of these emotions are wrong as a Christian. Why do we feel so guilty when we are flooded with these emotions? Whoever taught these things to us did not do it out of ill intent, but did it because they truly cared about us. It is because there is a fine line between doubting God and rejecting. There is a fine line between asking Where is God, and saying there is no God. This may sound nit-picky but there is a huge difference between the two. One is expression of all of your pain to God, and the other is completely rejecting God. In all of the scriptural examples given earlier we see that even with all of the doubt and despair, there is still hope in God.  Right after saying Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? The psalmist says, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help ⁶and my God.  In Jesus’ words we find that though they are full of anguish, they still say my God, my God recognizing that the Lord is still our God. In other Gospels we also go on to find that Jesus also said words of great hope, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” And then there is Job. Job who has talked about looking east and west and not being able to find God, also says this, “³Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!⁴I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.⁵I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.⁶Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me.⁷There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.” Even though Job has no idea why these horrible things are happening to him, even though Job knows that he is innocent and feels as if he is being unfairly punished for something, Job shows that he trusts the Lord. Trusts that the Lord is just and that if Job only had the opportunity to plead his case before the Lord that the Lord would act with justice. Here we find Job in the middle of pain and anguish, of fear and despair, and yet through it all he still has hope in the Lord. This is how we should question the Lord. When we feel as if God is not there, or that God is not responding to our needs, When we feel angry at God or have times of doubt, that is ok, but we should not do it by rejecting the love, mercy and existence of God, but we should always do it with hope.

            So how do we do this? How do we live out this hope and despair at the same time? Our founder John Wesley faced a similar dilemma. We find in his journal that at one point of his life John felt a loss of faith. He asked one of his friends, a Moravian named Peter Boehler, if he should quit preaching since he himself was lacking in faith. Boehler responded, “By no means” So Wesley asked him, “But what can I preach?” He said, “Preach faith until you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” This is solid advice. In times in which you feel as though your faith is dwindling, do the things that you would do if your faith was strong. By doing this though your faith may be weak, your hope is strong because you are putting your hope in Christ to strengthen your faith, and you may just come to find that some of those things that you did when you had faith, may help you once again find it. Through it all, we do not simply stop with our question of where is God, but even in our doubt we continue to look for him, and God will find you.

The Devil Went Down to Uz

Sermon as Preached 10/7/12 at Lambs and Evington UMC

Scripture Job 2:1-10

We’ve all probably heard the great Charlie Daniel’s Band song “the Devil Went Down to Georgia.” If you haven’t it goes a little like this.

The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind 'cos he was way behind and he was willin' to make a deal.
When he came across this young man sawin' on a fiddle and playin' it hot.
And the devil jumped upon a hickory stump and said: "Boy let me tell you what:
"I guess you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player too.
"And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
"Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his due:
"I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cos I think I'm better than you."
The boy said: "My name's Johnny and it might be a sin,
"But I'll take your bet, you’re gonna regret, 'cos I'm the best that's ever been.”

And then a great fiddle battle ensues. It’s fun song, and a song with a fascinating story about the devil making a bet for the soul of a young boy. For how entertaining that song is, for all the drama wrapped up in those words in in those fiddles, they still don’t compare to the drama that we find in our very own Bible, in the book of Job. Here in the book of Job we also find a sort of bet or wager, but this time it’s not between the devil and some random boy, this bet is between the devil and God!

            The story in our passage today starts out with God surrounded by the angels when all of the sudden the devil shows up. God asks the devil, “where did you come from?” and the devil begins to tell about his journey around the earth tempting humans, causing them to doubt their beliefs, causing them to give up on God. You can tell that the devil sort of enjoys bragging about this to God, it seems to make him feel powerful, and he seems to suggest that he is so powerful that he can turn any human against God. But God challenges him, God says, “Have you considered my servant Job?” He tells the devil that Job is a faithful follower, that he is righteous, that he has and will always trust and follow God.” Challenge accepted! The devil sees this almost a dare, and tells God that all humans when it comes down to it will choose their life over God.

            When hearing this story what troubles most Christians, and probably Jews for that matter, is that God goes along with this bet. All that God says to the devil is that you must spare his life. Why? Why would God allow this to happen? Why wouldn’t God simply step in and solve? This is something that has been questioned for centuries, it is something that I cannot stand here and act as if I have all of the answers to this question, but let me present it in one way that may at least help us to think about it in another way. First let us make it clear that it is the devil who wishes to harm Job, not God. The devil is the one who enjoying putting afflictions upon Job, God on the other hand allows it because he trusts Job. The devil has become so cocky about his own works and now God trusts Job to put the devil in his place. This does however mean that Job does however have to go through hardships, it must be tough for God to watch and do nothing. It really reminds me of a parent with their child. A baby that cries throughout the night makes you want to get up and hold the baby and rock the baby to sleep, and you do for a while, but then there comes a point where in order for the baby to learn to sleep throughout the night a parent has to let the child cry throughout the night. I can imagine as a parent how difficult this must be, especially if you have one of those baby monitors in your room, you hear the baby and all you want to do is comfort it, but you know you can’t, you have to let the baby cry for its own good.  Or when a child grows up and is struggling with math, and you see the problem you know the answer and you just want to do the work for them, but you know they have to struggle through it to learn it. This is how I imagine God in this passage, God wants to help so bad but knows he can’t. The unfortunate e part of this story is that such a heavy burden is placed upon Job. Job is already a righteous man, maybe the hardships may strengthen his faith a little, but it is not as though Job needed these challenges to be closer to God.  Poor Job, because of his righteousness has this placed upon him. He has become God’s shining beacon of humanity, the one who will stand up to the devil. God  allows all of this to happen because he trusts Job, trusts that he will not falter, and through all of the hardships that Job faces, we must recognize that to have this sort of trust put on you by God is in fact, quite an honor.

            And Job did have many hardships placed upon him. In chapter one of Job we find a similar scene with a wager between the devil and God, which is common in writing of this time. Repetition was often used to emphasize the importance of something but also to make distinctions. In the first chapter after the bet, the devil attacks the things that Job has. Job’s livestock are stolen, his servants either burn to death or are attacked and killed by outsiders, and his children are killed after their house collapses on them.   In our passage today we find that the devil inflicts Job with horrible and painful sores all over his body, so bad that he must sit around and scrape them off with a broken piece of pottery.  This physical attack of the body, along with what happened to his family, servants and livestock would have been interpreted by people at the time as God being displeased with Job. They would think that Job must have sinned in some way and now God is paying him back for his sins. This thinking gets so bad that even his wife doesn’t believe him anymore. She says to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” But here we have one of the most poignant responses by Job, he says, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

            Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad? As Christians this is a question that we need to seriously ponder. We are quick to give praises to God for the ways in which he blesses our lives, but when we face times of trouble we are also quick to curse God, or even worse believe that God is not even there.  Or like the wife of Job we tend to believe that it is some sort of punishment for our actions, that we didn’t so something well. How many times have you heard someone say well if I had only prayed harder, things would be different?  This thinking is the same as saying that you are being punished by God, and this is what Job is challenging. The simple fact is that evil exists, humans are sinful, temptation is real, and there are just situations that we don’t understand, but in these times let us remember Job’s question, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad.” This question is at the very heart of this book. As we explore Job further the next three weeks we will hopefully begin to understand this question better.  But for now, be comforted by the fact sin and death no longer has a hold on us, that God called another man to take on the devil, and this time even required the sacrifice of his own life. So as we prepare for communion let us give thinks for that sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let us be filled will the grace that flows forth from his blood.

           

Can I Get a Witness?

Sermon as preached 9/30/12 at Lambs and Evington UMC


Scripture: 2 Timothy 1:6-14

Back in the 90’s there was a certain brand of t-shirts that were extremely popular, especially if you were a sporty type of person. The brand of the shirts was called No Fear, and each shirt has some sort of either sarcastic or inspirational saying that emphasized that notion of no fear. For example some of the lines on the shirts included, “You must always push the limits, because if you never fail, you never succeed. The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed on game day. There’s only one thing worse than losing, it’s quitting.” And of course the classic, “Losers quit when their tired, Winners quit when they’ve won.” These shirts and the sayings on the shirt were meant to be motivational messages for sports players to never give up, to always play your hardest, and to never accept anything less than the best. The shirts were however also a way of boasting about your own athletic prowess, they were a way of saying I know I am good, and I have No fear in this upcoming game.

            No Fear. Paul and Timothy may not have had motivational t-shirts back in the day but this message of no fear is at the center of our passage for today. Now of course message of  No fear differs drastically from the message of the shirts, Paul is not telling Timothy to try to crush his competition, he is not telling him that failure is not an option, there is no if you’re not first you’re last mentality, and he is not telling Timothy to boast or trash talk, yet there are still so common threads between the shirts and Paul’s message for Timothy. In Paul’s letter to Timothy there is this theme of perseverance, of no fear of whatever may come your way, and also though Paul is not telling Timothy to boast or trash talk, but Paul is telling Timothy to speak up, to never cower from testifying about the way God has worked in his life, and to hold fast to the truth of the Gospel. Paul says, “⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

8 Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God,⁹who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.”

            We find out in 1 Timothy that Timothy is a rather young apostle, who has been working with Paul in spreading the Gospel. In chapter 4 of 1 Timothy Paul has to remind Timothy to not let anyone look down upon him because he is young, but rather to set an example in his speech, his conduct, his love, his faith and his purity. This shows us that there was already some doubt or timidity in the mind and actions of Timothy. This is further compounded by the fact that there were many false teachers that started to emerge at the time, probably speaking messages that were more enticing, that did not require much commitment from the people or on the other side relegating truth and knowledge to a select few.  This is why Paul tells Timothy, “Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.¹⁴Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Timothy finds himself in a situation where he has to fight for respect because of his age, and at the same time must hold true to the Word of God while others in the world have distorted the message. Many of us probably feel the same as Timothy, we see something in our lives that makes us feel as if we have to fight for respect whether it is our age, gender, economic status, level of education, whatever it may be many of us feel that same pressure. And then we look at the world around us and see the message distorted in so many ways. We see churches who have so many rules and are so judgmental, that view themselves as having all the answers and everyone else as being lesser. On the other side there is an idea of Christianity that requires no commitment, no change in one’s life, no true relationship with God  We see all these things and feel all of this pressure to do things that  seem so big when we seem so little, but still Paul tells Timothy and tells us as well, to have no fear.

            At first this may sound like an assurance that nothing bad will happen to us, that we will be saved like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace, or like Daniel in the lion’s den, but this not what Paul is saying. In fact the opposite is true, Paul is telling us that when we stand true to our testimony hardships are likely to come our way. Paul tells about how he himself is imprisoned, in other letters Paul talks about the thorn in his side. In fact Paul says, “Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel.” Paul invites us to join in suffering with him.

            Why? Why should we suffer because of our testimony? We suffer because of the gift that Jesus Christ has given us through his own suffering. We suffer because God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of love, of power, and of self-discipline. It is not that God wants us to suffer, but that God trusts us as disciples of Christ, to help in changing the world by declaring the good news of forgiveness of sins, the good news of the Resurrection, the good news of eternal life, and the good news of the Kingom of God. It is because of this good news that we risk suffering. We have come to accept Jesus in our lives through someone else’s testimony in our lives, it may not have necessarily been a verbal testimony, but they were a witness through the way they spoke and lived their life. Now we have the great honor and great responsibility of being that person in someone else’s life. We risk the suffering because the stakes are so high, we risk the suffering because the message of Jesus Christ far outweighs whatever may happen to us.

            Throughout the passage Paul also gives us hints at the most important reason that we are able to give our witness with no fear.  He says, “For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you” “relying on the power of God,⁹who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace” Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Did you hear it? The gift of God that is within you, relying on the power of God, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. Throughout the passage Paul reminds us that God is with us. When we speak with no fear, we do not do it out of our own strength but are able to do because God is with us. The Holy Spirit is able to work through and in us share the word of God with others, to tell of the ways in which Christ has changed our lives. So instead of me standing up here continuing to preach, let us stop and take time to listen the witness of Christ in someone else’s life. May the testimony speak to our hearts as well as kindle the fire within our souls making us bold enough to be a witness for God.

Grace to Lead Me Home

Sermon as preached at Evington 9/16/12 and Lambs 9/23/12


Scripture: 1 Peter 4:1-11

The hymn Amazing Grace will forever be tied to service in my mind. This may seem pretty odd, since the hymn’s lyrics are much more about conversion than they are service; they are much more focused on oneself, rather than others. Still, I will always treasure this hymn as a hymn of service, because of one of my own experiences in service.  In 2006, a year after hurricane Katrina had devastated the gulf coast of America, the church I grew up in sent a team of members down to Gulfport, Mississippi to help with recovery and rebuilding efforts, and I was fortunate enough to be on that team. When we got there, even a year later the area was still in shambles. There were beautiful antebellum stairways that lead to nowhere, McDonald’s and Gas station signs, but no building, and even a small fishing boat that had washed up about three blocks inland. Our church had the pleasure of helping our a man named Leo. Leo had lost just about everything in the storm, and teams had been helping him throughout the year fix his house. Our main task was fixing the walls and cleaning debris from the yard. Due to the damage to his house, Leo had been living in a small FEMA trailer for over a year, he did plumbing work whenever he could get a job, but most people in the area were like him and plumbing was the least of their worries. One day during the middle of the week, Leo and his brother wanted to show us their gratitude for the work that we were doing. Although they did not have much, they cooked us a wonderful Cajun feast including jambalaya, shrimp Gumbo, and Crawdads. While we were eating and resting in the shade, Leo and his brother began to sing, and what did they sing? Amazing Grace. The sound bellowed from  the depths of their souls, while both they and all who heard fought back the tears. Here were two men, completely devastated by one of the worst hurricanes in US history, they had lost almost all they had possessed, but here they were singing from their souls about the Amazing Grace of God. At that moment I felt as though those words were just as much coming from my soul as it was there. I was no longer just a Christian trying to do something nice for someone else, but I myself was one was with Leo and his brother. The Amazing Grace was not just the grace that they received by having Christians come and help them, but it was also the grace that all of us there received, being forever transformed in our lives. In that moment I realized that service was also a very personal endeavor.

            So this may not be what many of you expected to hear from me when talking about service. After all in the prior sermon series I have taken many practices that are very personal to us and told you that the focus needed to be on others. When talking about prayer I talked about how we need to pray with and for each other. When talking about worship, I talked about how it was important that all members of the body be present. Even when talking about giving last week, I talked about how it is not about us but about God. Now, I’m talking about service, something that is so obviously not about us, and I’m making it personal?! You must think that I am doing this just to mess with your minds, but I assure you I’m not. My goal is to present these topics in ways that we may not have thought about them before.

            And that is why I really like this scripture passage from 1 Peter for talking about service, because it too is not your typical passage about service. In fact, Peter’s discourse on service is not until very late in this passage. This passage actually starts off with Peter talking about us and our own actions. As was the case when we discussed James and prayer, Peter here is making a differentiation between what is of this world, and what is of God. He says, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),²so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God.³You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.” Peter is telling his fellow Christians that if we want to be followers of Christ, then we need to actually follow Christ. We need to act with the same intentions of Christ instead of acting as the Gentiles do in the world. He lists for us a laundry list of some of the crude actions that many Gentiles are participating in, including lawlessness, drunkenness, and giving in to our passions, and tells us that if we want to be true followers of Christ then we need to lead this type of living behind.

            So how does this help shape the way in which we view service. How do our personal morals have anything to do with helping our fellow neighbor? If we view this part of Peter’s message simply as a list of rules for our lives, as a checklist of things to avoid, then we are severely missing the point of Peter’s message, and the link to service will in fact make no sense. We need to look at what Peter is really saying in this passage. Peter’s first two verses gives us all the clues we need to understand what is at the heart of his message. Let’s look at it one more time, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),²so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God.”  For Peter, the crux of this passage focuses on becoming more like Christ. It focuses on making our will become more in tune with the will of God.

            As Methodists, this is something that is part of our theological heritage. Pastor’s that are about to be ordained are asked many historic questions that Wesley himself used to ask, including, “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it?” These tough question may be asked only to the ordained pastors, but they apply equally to all United Methodists. “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it?” Our response to all of these questions should be a simple yes.

            Yet this task seems impossible, how are we supposed to become perfect? So let’s be clear, Christian perfection does not mean that you become flawless, it does not mean that you yourself become God; no perfection, perfection in love means that our will is aligned with the will of God. We may still fail, and we will, but it means that every action we take we take because we are trying to follow God, every decision we make, we make using that cliché line of What would Jesus do? Being perfected in love means that we have strived throughout our lives to follow habits that produce love so that when a challenge is presented before us our initial reaction is to respond in love and not hate. Christian perfection for sure is a lofty ideal, but it is one that is possible, and more so is one that we should be striving towards.

            Are we there yet?  I can’t answer for you, but I know that I certainly am not, but as both Wesley and Peter in our passage for today instruct, we should be striving towards it.  That is why we put off the things of the world, not simply because it is a checklist of moral laws to follow, but so that we may grow closer to God in our journey of faith, and likewise this is one of the reasons why service is so important. If we are striving to continuously live more like Christ, then how should we treat the others around us? Well, Peter tells us, “The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.⁸Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.⁹Be hospitable to one another without complaining.¹⁰Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.¹¹Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever.” Constantly love one another, be hospitable without complaining, serve one another; this is how we can become more like Christ. Service is one of the primary ways in which we can become more like Christ. Through serving others, not only do we spread the love of Christ to someone in need, but we ourselves grow closer to Christ in our journey of faith. Service is an incredible means of grace.

            But do not misunderstand me, good works do not save you. This is not what we believe. We are saved through the grace of God. The wonderful grace that was given to us before we took our first breath, the grace that was given to us on the cross. The grace that lead us to Christ before we even knew who Christ was. The grace that turned us from our bondage to sin and death and made us washed new by the waters of our baptism. And it is that amazing grace that continues to transform our lives to be faithful disciples of Christ. It is only through this grace that we are saved, but it is also through this grace that we are able to become more like Christ.

            I turn once again to that wonderful hymn, Amazing Grace, and in particular to the third verse, which says, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” This is a beautiful line that talks about the way in which God’s grace has already worked in our lives, carrying us through dark and difficult times. It is also a line of hope; a hope in the time in which we are able to rest with God in the fellowship of the angels and the saints. Yet when many people hear this line they forget about the here and the now. They think, God has carried me through the tough times of my life, and now that I have been saved  I can just sit and wait until God takes me home. But notice that the hymn does not say God will take me home, or God will carry me home, God will pick me up in his limousine and escort me home; no the line says God will lead me home. This indicates that between the time in which we accepted Christ into our lives and the time in which we are laid to rest, there is still a journey that we must undertake. A journey towards perfection, a journey towards become closer with God. This journey is only done through the grace of God, and we are called to respond accordingly to God’s grace. As Peter tells us, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.¹¹Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. Like good stewards of the grace of God; there is that word again steward. This time we are stewards of God’s grace. How do we best take care of the grace of God that we have been given? Serve one another with whatever gift each of you have received, speak as one speaking the very words of God, serve with the strength that God supplies, so that through it all God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. Service is so important to us as Christians because through it we are able to be stewards of the Amazing grace God has given us. Through service we can continue to walk onward towards perfection through the grace of God. The grace we receive and the grace of God that we show others through service truly is an Amazing Grace, and it is a grace that leads us home.

You Reap What You Sow

Sermon as Preached 9/9 at Evington UMC and 9/16 at Lambs UMC

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

A little over a year ago I was not in a very good place weight wise, Not to say that I am now, but I was very unhealthy, so much so that when I went to the doctors for a physical, he told me that my weight was becoming a problem. From then on I tried to lose weight, but I had a very difficult time putting the energy that I should into my health. I tried to make little concessions such as switching from regular soda to diet soda, or switching from 80% lean beef to 90% lean beef. I told myself that I didn’t have time for exercise, and I continued to live my life in very much the same way that I had, with now a few minor concessions. The changes in my diet were indeed important changes to make, but they were very small steps compared to what I needed to be doing. Yet every week I would still get on the scale expecting the pounds to have just dropped off, and was stunned and saddened when I realized I had lost very little weight if any weight at all! I then made the decision to put more effort into my health. I continued to use those helpful concessions that I had already made, but I also made my diet more drastic. I started to not only watch what I ate, but how much I ate, and became very deliberate about eating only the amount that I needed. I also forced myself to go to the gym three times a week. I increased my daily water intake. In essence I became much more serious about taking care of my body, and I had put much more effort into my overall health. And after putting this effort in, when I got on the scale each week, to my amazement weight had dropped off. Even in times where weight had remained steady, I could actually see improvement in my muscles, which told me that I had lost fat and gained weight. In fact, after making the decision to put an emphasis on my health, I have lost over 40 pounds in a little over a year.

            I tell this story not as a personal testimony for weight loss; no this is not a Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers commercial, but I tell this story because it teaches us a crucial lesson for our topic for today. With this type of story, one would expect that the sermon today would be on taking care of our bodies, but if you have been paying attention to our sermon series, then you know that today’s topic is about gifts and giving. You may be wondering now, how does this relate to giving? Let’s look at our scripture for today, and maybe we can start to see how.

            In this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Paul is talking about giving. More accurately, Paul is encouraging the church in Corinth to consider giving to a new collection that Paul is taking up, one that would allow the Corinthians to join in with other Christian churches around the world (or the world as they knew it) to help spread the Gospel and to also mend fences between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. Paul knows that this will be an unfavorable request, especially since Paul had a bit of a falling out with the Corinthians between his first and second letter. For this reason Paul does not try to pull any rank or prestige, he doesn’t remind the Corinthians that he helped to form and sustain them so now they need to give, because in the eyes of Paul, giving that is forced or coerced is not true giving. Instead, Paul takes time in this passage to the Corinthians to explain why we give.

            He starts his explanation by saying, “⁶The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” You reap what you sow. This is Paul’s advice for the church about giving. You reap what you sow. We have heard this phrase we know what it means. The more you put into something the more you get out. Literally the phrase is saying the more seeds you plant, the more you will have when harvest time comes around. And this is Paul’s advice to the Corinthians about how and why they should give. At first this may seem like strange advice, but when we really think about Paul’s advice in this passage, we quickly see that it is very sound advice.

            How many times have we put very little into the church, maybe given whatever was in our pockets that day, maybe seeing in our wallet a five and one and we pull out the one and put it in the plate, and then later we hear about the how the church is not participating in a project that we think would be a great way to spread the Gospel, or we do not help someone who may be in need of help, and we ask why isn’t the church doing more. So often we have a completely forget that as a church, we reap what we sow.

            I believe that this is because there is a complete disconnect between our giving and seeing the fruits of our giving. How often do we give money to the offering simply because we see it as some sort of membership due that we are required to pay? When we do happen to think about what our money is going towards, we only tend to see our offering as paying for the pastor’s salary and the maintenance and upkeep of the church. While our offering does goes towards maintenance and salary, we forget about how our offering is used by God to change this church, the community, and the world. Sometimes we need to be reminded how our offering to God is being used to spread the Gospel and build up the Kingdom of God.  Through your offering this year our church has been able to bring in wonderful speakers and musical guests who have inspired us through their gifts for ministry. Our offering has been used to help countless families and people in our communities who are down on their luck, and needed our help. Our offerings have helped places like Heart Havens serve members of our community with disabilities, and places like DAWN provide food to our community. Our offerings have help to educate kids in Brazil and give them a safe after school place that keeps them off the street and teaches them about the love of Jesus Christ. Our offerings have helped to establish new churches in Virginia, across the US, and overseas, including Cambodia which is now seeing a great boom in Methodist churches. Our offerings have helped to provide scholarship to future pastors both in America as well as in Africa where we support Africa University which serves students from over 21 different countries. All of this is made possible through our offering to God. Paul is telling us if we want to continue to serve the Lord in these great ways, in fact if we want to spread the Gospel even further, we must sow more seeds because we can only reap what we sow.

            Paul tells us something else that is very important though. Paul says, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.⁸And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” In this passage Paul is telling us two crucial things about giving. First, he is telling us that giving must be voluntary. We should only give because we are happy to give, not because we are forced to give or coerced to give. So often offerings feel like a burden, like something we have to do, we rarely give with a joyful heart, we are so rarely “cheerful givers” as Paul calls it. This is why Paul is reminding us we reap what we sow. It’s not to make us feel guilty about our giving tendency, it is not to try and coerce us into giving; Paul tells us that we reap what we sow, so that we may once again experience the joy in giving. He reminds us about all the ways in which are giving impacts the church and the world around us. He reminds us that what we give really does matter, that it really does help the Kingdom of God. Not only this, but Paul is giving us hope and faith that through a little bit more sowing, through the grace of God, we can help change the world!

            Even after hearing this, it is still difficult to give cheerfully. We take this you reap what you sow to heart in our own personal lives, and we see all the hard work that we put into to earn our money, and then are broken hearted when we feel like we should give some of it away instead of seeing how we could reap what we sow in our own lives. But Paul warns us against this type of thinking, that is why he says, “⁸And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” This is the second great lesson that Paul is teaching us, and that is that all we have is only possible because God provided it for us. Did we work hard to earn it ourselves? Of course we did, but everything that we have, that we are able to do, all the doors that have been opened for us, is only possible through our Lord Jesus Christ. After all it is God who created us and this world in the first place. Paul reminds us that what God has given us is sufficient, and the excess that we earn we earn so that we share it. That God may work through us to provide sufficiency to a fellow brother or sister of God’s creation. You see our founder of Methodism John Wesley had a popular phrase that has been used through the centuries that goes like this, “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” Now this phrase has been often used as a sort of motto for the Protestant work ethic, that we should work hard and earn all we can and that we should save it. This leads to a looking  out for numero uno mentality, but this leaves off the last part of his quote, which is the most important. The reason that we earn all we can, and the reason that we save all we can, is so that we are able to support ourselves and then give all that we can to help others. Wesley’s motto is not an example of financial  stinginess, but is really an example of great giving.

            This sort of giving, and this joy in giving can only really take place when we realize that what we are giving, is only possible because of what God has given to us. When we started this Stewardship sermon series, I talked about how the word stewardship was unfamiliar to us. That often when we heard the word stewardship, all we thought about was the church asking us for money, but what does stewardship really mean? Well in the medieval times, people operated under the feudal system, which means that there were different lords of area who owned the landed and usually a castle. The lord controlled that land and all of his servants usually worked and lived on his land. Usually the lord would have a servant called the steward. The steward was a person that the lord trusted, because the steward’s responsibility was to take care of the household and it’s management. In essence, the lord was the owner, and the steward was the manager. The steward did not own any of the things that he had control over, but did often have the privilege of its use and benefits.

            When we talk about stewardship in the church, we are talking about very similar things. We have one Lord, who has given us everything; not for us own, but to use and take advantage of. With that, we also have the responsibility of taking care of all of what the Lord owns. When we are able to view what we have less as our own ownership, and more as God’s gift given for us to use, then it becomes easier to give with a cheerful heart. We want to give to God’s church, we want to help those in need, because by doing so, we are able to show our thanks to God who has given us so much.  When we remember that everything belongs to God, then we want to sow more seeds because what we reap is one of the greatest thanks that we could ever give to God. But like my weight loss story suggests, minor concessions only produce minor results. To truly see this church, this community, and this world transformed, we have to become committed to our sowing.