BUT GOD MEANT IT FOR GOOD
Sermon by Judy Turner
Genesis 50:19-21
The Bible tells the stories of many people, and how God was in their lives, through good and terrible circumstances, so we can know how God will be for us, as we go through all the days of our lives. Let’s consider this morning one of the most intriguing characters of the Bible. I’ll start describing him, and you see when you recognize who I’m talking about. He started life with a lot going for him, the favorite son of a doting father. He knew he was destined to be a leader, and was perceived by those around him as an arrogant braggart. He experienced a great reversal early in his life, at the age of 17, an unspeakable tragedy. He was captured by his jealous brothers, thrown into a pit, and sold to some slave traders passing by. And it seemed to go from bad to worse. He was taken to Egypt, and bought by an Egyptian officer, but was falsely accused of sexual misconduct and ended up in jail. You probably know by now that I’m talking about Joseph, whose amazing story is told in Genesis chapters 37- 50. I read the story again in preparing for this sermon, and was still utterly taken with it, with tears in my eyes at the most tender, touching moments of the story. Read the details. You will be blessed.
But we’ll give a quick summary this morning. A line repeated throughout the hard years of Joseph’s life in slavery and prison was, “The Lord was with Joseph.” And his Egyptian master and the warden of the prison saw Joseph’s abilities and his integrity. And he was given responsibility. In prison, he was put in charge of the other prisoners. God gave Joseph the ability to interpret dreams, and he told two of the prisoners what their dreams meant. His interpretation proved to be right, and later, when the Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt had a dream, Joseph was brought from prison to interpret the meaning. Joseph said, “Pharaoh, this is what the dream means. There will be 7 years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt, then the land will be ravaged by 7 years of famine. And this is what you should do. You should put a wise and discerning man in charge of storing grain during the good years, so there will be plenty to keep the people alive when the famine comes.” Pharoah says, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom the spirit of God dwells?” And Pharoah made Joseph second in command in all the land, and put him in charge of this system of storing and then distributing the grain. Talk about a reversal! But still there had to be an empty, aching place in Joseph’s heart. He was separated from his family, not knowing even if his beloved father Jacob was still alive.
The seven good years came, then the bad years. The story then switches back to the land of Canaan, with Jacob and his family. Those years of famine affected a much wider geographic area than just Egypt, and people in other countries were going to Egypt to buy food. Things were getting desperate for Jacob’s family, so he sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain, and who did they encounter? None other than their brother, Joseph, who years earlier they had sold into slavery. Joseph immediately recognized his brothers, but they didn’t recognize him. He decided to test whether they had changed through the years, a test that involved bringing their little brother Benjamin to Egypt. When the brothers demonstrated that they would lay down their lives for their little brother rather than abandon him or sell him out, as they had Joseph, Joseph was convinced of their change of heart. In one of the most touching scenes in all human history, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and then arranges for his father and the whole extended family to move to Egypt so they can live. There is another very moving scene when Joseph is reunited with his father, Jacob. So the family prospers in Egypt, and Jacob dies there. Then the brothers become afraid again. Has Joseph only been kind to them as long as the old man was alive, and now he would get revenge for the evil they had done to him years ago?
Our text this morning is what Joseph says in response to their fear: (Genesis 50:19-21
19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
This is certainly the story of an amazing man named Joseph, but it is more the story of an amazing God. As John Claypool says in God The Ingennious Alchemist, God can take the bad choices made in human freedom and somehow transmute them into experiences of growth and blessing. The book of Genesis begins with God, the being of ultimate goodness, love, and joy creating the world and everything that lives to share the sheer abundance of that goodness with those He created. But the Creator wanted children who could choose to love Him back and walk in His ways, rather than puppets. So he put in His human creatures the freedom to choose. Claypool says, “It is ultimate absurdity, but, tragically, this is the response that the earliest humans made to God’s primal generosity. They proceeded to unmake creation. God started with nothing and moved through chaos to form and beauty, but ungrateful creatures reversed that process and turned form and beauty back into chaos, toward the nothingness from which it all came.” This is how the book of Genesis begins, with creation, and then sin entering the world. But the book of Genesis ends with the story of Joseph. And Joseph saying to his brothers, “You chose evil, but God meant it for good. And all this has resulted in fulfilling God’s purpose of saving many lives.” So the book of Genesis ends with a powerful story of redemption, a marker along the way to what God was ultimately going to do in Jesus.
What an amazing God! Without robbing human beings of freedom, God has within God’s being the ability to take bad things or events and resourcefully bring good out of them. So what does this mean for us? It means first of all, that there is nothing bad that we have done and nothing bad that has been done to us that is beyond the power of God to redeem and somehow bring good. Of course, to personally experience that good, we need to repent of the evil we have done and forgive the evil done to us. Joseph had to repent of being the spoiled, arrogant child, and be willing to grow and change through the hard experiences. God was with him through it all, but Joseph had to choose each day in that prison to walk with God. His brothers had to repent of their wrong response to their father’s favoritism, and their brother’s annoying self-centeredness (both of which were wrong, but so was their response of resentment, and letting that resentment grow into taking action to destroy the favored one and then lie to their father about it.) Joseph’s brother’s had to repent of their wrong response to the evil done to them, and instead grow into people of Godly character who could love their father, even with his imperfections, and lay down their lives for their favored younger brother Benjamin. And Joseph had to choose to forgive, to let go of any desire to retaliate or get vengeance or harm the brothers who had harmed him. I think his reaction in first encountering them again after all those years said that he had forgiven them in his heart. He didn’t want to hurt them. That is forgiveness, to drop the charge we have against someone. We can always forgive, even if the other person has not changed. But, if they had changed, Joseph knew he could move beyond forgiveness to reconciliation, reestablishing relationship. He had already forgiven. He wished them no harm, only good. But he set up the tests to know if they had changed. And, by the grace of God, he saw they had changed. And God redeemed and healed the broken relationships in this family, making them better and stronger than ever before.
What we must do if we want to see how our amazing God can redeem absolutely anything? At any point in time, no matter how bleak things seem is never lose hope in God, never give in to despair. This must have been a choice Joseph made every day, even when there was nothing visible, nothing he could see on the horizon to give him hope. Claypool quotes a rabbi who says, "Despair is presumptuous. It is saying something about the future that we have no right to say. If God can make the things that are out of the things that are not, and can make dead things come to life again, who are we to set limits on what that kind of power might yet do with what we have done?" The scriptures invite us to get to know this Holy One who in the worst of times can do the best of things.
Gert Behanna lived a life of deepening despair. Although she was the daughter of a successful, wealthy man, and had lots of money, she had nothing to guide her life. She married three times, only to have each marriage end up in divorce. She had two sons, whom she had no idea how to handle and who wound up causing her all sorts of problems. In the midst of all this pain, she became increasingly dependent on alcohol until, finally, her life became so unworkable that she said, “I cannot stand it any longer.” One night she took a massive overdose of sleeping pills. Imagine her dismay when, eight hours later, she woke up in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital and had to face that fact that she was such an inept failure that she could not even succeed in ending her life. She lay alone in the darkness of the night and the dark despair of her soul. She looked up at the ceiling and stammered out, “God, I don’t even know whether you exist. I have never had anything to do with you, but if you do exist, and if you can help me, please, please come. I am absolutely at the end of my rope.” A warm light began to move toward her, enveloping her in a sense of love that she had never experienced before from anyone. She was given a sense that her life somehow mattered to the Source behind all reality and that there was a meaningful future for her in spite of her past. This healing embrace lasted for several minutes and, when the intensity began to subside, even though it was by then the middle of the night, she picked up her phone and called her business manager and said breathlessly, “Bring me a copy of the Holy Bible as quickly as you can!” Her manager knew her quite well and could not contain his shock. He blurted out, “My God, Gert, what has happened to you?” To which she replied, “My God has happened to me.”
At any point in our lives, especially when we come to the end of ourselves, our God can happen to us. And we discover a goodness much bigger than all the badness in this complicated world. And knowing this God and walking with Him day by day, we move from a life of fear and despair to a life of courage and hope.
May this amazing God who can redeem absolutely anything happen to us today!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
His House Children, Nov. 2010
Children acting out the story of David showing kindness to Mephibosheth during the morning worship service
Helping with worship by offering a drama
Rehearsing a song for the Christmas Cantata
Singing with the angels and celebrating the Lord's birth!Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
Sermon from November 7, 2010
Luke 10:25-37; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18, 33-36
The Bible has a great deal to say about how we are to extend godliness to the social order by living out our human calling to be the image of God, representing God’s nature and purposes to the world. For instance, the central theme of the book of Leviticus is how God’s people are to live a holy life. The structural center of Leviticus’ message is in Chapter 19. The theme statement is expressed in 19:2, “Speak to all the congregation of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’” Peter applies this theme to the church in 1 Peter 1:14-16, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
A surprising number of the laws in Leviticus 19 are about relating helpfully and not harmfully to the poor, the weak, the day laborer, the deaf, the blind, the elderly, the foreign sojourner, the person accused of a crime, the neighbor who sins (possibly against you), and the neighbor with whom you do business.
The central teaching of Leviticus 19 is verse 18, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” If you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer turns out to be broader than “the sons of your own people.” Verses 33-34 say, "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”
In Luke 10:25-37, a religious legal expert asks Jesus what is necessary to inherit eternal life. Jesus invites the man to summarize what the law says. The man combines Deuteronomy 6:5 which requires total love for God with Leviticus 19:18 which requires loving our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus affirms the answer. The expert, wanting to limit the potewntial neighbors he was thereby obligated to love, asks for a definition of neighbor. Jesus offers a parable about two self-concerned religious experts who pass without helping a man who had been beaten and left for dead along the roadside. In contrast, a Samaritan, stereotyped by the experts as spiritually and morally impure, goes to extraordinary lengths at his own risk and expense to help the man. On the neighbor test, the religious experts failed the neighbor test by passing the beaten man, while the man from impure Samaria passed the neighbor test by helping the beaten man. The expert had asked Jesus whom he was obligated to help. Jesus essentially told him that he would be better off asking whom he had the opportunity to help.
In Mark 12:28-34,when a religious expert asks Jesus to summarize the law, he gives the same answer that the earlier expert had given him, Deuteronomy 6:5 plus Leviticus 19:18 calling for our loving God and neighbor. When this second expert agrees emphatically, Jesus tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God. Jesus specifically affirmed and taught that these verses are central for the lives of his followers.
There is another occasion when Jesus took the matter of our obligation to love others even further than with the parable of the Samaritan. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:43-48, he challenged us to include our enemies on the list of those we hav the opportunity to love: 43“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
“You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” is just a restatement of the Leviticus theme, “You must be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”
Jesus said that we may have heard, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” From where might we have heard that we should hate our enemy? Not from Leviticus 19. Indeed, the command in Leviticus to love our neighbor is given in the context of not taking vengeance or bearing a grudge against someone who has done us wrong. In essence, it is a command to love our neighbor who has just acted as our enemy. The passage says that we are to confront our neighbor about his or her sin, but nonetheless to love our neighbor. Love here does not mean to feel all warm and fuzzy about our neighbor, but to seek the best for our neighbor just as we seek for ourselves.
So where might we have heard the message to hate our enemy? From people who do not understand the true nature of the holiness of God. Some people think that being holy means being very angry against all sinners, so angry that we want to punish them, to do harm against them. Leviticus says that this is not right. Jesus says that this is not right.
We need to work our way through this carefully. Scripture is clear that we are not to condone idolatry, adultery, or other sins. Paul says that the church is not to partner in its internal fellowship which exists to represent Christ with blatant, unrepentant sinners. But not partnering with them in our church’s mission is quite different from withdrawing from all contact or of becoming hostile toward blatant, unrepentant sinners. How might the blatant sinner come to see the amazing redeeming and transforming love of God if Christians do not have friendly, helpful contact with them?
Now I would not suggest that the new Christian recently rescued from alcoholism be assigned to bar ministry. Nor would I suggest that the church in its eagerness to reach sinners adopt manners that appear to take sin lightly; the apostles explicitly forbid that in our Scriptures.
Jewish people were forbidden to marry pagans because of the difference in moral and spiritual values. Christians are similarly instructed regarding not marrying unbelievers. Marrying is one thing. Treating people with fairness and helpfulness is another.
Who were the foreign sojourners in ancient Israel? Probably many of them were from the nations and tribes that Israel had to fight on the way into the Promised Land, that the judges had to fight in the days of the settlement of the promised Land, that their kings had to fight in the days of possessing the Promised Land, the nations and exiles that taunted the Israelites in the days of their exile. In short, they were long-time enemies. But Leviticus commands Israelites to remember that their ancestors were once slaves in a foreign land and to treat foreigners living among them with fairness and hospitable helpfulness.
Jesus similarly continually shocks people with his open dealings with Samaritans, such as the Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. Jesus did not condone sin, but he did not shun sinners. Who would have guessed that the Samaritan woman at the well would have moved more quickly into becoming an effective evangelist than Jesus’ own traveling companion disciples? Yet that is exactly what happened.
Somehow, we have to get it through our heads and into our hearts that our purpose in life is to represent the holy character of God, and that the holy character of God includes as a main feature steadfast, redeeming love even for foreign sojourners, hostile enemies, and blatant sinners.
I am not saying that we are to toss aside all discernment. I am not saying that we are to walk around with a “kick me” sign taped to our back. I am not saying that we become punching bags for abusers. I am not saying that we become foolish enablers of manipulative users.
I am saying that we are to represent the steadfast, redeeming love of God, that we are to support efforts that offer opportunities for people to salvage their broken lives and begin to live as children of God, that we are to offer such opportunities even to our enemies.
At the most basic level, this challenges us to strip all remnants of hate and fear speech from our conversation, all hateful and fearful actions from our lives. We do not have to agree with people in order to be kind and fair and helpful to them. We can understand that what certain people have done is not in accord with God’s standards without beginning to hate them. How many of us have said something about African Americans or Hispanics or Muslims or gay people that we would cringe in shame if we knew that Jesus overheard us? Guess what? Our actions have already been entered into our eternal records, and we had better repent of them, not just regret them, but also change the underlying thinking that led to them, and the sooner the better, so that Jesus can erase them from our book.
We live in a culture that is in serious trouble. Human brokenness is mounting. The social resources to cope with that brokenness are declining. The solutions that are being offered from our secular culture are about as effective as applying a band-aid to a cannon ball wound. Voices of fear, hatred, and resentment are spewing forth into our minds. They will only make matters worse. It is time to turn off the hate and turn on creative approaches.
I am convinced that real solutions must be spiritual, moral, and relational. They are the kinds of solutions that can be found only in living communities of faith, communities where believers are committed to living out the character of the God we know through Jesus Christ. We have lots of churches, but only a small minority of them are focused on their calling to put human flesh on the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ, offering personal, caring alternatives to the mammoth impersonal institutions of our day.
What we have done is that we have, for the sake of elusive material benefits, sold out to a large, impersonal culture that has no ability to deliver on its promises. We have become producers, consumers, and clients managed by big, impersonal institutions. Jesus during his earthly life did not try to control those kinds of institutions. He simply laid the foundation for building something new outside those big institutions, an alternative way of living in community that has real, spiritual, God-given values. That is essentially what his followers did in the first century Roman empire. That is what his followers did again with Celtic-style monasteries that spread out from Ireland from the 5th through the 10th centuries, creating centers of hospitality, scholarship, arts, and evangelism that may well have saved civilization. That is what the evangelical pietists did in places like Germany, the British Isles, and North America in the 18th and early 19th centuries, creating faith-based missionary societies, Bible societies, hospitals, orphanages, schools, self-help groups, improving the status of women, equipping freed slaves, elevating the moral climate that was so damaging to women and children, and on and on.
In each of these movements, much of the strength of the movement rested in building voluntary, faith-centered, Bible-based, prayer-powered, spiritual communities and networks outside the dominant social institutions of their day, networks of relationships that changed the world of their day.
I suggest that it is high time for Christians to do it once more. You may ask, “How?” I do not know the details. The details will not emerge until we catch the vision and join ourselves in study, prayer, and mutual encouragement. But God is faithful. God has done it before when Christians have sought him. He can and will do it again if we will persistently seek him.
We cannot do it all at once. We must reach out to invite others to come alongside us, but together we can begin to reclaim our lives right here in this community of hope, faith, and love. This is where the real action is because God is here and ready to act as soon as we join him in our readiness. Let’s get ourselves spiritually prepared.
Loving God with All Your Strength
Abridged sermon from October 10, 2010
Deuteronomy 6:20-25; 2 Corinthians 8:1-5; Luke 14:16-24
The Message paraphrase of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5 is: Love God (Yahweh, personal name), your God (Elohim, office or role), with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got.”
Where The Message has “with all you’ve got,” most other translations say “with all your might’ or “with all your strength.” One commentator suggests that, “with all your very muchness,” gets at the meaning.
When Jesus quotes this passage and Mark reports it, almost all the translations opt for “with all your strength.” For most of us, our first image of strength or might has to do with muscle. But let’s start with muscle and see what we need to add to get to the range of meaning: all your muscle, might, strength, energy, substance, resources, possessions, influence, excessiveness, totality, “all you’ve got,” “all your very muchness.”
In previous weeks, have suggested that your heart means the formative place within you, that your soul means your life and self, that your mind means the mental processes by which you connect your personal story to God’s great story and decide what it means to walk in God way and wisdom. Now I am suggesting that your strength or might means everything you’ve got, your very muchness. There is not much held back in this Greatest of All Commandments, is there?
What does it mean to love God with everything you’ve got? I think that a parable Jesus told will help us get at it. Luke 14:16 But Jesus said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many guests. 14:17 At the time for the banquet he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, because everything is now ready.’ 14:18 But one after another they all began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please excuse me.’ 14:19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going out to examine them. Please excuse me.’ 14:20 Another said, ‘I just got married, and I cannot come.’ 14:21 So the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the master of the household was furious and said to his slave, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 14:22 Then the slave said, ‘Sir, what you instructed has been done, and there is still room.’ 14:23 So the master said to his slave, ‘Go out to the highways and country roads and urge people to come in, so that my house will be filled. 14:24 For I tell you, not one of those individuals who were invited will taste my banquet!’”
This parable is one of those that often perplexes people. They think that Jesus is asking them to choose whether they will have careers, possessions, labor-saving devices, marriage, family life, and so forth, or whether they will just serve the kingdom of God, as though the two are mutually exclusive. But that is not true. Jesus is not against any of those good things, but he wants everything we let into our lives to be dedicated to the love of God. Rather than allowing a conflict between these things and God, we are to manage them so that we serve God and celebrate God through these things, and so that they do not get in the way of important celebrations of God’s redeeming love.
Now, I understand that this is easier said than done. Any of these things can end up in conflict with loving God, and it is not always easy to figure out how to resolve the conflict. Even religious work can end up in conflict with loving God. It is especially hard when we are working for a company or an employer who does not value our goal of loving God through everything that we do. There may be situations in which we need to look for another job, but I would not urge a hasty decision on that. Employees who prayerfully seek creative ways to represent Christ can often find appropriate and surprising ways that keep the obligation they have to their employers and still show love for God. Several of you have been very creative at finding such ways.
Finding ways to be faithful in showing our love for God through the major components of our lives—our employment, our skills, our family relationships, our money, our possessions, our education, our hobbies, our friendship circles, and so forth--opens doors for larger opportunities. Our lives deepen in satisfaction.
Take a moment to select one or two areas of your life in which you would like to show more of your love for God. Ask God to show you how to do it appropriately and effectively. Listen until something I list grabs your attention. Then go with it for a few moments.
How could you show more of God’s love through:
1. Your employment?
2. Your skills?
3. Your family relationships?
4. Your money?
5. Your possessions? Don’t forget your transportation and communication devices.
6. Your education?
7. Your hobbies?
8. Your friendship circles?
Love God with all your very muchness! You’ll be glad you did. Amen.
[For posting on the Web, I have left out two illustrations of living our daily lives with God in the forefront, one illustration regarding a Christian plumber and one illustration provided live and impromptu by our youth ministries leader Scott Frame. Think about Christians you know who find creative ways to live out their Christian faith and witness].
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sermon: Singing the Lord's Song
SINGING THE LORD’S SONG
Sermon by Judy Turner
I don’t know exactly when or how it happened that American culture changed so much, but it seems like we of the mainline church recently woke up to find ourselves in a “foreign land”. Wasn’t it just yesterday that American culture was “Christian”? Oh, we know everyone was not a committed follower of Jesus Christ by any means, but the culture was built on some shared values and standards. The first television shows I saw portrayed an Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best kind of world. And the mainline church with its white columns and tall steeple was the center of that world. People generally respected and supported the institutional church. Now we’re in a fragmented culture. Everyone seems to be defining their own center, and if there is an orientation point in communities, it’s Wal Mart, not the church. Church leaders are singing songs of discouragement, like “We’ve Been Working at the Church House, All Our Live-Long Lives” and “Where Have All the People Gone?” Shortages of people and money seem to be the common experience of churches of the old denominations such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Disciples of Christ.
And in the midst of all our discouragement and troubles, the secular culture is out there taunting us with their indifference. It’s as if unbelievers are saying, “OK, just show me what this God of yours can do for me. He doesn’t seem to be doing much for you.” Or maybe the taunt is, “Give me some reason I should even notice the church.”
God’s People in a Foreign Culture
But this is by no means the first time in history that God’s people have found themselves in a foreign culture, with everything changed. In the Sixth Century before Christ, the little kingdom of Judah had been invaded and destroyed by the powerful Babylonians. The conquering army destroyed homes, killed lots of people, and others they rounded up like cattle and herded them from their homes and relocated them in the foreign land of Babylon. Psalm 137 reflects the experience of God’s people in exile. Those exiles sat by the rivers of Babylon remembered- bitter, sad memories of loss and destruction. Saddest of all was remembering Solomon’s magnificent temple in Jerusalem, destroyed, nothing left but rubble, all the precious holy things of the temple carted away – just booty. The temple was the place where through the centuries God met His people, sacrifices were offered for sins, forgiveness was granted. It was the holiest place in all the earth, and now it was no more. The taunts of their captors, “Why don’t you sing one of the songs of Zion like Psalm 48 (“Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain…God is in her citadels; he has shown himself to be her fortress”) made the pain unbearable. They couldn’t sing for the tears and the choking in their throats, when they remembered Jerusalem. They just hung up their harps on the nearby trees and wept for their homeland.
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill . 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!" 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
What is helpful for us in this Psalm, and in what way?
What do we do with a Psalm like this? It’s called a Psalm of Lament. No kidding! And it expresses a bitter vindictiveness that the New Testament makes clear is not to be the spirit of a follower of Jesus. But there is a reason this Psalm is included in among the divinely inspired scriptures, and as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” So I think we benefit from prayerfully studying the Psalm to see what in it is helpful for us, and in what way.
1. In this real relationship we have with God, we must be real with God.
We can express to God our deepest anguish and our bitterest anger. We don’t have to put on a happy face or pretend with God. Straight to the arms of God is the safe place to go with our rage and despair. When life is hard, turning our backs on God is a temptation. Instead, we choose to turning toward God with our pain. Our honest openness with God gives God a chance to start redeeming and healing the pain.
2. Value our spiritual heritage, but don’t make an idol of it.
The first 5 books of the Bible are about God forming a people to represent Him in the world. He gave them a shared history, a culture, practices, that would remind them continually of who they were and why. It was a good thing for the Israelite exiles in Babylon to remember their spiritual heritage, to not forget their homeland and the temple and their religious practices. But what about considering Jerusalem their “highest joy”? Could that be a form of idolatry? Idolatry is giving anything other than God first place in your heart and in your life. If their trust was placed in their religious system or their religious traditions or a sacred building rather than in God Himself, then their trust was misplaced. So, here we start learning from the Psalm as a negative example. In the light of the whole counsel of scripture, we say, “Yes, we are to always remember what God has done in the past. Yes, we are to value our spiritual heritage, our traditions and our places where we’ve met God. But we can’t value any of that more than we value God Himself. And we can’t put God in the box of the past. The Prophet Isaiah wrote during the time Israel’s destruction as a nation started taking place. He saw the time when Israelites would be taken from their homeland and into exile. But just because the kingdom of Israel was no more didn’t mean the Kingdom of God was in trouble at all. Isaiah forsees how God will continue to work in human history until His purposes are fulfilled. In Isaiah 43:18-19, God says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God’s people are always supposed to have a rear-view mirror so we can see where we have come from, but we need to have a big and clear windshield so we can see where God is taking us now! If all we have is a big rear-view mirror, we’ve got serious problems.
3. Choose to believe that God can empower us to be effective witnesses for Him now (even in this “foreign land”, our changed circumstances)
I think we can understand the choice reflected in Psalm 137: “things are so hard here, we’ve lost so much, we can’t give bold, joyful effective witness to the loving goodness of our God. So we’ll just give up. Literally, they hung their harps on the trees near the river and went silent. That was just a picture of the surrender in their spirits. They would have their religious memories, but they wouldn’t have a living, vital faith.
4. Repent and retrieve our harps
What about us? Are we singing the Lord’s Song in this strange land? Are we breaking through the darkness of our culture with a joyful witness to the love and power of God made known in Jesus Christ? Have we stopped trying to influence our culture toward God and become influenced by it? Have we lost our joy and confidence? Have we hung up our harps and gone silent?
Jill Briscoe reflects on this Psalm and suggests that if we suspect that we’ve lost our joy in the Lord, but want to rediscover it, it would be a good idea to look where we hung up our harps. Will each of you come with me into the realm of the Spirit and walk around for awhile and see if there’s a tree where your harp is hanging?
There is the grief tree. Some hurt or loss has taken your joy in the Lord, and maybe even caused you to doubt God’s goodness. God wants to heal the hurt and fill the empty places inside of you, but you can’t seem to let go of the sadness and the anger. You want whatever it was you lost more than you want God. Together as a church we often hang our harps on the grief tree. We’re focused on what the church used to be like and long for the good ol’ days. We forget that God’s name is “I am”, not “I was”.
There is the gripe tree. You take your focus off God and focus on what’s wrong- with the world, your spouse, the church, your neighbors, the country – never thinking something could be wrong in your own spirit. When your harp is hanging on the gripe tree, it’s easy not to thank God or praise God. And pretty soon you’re not thanking or encouraging anyone. In front of many churches (not this one, of course) we see gripe trees, just covered with harps! And chances are, there aren’t many people inside.
There is the fear tree. We’re so afraid of how people will respond that we don’t do anything. We want to share our faith with people outside the church, but we just can’t bring ourselves to risk rejection. So we never initiate spiritual conversations, never say anything about the Lord. As congregations, we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of not having enough money or people to extend our outreach, so we never try. Or, maybe we’re afraid of success. What if we really sang the Lord’s song and the pagans heard it and came? What if they came? They might change our nice little church! So, we hang up our harps on the fear tree.
There is the tree of unbelief. We really don’t believe that people today encounter the risen, living Lord Jesus, and that their lives are changed! We really don’t believe that God’s Spirit can empower us and that God will provide what we need and that we can live in the Kingdom of God. And so we live the Christian life as if it were a set of abstract principles instead of a dynamic relationship with the living Lord Jesus! We do church as if we were volunteer members of a charitable organization instead of the very presence of the Lord Jesus in the world today! We’ve hung up our harps on the tree of unbelief.
If we see our harps hanging on any of these trees, what do we do? We repent. Reverse direction. Ask God to change the focus from what we’ve lost to what lies ahead, to replace our griping with gratitude, our fear with faith, our unbelief with faith.
5. Ask God every day to see where He is at work and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work
God is up to something here at First Christian Church. Can you see it? Can you perceive it? I heard we had very meaningful worship services the last 2 Sundays, even when our pastors weren’t here. Wednesday night we counted 65 people here. Someone who was so discouraged she could hardly get out of bed received new hope and strength as people prayed for her here. A teenage girl told John and me her life has been turned around since she has been coming to our church, and she had the privilege last week of leading a friend to the Lord. Let’s ask God to open our eyes to see what He is doing here, and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work.
Every day as we live our lives, we are on a mission field. At the beginning of the day we pray, “Help me make your love real.” Even small things done with great love can be a big influence. We ask every day to have opportunities to influence people toward Christ with the way we live our lives, our loving deeds, and our words.
By the grace and power of God, we start singing the Lord’s song, even in this strange land.
RELEASE YOUR SONG by James Forbes
There’s a song inside of me, I can hardly wait to see What it is I have to say Or the music I will play. It’s been so long in coming, First the thought and then some humming. But before I find my key Something stifles it in me.
What keeps my song from being sung? Past hurts, deep fears, a timid tongue? What makes my freedom come so hard? A self-made, live-in prison guard. Meanwhile my song still groans in me. I can’t be me til my song is free. Debating, hesitating, getting ready to sing, My song could die, like a stillborn thing.
“Release your song,” said the Spirit to me. “Be free, be free. It’s Jubilee!” Cast out each fearsome song patrol; Proclaim deliverance to your soul.”
The courage of life now danced in my blood. I said “yes” to my song, and it came like a flood. Up from within and down from above, A Kingdom built on the power of love. Thank God my song has been set free. The rhythm and words are right for me. I’m finally ready to sing out strong. My soul is saying, “This is my song.”
Sermon by Judy Turner
I don’t know exactly when or how it happened that American culture changed so much, but it seems like we of the mainline church recently woke up to find ourselves in a “foreign land”. Wasn’t it just yesterday that American culture was “Christian”? Oh, we know everyone was not a committed follower of Jesus Christ by any means, but the culture was built on some shared values and standards. The first television shows I saw portrayed an Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best kind of world. And the mainline church with its white columns and tall steeple was the center of that world. People generally respected and supported the institutional church. Now we’re in a fragmented culture. Everyone seems to be defining their own center, and if there is an orientation point in communities, it’s Wal Mart, not the church. Church leaders are singing songs of discouragement, like “We’ve Been Working at the Church House, All Our Live-Long Lives” and “Where Have All the People Gone?” Shortages of people and money seem to be the common experience of churches of the old denominations such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Disciples of Christ.
And in the midst of all our discouragement and troubles, the secular culture is out there taunting us with their indifference. It’s as if unbelievers are saying, “OK, just show me what this God of yours can do for me. He doesn’t seem to be doing much for you.” Or maybe the taunt is, “Give me some reason I should even notice the church.”
God’s People in a Foreign Culture
But this is by no means the first time in history that God’s people have found themselves in a foreign culture, with everything changed. In the Sixth Century before Christ, the little kingdom of Judah had been invaded and destroyed by the powerful Babylonians. The conquering army destroyed homes, killed lots of people, and others they rounded up like cattle and herded them from their homes and relocated them in the foreign land of Babylon. Psalm 137 reflects the experience of God’s people in exile. Those exiles sat by the rivers of Babylon remembered- bitter, sad memories of loss and destruction. Saddest of all was remembering Solomon’s magnificent temple in Jerusalem, destroyed, nothing left but rubble, all the precious holy things of the temple carted away – just booty. The temple was the place where through the centuries God met His people, sacrifices were offered for sins, forgiveness was granted. It was the holiest place in all the earth, and now it was no more. The taunts of their captors, “Why don’t you sing one of the songs of Zion like Psalm 48 (“Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain…God is in her citadels; he has shown himself to be her fortress”) made the pain unbearable. They couldn’t sing for the tears and the choking in their throats, when they remembered Jerusalem. They just hung up their harps on the nearby trees and wept for their homeland.
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill . 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!" 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
What is helpful for us in this Psalm, and in what way?
What do we do with a Psalm like this? It’s called a Psalm of Lament. No kidding! And it expresses a bitter vindictiveness that the New Testament makes clear is not to be the spirit of a follower of Jesus. But there is a reason this Psalm is included in among the divinely inspired scriptures, and as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” So I think we benefit from prayerfully studying the Psalm to see what in it is helpful for us, and in what way.
1. In this real relationship we have with God, we must be real with God.
We can express to God our deepest anguish and our bitterest anger. We don’t have to put on a happy face or pretend with God. Straight to the arms of God is the safe place to go with our rage and despair. When life is hard, turning our backs on God is a temptation. Instead, we choose to turning toward God with our pain. Our honest openness with God gives God a chance to start redeeming and healing the pain.
2. Value our spiritual heritage, but don’t make an idol of it.
The first 5 books of the Bible are about God forming a people to represent Him in the world. He gave them a shared history, a culture, practices, that would remind them continually of who they were and why. It was a good thing for the Israelite exiles in Babylon to remember their spiritual heritage, to not forget their homeland and the temple and their religious practices. But what about considering Jerusalem their “highest joy”? Could that be a form of idolatry? Idolatry is giving anything other than God first place in your heart and in your life. If their trust was placed in their religious system or their religious traditions or a sacred building rather than in God Himself, then their trust was misplaced. So, here we start learning from the Psalm as a negative example. In the light of the whole counsel of scripture, we say, “Yes, we are to always remember what God has done in the past. Yes, we are to value our spiritual heritage, our traditions and our places where we’ve met God. But we can’t value any of that more than we value God Himself. And we can’t put God in the box of the past. The Prophet Isaiah wrote during the time Israel’s destruction as a nation started taking place. He saw the time when Israelites would be taken from their homeland and into exile. But just because the kingdom of Israel was no more didn’t mean the Kingdom of God was in trouble at all. Isaiah forsees how God will continue to work in human history until His purposes are fulfilled. In Isaiah 43:18-19, God says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God’s people are always supposed to have a rear-view mirror so we can see where we have come from, but we need to have a big and clear windshield so we can see where God is taking us now! If all we have is a big rear-view mirror, we’ve got serious problems.
3. Choose to believe that God can empower us to be effective witnesses for Him now (even in this “foreign land”, our changed circumstances)
I think we can understand the choice reflected in Psalm 137: “things are so hard here, we’ve lost so much, we can’t give bold, joyful effective witness to the loving goodness of our God. So we’ll just give up. Literally, they hung their harps on the trees near the river and went silent. That was just a picture of the surrender in their spirits. They would have their religious memories, but they wouldn’t have a living, vital faith.
4. Repent and retrieve our harps
What about us? Are we singing the Lord’s Song in this strange land? Are we breaking through the darkness of our culture with a joyful witness to the love and power of God made known in Jesus Christ? Have we stopped trying to influence our culture toward God and become influenced by it? Have we lost our joy and confidence? Have we hung up our harps and gone silent?
Jill Briscoe reflects on this Psalm and suggests that if we suspect that we’ve lost our joy in the Lord, but want to rediscover it, it would be a good idea to look where we hung up our harps. Will each of you come with me into the realm of the Spirit and walk around for awhile and see if there’s a tree where your harp is hanging?
There is the grief tree. Some hurt or loss has taken your joy in the Lord, and maybe even caused you to doubt God’s goodness. God wants to heal the hurt and fill the empty places inside of you, but you can’t seem to let go of the sadness and the anger. You want whatever it was you lost more than you want God. Together as a church we often hang our harps on the grief tree. We’re focused on what the church used to be like and long for the good ol’ days. We forget that God’s name is “I am”, not “I was”.
There is the gripe tree. You take your focus off God and focus on what’s wrong- with the world, your spouse, the church, your neighbors, the country – never thinking something could be wrong in your own spirit. When your harp is hanging on the gripe tree, it’s easy not to thank God or praise God. And pretty soon you’re not thanking or encouraging anyone. In front of many churches (not this one, of course) we see gripe trees, just covered with harps! And chances are, there aren’t many people inside.
There is the fear tree. We’re so afraid of how people will respond that we don’t do anything. We want to share our faith with people outside the church, but we just can’t bring ourselves to risk rejection. So we never initiate spiritual conversations, never say anything about the Lord. As congregations, we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of not having enough money or people to extend our outreach, so we never try. Or, maybe we’re afraid of success. What if we really sang the Lord’s song and the pagans heard it and came? What if they came? They might change our nice little church! So, we hang up our harps on the fear tree.
There is the tree of unbelief. We really don’t believe that people today encounter the risen, living Lord Jesus, and that their lives are changed! We really don’t believe that God’s Spirit can empower us and that God will provide what we need and that we can live in the Kingdom of God. And so we live the Christian life as if it were a set of abstract principles instead of a dynamic relationship with the living Lord Jesus! We do church as if we were volunteer members of a charitable organization instead of the very presence of the Lord Jesus in the world today! We’ve hung up our harps on the tree of unbelief.
If we see our harps hanging on any of these trees, what do we do? We repent. Reverse direction. Ask God to change the focus from what we’ve lost to what lies ahead, to replace our griping with gratitude, our fear with faith, our unbelief with faith.
5. Ask God every day to see where He is at work and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work
God is up to something here at First Christian Church. Can you see it? Can you perceive it? I heard we had very meaningful worship services the last 2 Sundays, even when our pastors weren’t here. Wednesday night we counted 65 people here. Someone who was so discouraged she could hardly get out of bed received new hope and strength as people prayed for her here. A teenage girl told John and me her life has been turned around since she has been coming to our church, and she had the privilege last week of leading a friend to the Lord. Let’s ask God to open our eyes to see what He is doing here, and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work.
Every day as we live our lives, we are on a mission field. At the beginning of the day we pray, “Help me make your love real.” Even small things done with great love can be a big influence. We ask every day to have opportunities to influence people toward Christ with the way we live our lives, our loving deeds, and our words.
By the grace and power of God, we start singing the Lord’s song, even in this strange land.
RELEASE YOUR SONG by James Forbes
There’s a song inside of me, I can hardly wait to see What it is I have to say Or the music I will play. It’s been so long in coming, First the thought and then some humming. But before I find my key Something stifles it in me.
What keeps my song from being sung? Past hurts, deep fears, a timid tongue? What makes my freedom come so hard? A self-made, live-in prison guard. Meanwhile my song still groans in me. I can’t be me til my song is free. Debating, hesitating, getting ready to sing, My song could die, like a stillborn thing.
“Release your song,” said the Spirit to me. “Be free, be free. It’s Jubilee!” Cast out each fearsome song patrol; Proclaim deliverance to your soul.”
The courage of life now danced in my blood. I said “yes” to my song, and it came like a flood. Up from within and down from above, A Kingdom built on the power of love. Thank God my song has been set free. The rhythm and words are right for me. I’m finally ready to sing out strong. My soul is saying, “This is my song.”
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Children's Garden Under Way!
Children's Garden at Stark's Garden, Orange, TexasThanks to Bill Hudspeth's backhoe wizardry, we're adding a Children's Garden to our Community Garden; stop by next Sunday and see tree stumps go out, and the fence posts go in. There are approximately 600 Community Gardens sponsored by Churches across the country; many of them have areas specifically focused on youth and children. There, kids learn about where food comes from, get hands-on experience, and contribute to their communities food banks.
Mr. McGregor's GardenMany children's gardens develop themes that children can relate to, and expand on. At the Stark Garden in Orange, Texas, raised beds are set up that represent stories from fairy tales, from the Bible, or from Children's Literature. The small garden above (it is about 6X6 feet) tells the story of Peter Rabbit.
Over the winter (between November through March) your Community Gardeners will be preparing the garden for spring planting. Mulch will be laid down, infrastructure (fencing, water lines and meters, and trellises) will be put in, planting "maps" will be put together. If you would like to take part in the Community Garden--as a gardener, helper, or contributor--you are most gratefully welcomed to do so!
In the mean time, watch how the Children's Garden Grows!
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