Oct. 9 Sermon

This is a sermon I preached on October 9th, 2011 at 6th Presbyterian Church based on Exodus 32:1-14 and Matthew 22:1-14

As I read the Golden Calf passage along with the parable of the wedding banquet, I get the feeling that humanity needs a good counseling. A nice sit down session with legs up on the couch, discussing our issues of commitment and identity. Those really are the two issues identified in these passages, aren’t they?

In Exodus, God has just led the Israelites out of Egypt, freeing them from slavery. They weren’t just freed though, no, God intervened in such a way that God’s power and majesty was made know. God intervened in a very visible way with frogs, blood, locusts, gnats, flies, boils, thunder and hail, and turing Egypt dark for three days. God’s intervention was a cosmic intervention. The Israelites then crossed the Red Sea escaping the danger of oncoming Egyptian armies. Once reaching safety in the wilderness, the people cry out in the wilderness asking for food and water. Again God provides sending manna and quails and sending forth water from a rock. God acts as the provider. Once all of the commotion of escaping from a major world power and surviving plagues, calms down a bit God and Moses have some time to chat up on Mt. Sinai about the forming of this community. God gives Moses instructions for how the community is supposed to live. This is where our passage picks up today. Moses has been on top of the mountain for forty days and just as the instructions are being made, the people down at the bottom of the mountain are getting a little restless. They begin to ask one another, where exactly this Moses guy is. This Moses guy who lead them out of Egypt. Wait, wait a second. Did they just say this Moses was the one who lead them out of Egypt? Is this the same Moses who fled Egypt and argued with God about going back and helping out his fellow Israelites? Did the Israelites miss the whole God and plague thing? I mean, how could we ever mistake what God does for us as the qualities and actions of a person. Reading this story we would never reduce the majestic loving power of God to chance and reason, of course we would give God credit where credit is due.

But this isn’t just the Israelites story is it? This is the story of today as well. This is your story, this is my story. I have been a part of churches where this is their attitude, an attitude of separation from God. It is easy for the members to sit back and criticize the leadership of the church. It is even easier for those outside of the church to sit back and criticize. So often we look at the pastor, or the building, or the presbytery as our leader, don’t we? We begin to follow pastors words as if they are final, we go along with denominational lines simply because they are there, we allow others to pray instead of us, and those outside of the church may even say, “eh well that God thing really isn’t for me.” Now, this is not an attack on those who criticize, or even those who are apathetic, but this instead is an invitation. This is an invitation to examine what it might look like to step into God’s loving grace and to set our hearts and minds on God as our guide. With the view that a pastor, or that “someone else” is our guide we take all of the responsibility off of ourselves and we lose something very important. We lose our identity as children of God. Instead we may become children of the Presbyterian Church, or children of a certain pastor or Christian author just as the Israelites in a way became children of Moses, waiting for direction. But these other leaders do not define truly who we are, and in finding our identity in them, we lose one of the greatest gifts of God. We lose sight of the fact that God came to us in Jesus, so that we may know God and enter into a relationship with God. No middle man, no smoke and mirrors, no games to be played, God longs for us to enter into relationship with God. So I ask of you, please accept this invitation.

But first let’s take a look at the Matthew passage before we get any further. In Matthew, Jesus’ parable doesn’t even seem to beat around the bush. While the message still has some ambiguities the action seems fairly straight forward. There is a king who has prepared a wedding banquet for his son. The food was ready, tables were set, and the kings messengers were sent to invite the guests. However when the guests are first met each one goes on their own way, keeping up with their daily lives. I’d like to say that these people didn’t know what they are missing out on, but I too have unfortunately skipped my fair share of free dinners. When I first read this story it reminded me of my college years. At Westminster, a small liberal arts school, people are notorious for being over committed and unable to say no. If there were 1,400 students there might be 2,800 clubs, organizations, activities, dinners. Ok that might be an exaggeration, but there really were more events than you knew what to do with, not to mention keeping up with the school work that you were assigned. I would get e-mails every day for new events or meetings or speakers, and when I would walk into the student union building there would be flyer after flyer advertising for even more events. After a while I just came to ignore any e-mail update or flyer that came my way. I’m not sure if Jesus’ parable isn’t getting at something similar. In the parable it states that the guests made light of the invitation, one went on to his farm and another back to their business. It is very true that we have things in our lives that we need to take care of. There are bills that need to be paid, which means we need to go to work, and jobs are harder to find now, so we even have to work at finding work, and then there are relationships to keep up, children to taxi around, meals to be made, shopping to be done, and then maybe we can find time to rest, and then possibly if we have rested we might have time to notice these invitations around us.

I am the first to be guilty of this. I am teased of being a person of routine, but its true. I have a routine that keeps me sane in which I can fit in all of my tasks in the day. However, in keeping to my routine I miss many opportunities for unexpected encounters with God. But how are we to structure our lives so that we may be more aware of God? We can’t just sit around waiting, there are things that need to be done. We are students, and physicians, and teachers, and mothers, and fathers, and business men and women, and caretakers, and pastors, and architects, and you fill in the blank. These identities of ours keep us busy, very busy. Who we are determines what we have to do. As a student I have books that need to be read, papers that need to be written, I need to show up for class, and even when I’m feeling a little bit crazy I might participate in class. The same goes for all of our identities, there are tasks that need to be completed that correspond with who we are.

Lets jump back to the Israelites at the base of Mt. Sinai. Remember their problem? They wanted to make a golden calf to worship since it seemed like Moses wasn’t coming back. They wanted to replace Moses because they said it was him who led them out of Egypt. It was Moses they put their trust in. It was Moses that they wanted to follow. It was in Moses that they found their identity. But it wasn’t Moses who led them out of Egypt, was it? It was God who led them out of slavery and God who fed them in the wilderness. Their trust should have been in God, it should have been God whom they wanted to follow. When they were followers of Moses, they lost their identity as a people of God, as children of God. God even recognizes this. In Exodus 32:7 God commands Moses saying, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt are acting perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them.” When we lose our identity, we become committed to other things, or people. The same applies for the Matthew passage. There, the people are identified by their works. It makes sense that they would ignore the invitation of the king, because their identity was not with him, it was with their work. While working is good, it is needed, it seems like this parable and the golden calf story are telling us that is not where we are to find our identity. We are to find our identity in God. Through these texts we have seen what happens when we lose our identity in God, that we become committed to other things, but how should our lives look if we were to find our identity in God?

It would be so nice if I said that this identity grounded in God looked like someone just showing up to church, or if there were steps to follow. I would love that, or at least I think I would at first. I could easily take these steps and fit them into my schedule and go about my routine. But I have found through struggling in faith, that those steps aren’t the fulfillment of grounding our identity in God. And that is because our identity is that of a child of God, and a child is a relational term. Relationships take work, they take time, you can go through many stages in a relationship, and I have found that if you want a good relationship you can’t fit them into your schedule just like another item on a list of to-dos. You see, when we fix our identity issues we also fix our relationships, our commitment issues. A relationship is organic, moving, give and take, dynamic, it is life giving, it is participatory. There is a lot of work in a relationship, but there is so much life, and emotion, and reward, and you feel alive. This is true of a relationship with God as it is a relationship with any loved one. But here is one thing that makes our grounded identity in God so much more fulfilling, so much more life giving than other identities; school ends, children grow up, jobs come and go, but God is. God is the one who was, the one who is, and the one who is coming.

We are called to so much more than a stagnant intellectual thought of God. We are called into a life giving relationship with the one who loves us, created us, and knows us. Now this does not mean that we are to sit around and read the Bible all day long and forget the rest of the world, no, that would be silly. This does not mean we are to not care about our jobs or our other relationships, again, silly. This does, however, mean that our identity in God, our relationship with God influences and gives life to all of our other relationships.

Once we commit to this, to actually living in a relationship with God, it can be a hard process, a process of change, and growing pains, a process of reorganizing priorities, but in this relationship there are many blessings, comfort, and joy, true joy. And we are to be comforted that God came to us in Jesus so that we may know and see what a relationship with God looks like. This is where the church fits in as well. The church and pastors in our lives are to be guides, not someone to be followed, but someone to walk alongside us, assisting in our growing relationship with God. Like I mentioned before, a relationship with is not something that we can just plug into our schedule, a relationship is not something that we can only attend to once every now and then, a relationship is not something that is a one way street. A relationship with God is exactly the same. We cannot just fit God into our schedule on Sundays, we cannot simply come to church expecting to receive, but we must let our relationship with God spread into all of the areas of our lives, be a participatory member of the relationship, grow through prayer and thought, learn more about God through reading the Bible and contemplation, ask questions, get frustrated with God, share your joys with God, when you pray believe what you are praying.

I pray for each of you that you will come to enter into this relationship. I pray that each of us would come to enter into the beautiful banquet which God already has for us, planned and ready before we even do anything. I pray that we as a church would come to make all decisions and movements with this relationship in mind. And I pray that we may all come to know our true identities as children of God.

Psalm 146

One of my favorite Psalms is 146. I feel like I say "one of my favorite Psalms is..." a lot. That is probably true thought. They all have so much meaning and emotion just seeping out of them. However, Psalm 146 has a special significance to me over the last few months. As I have been reading the Psalms I don't just sit back and pat the psalmist on the back for his beautiful language and great imagery. Instead, like I said before, the Psalms become my prayers. The hope of the psalmist becomes my hope. Consequently my hope in God changes the way that I live my life. I try not to live in fear or the shadow of oppressive systemic evils, but I try to live in the light of God's love who is Christ Jesus.

Psalm 146:8-9

The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

As this Psalm has become my prayer God has placed opportunities in my life to help live out the prayer. I feel like we should not only pray to God four help but to pray that God would use us in God's work. When this happens however, you need to expect and believe that God will answer your prayer and be ready to respond. The other day I had the opportunity to do just that. As I was walking down the street I was approached by a man outside of the post office. His name was Leon. As Leon began talking to me it seemed as though all my life slowed down and all else around me vanished. Leon was just asking for a quarter saying that he was hungry. I was able to give Leon a few dollars before I headed into the post office. The line was long, I did not stay long. As I came outside I saw Leon was still standing there and I remembered that I had found an Eat N Park gift card in my wallet just a day before. I asked Leon if I could take him to get something to eat. What do you know, there was an Eat N Park two doors down from the post office. I was able to sit and chat with Leon just for a bit before I went to a meeting. As I left, Leon was behind me eating his mid afternoon breakfast and I moved on to the rest of my day.

Even though I may never see Leon again, I continue to pray that God use me in his work to bring about his kingdom here on earth, always hoping to live in the light of what is to come.

Psalm 135

This morning I read Psalm 135. Within the Psalm lies some of my favorite language full of imagery. The Psalmist writes:

"The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of human hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear, and there is no breath in their mouths. Those who make them and all who trust them shall become like them." (135:15-18)

The Psalmist in this passage is just taunting those who worship false gods. He places right in front of them the downfall of their worship. These things that you worship, you made them! How can you worship something that is less than you, something that depended on you to come about, something that you have complete control over? This however is the question today as well though, isn't it? Forget about all of the material things that we worship in the place of God, put that aside for now, I am sure I will comment on that some other time. But for now, think about how we attempt to control God when we worship God. Think of all of the ways which we use the Bible to say what we want it to instead of letting the Bible instruct us. Think of all of our narrow views of a very deep and wide God. Think of all of the ways in which we try to make God ours and only ours when God created the earth and all that is in it.

Let us not try to control God, but to lift up our arms in surrender and let the one who created all guide us in all that we do.

Praying the Psalms

This past weekend I attended a conference on ancient scripture and early church fathers. To bridge the gap between the ending time Friday night at 9pm and the beginning time Saturday morning at 9am, we, as a conference, read through the Psalms. Split into two hour shifts and then individually taking fifteen minutes of reading at a time, the Psalms were prayed through one and a half times. While I did not spend the entire night at the church I did come early in the morning around 5:30 to listen and then helped read from 6 to 8am. Hearing the Psalms read in a quiet sparsely populated sanctuary was quite moving. It is hard to put words to, but the experience was transcendent but completely real at the same time. With the lights low and eyes shut in contemplative prayer and reading, minutes of prayer turned into hours of praise. While I listened to the Psalms being read, the prayers of ancient Jews became my prayers, their words my words, their anxiety, frustration, hopelessness, became my anxiety, frustration and hopelessness. But Psalm after Psalm, cry for help after cry for help, each Psalm found room for praise. In Psalm 109 verse 1 the poet writes, "Do not be silent, O God of my praise. For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues." In the same breath that the writer is describing his despair, he is also singing God's praise! How much we can learn from these ancient Psalms.

I have been reading two Psalms every morning and two each night for some time now. When I first began reading them they were something that I had to get through to get to the Gospel reading. However, reading the Psalms for me has become a beginning for the prayer that I carry with me throughout the day. The cries for safety in troubling times of encroaching enemies plays through my head as I walk to school and think of the many homeless that live around me who have no shelter, who feel vulnerable to enemies encroaching in on them at all times. I pray for the many unnamed homeless that they may find shelter in God, and that God may use me and the community to provide for their needs as well. While my daily troubles seem tame compared to homelessness, hunger, and war, none the less, reading the faith that these ancient Jews had inspires me to have a more real faith which cries out to God in my times of hardship and loneliness while at the same time proclaiming the praise due to God.

In an attempt to bring the Psalms more fully into my life as prayer I hope to reflect on the Psalms and my own prayers here.

Tomatoes in December

Do you know where your food comes from? Sure, we buy our bags of lettuce, tomatoes, chicken, and eggs from the grocery stores. I regret to inform you, however, that lettuce does not grow in bags, tomatoes are not supposed to be "fresh" in Pennsylvania in December, and chicken's breasts are not naturally that large. (Yes, even chickens breasts are augmented)

Recently I watched the movie "Food Inc." This movie attempts to tell us where exactly our food comes from. At one point, the screen filled with hundreds of acres of cattle eating corn in brown desolate land. Cows do not naturally eat corn, but corn is a quick easy food source to give them and boosts production and efficiency. Mad cow disease and other food contamination has come from cows whose diet is solely corn. There is some reaction in the cows stomach with bacteria and corn which scientists describe, but the end reaction is the same, poor food for the consumer. So, is efficiency what our consumption and production should be based on?

I saw chickens kept by the thousands in small coops that could only take a few steps before falling over due to enlarged breasts from hormones and other chemicals in their food. In the end all we see are large pieces of meat neatly packed by the hundreds in the grocery store. But what are we eating, chicken, or chemically enhanced chicken look alike. At what cost to our own bodies and the bodies of chicken do we get our big cheap meat? The system is very efficient, but again, at what cost?

Both the chickens and cows are kept in close quarters, so much so that most of their days are spent walking, sitting, and sleeping in the feces of the animals around them. What are we eating?

Most of the places that these animals are raised look more like factories than farms. Smoke stacks hover over fields while smoke pours into the land. Lush green vegetation can hardly be seen anywhere. What happened to some of our farms? These are not rare occurrences either. A majority of meat is produced by only four (4) companies in the U.S. and all four of these companies handle and prepare their meat this way.

The good news is, we have a choice. We do not need to eat meat look alikes enhanced chemically or fed an unnatural diet. We can benefit our own bodies and the bodies of the animals that we eat by buying food that you know where it comes from.

"Food Inc." ends with a clip showing a farmer Joel Salatin in Virginia (pictured above). The farmer walks around his lush fields where his cattle roam, feeding on their natural diet, stretching their legs, and in return fertilizing the land as their waste goes back to the earth grazing from field to field. Chickens freely walk in and out of their coop eating the grass, bugs, and other feed, growing fully and naturally. The farmer and his family sell fresh meat to customers up to nearly five hours away. While this may be a long drive, these customers not only know exactly where their food is coming from, but they have a relationship with the farmer. A closer example of a farm that grows free range chickens and cattle is in Ohio, where my friends Mel and Steve Montgomery live at Lamppost Farm.

For further information on how to get fresh food around you google CSA (community supported agriculture).

Eat fresh, live well, be informed.

Thanks For Your Time

For the past few days, the Summer Youth Institute at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has been blessed by the presence of David Bailey. While here David played a concert for the scholars and led a workshop on faith and creative writing last night. He was energetic with the high school students, cracked jokes, and played the guitar beautifully picking with his long quick fingernails. David has recently released his 23 album and is leaving directly from the seminary to go to the New Wilmington Mission Conference.

David also had a brain tumor removed just 7 weeks ago. He is learning to balance himself again and was warned by loving family and friends to not come to the seminary to play, saying he was not fit for travel. David, however, wanted to be here and nothing was going to stop him, especially not an ailing body. You see, over 13 years ago David was diagnosed with brain cancer and was told he had six months to live. Ever since then, time has been something very important for him. He has written many songs about time and talks about how he spends his time with family, friends, and especially drinking coffee. David does not dwell on the fact that he has overcome cancer multiple times, but he definitely does not ignore it either. He is very aware of his limitations with vision, being partially blind on the left side, and his balance. These limitations, I believe have only made him more aware of the blessings of life.

Ironic, isn't it how we sometimes only see the blessing in our lives when they are threatened, hindered, or away for a certain amount of time. I hope the take David's life as a lesson, so that I do not need to wait for my freedoms and gifts to be threatened to appreciate what I have. I hope we can all take time to appreciate time. Take time for others, to truly talk to them. Take time for yourself, to sit quietly and listen to yourself and God. Take time to be in awe of the world around you. Time, like so many things in our lives is not a renewable resource, there is a limited time that we will be here. I am not trying to be morbid, but am attempting to spur myself and others to live life, to appreciate the small things, and to forget about the trivial and unimportant things in life.

So, David Bailey, a man who has such precious time, thank you very much for spending the time you do have with us.

Hugaholic

This is the story of how I met Gregory, a self-diagnosed hug-aholic.

Last Wednesday night I had the chance to go and worship at East Liberty Presbyterian Church for their Taize service. The service was in an old stone chapel decorated full of candles, icons, and banners. As we sat in the pews singing and praying, there was no one in front of the congregation leading worship, but instead different members of the congregation would lead prayers from their seat. Having no one up front to focus on only helped our focus on God.

Now East Liberty Presbyterian Church, you must understand, is located in a neighborhood in Pittsburgh that is said to be quite economically and socially depressed. A lot of the commercial building space is vacant and many of the houses are run down. The church itself is a beautiful historic building constructed with money from Andrew Carnegie. If the church wanted to, it could get by on the endowment from Carnegie. However, the church has committed itself to living and serving and not just getting by, and has therefore been quite involved with the community. The church supports local programs that help get community members ready to own homes that have been remodeled, and provide freshly grown food in formerly abandoned lots at a low cost. East Liberty Presbyterian Church is not just getting by, but giving life to a place which is used to desolation and abandonment. The church also warmly welcomes those in the community who many churches may not be as welcoming to.

This brings me to Gregory. I noticed Gregory during the worship service on Wednesday night. He sat towards the front of the sanctuary and sang with all of his heart during the worship service. He had one of those smiles that is contagious and begs you to begin a conversation because you just know there is a story waiting to be told. So, after the service I approached Gregory during a time of refreshments right outside of the chapel. Gregory warmly introduced himself and proceeded to tell me about his button that he made which reads "Hugaholic". He told me about the importance of hugs, how everyone needs hugs, that they are great because they are free, and pretty much that hugs just make the world a better place. Gregory gave me a pamphlet that he drew himself and made photocopies of describing the benefits of hugs with quotes about hugs from various authors. After talking to Gregory for a bit and learning just a small bit about his history I had to join up with my group again. Before I left I asked Gregory if I could give him a hug, and I am confident that us two men hugged the biggest most loving hug two strangers have ever hugged before. We smiled and said our goodbyes, thinking that this could possibly be the last time that we see each other.

Gregory however, had more love to give.

As I gathered some other members of the group that I was with, we headed downstairs to walk to labyrinth. Again, the room was filled with candles, banners of every color of the rainbow, and light instrumental music in the background. When I entered the basement, I found that most of my group, made up of high school students, was already walking the labyrinth, and there in the midst of them was a middle age man, Gregory. Gregory was not walking the labyrinth, he was gracefully dancing and moving with the music, letting the twists and turns of the labyrinth direct his movement. I did not walk the labyrinth, but sat and prayerfully walked the labyrinth through the movements of Gregory.

I saw God that night in the form of a middle aged man named Gregory dancing in and among us. Isn't that how it usually happens? God is right there in front of us, dancing through our lives, so in sync with the movements that we make, that it is hard to recognize at times. I believe that God is always around us in the beauty of music, art, the nature, and people around us, but we need to slow down sometimes to see that it is God. So, may we slow down and join God in the dance he is dancing. Let God wrap his hands around us, pull us tightly towards him and follow God's lead in this dance of life.