Sermon August 23 2009

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
“Trusting in Uncertain Times”
In conversations with people over the years, I have realized that my experience of home and family is not universal. I was born to parents who wanted me from conception and welcomed into a family who had been excitedly awaiting my arrival. And most children are born to parents who want them—but sometimes those families are in situations where children feel less than welcome.

Sometimes parents feel pressure from their parents or other family members because of financial insecurity or relationship problems. So children may feel insecure because of personal relationships within families themselves. And sometimes children feel insecure within families because of issues beyond the control of individual families. Over certain periods of history some children have been born into cultures that were slowly disintegrating or actively being destroyed. For example, within recent Australian history, young Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents, forever labeling them as the stolen or homeless generations. And this country has similar legacies attached to earlier times when Native American children were removed and “reeducated” in schools that sought to remove native languages and cultures. A home and shelter, it seems to me, are a basic right of every human being, yet in many places in the world and in history it still seems to be something that people have to earn or something to be worthy of.

All of this talk of home and security—of having a shelter and the means to maintain it—reinforces the reality of having a home in God. Having a secure home—or not—as a child can strengthen the desire of security as we grow into adulthood. One of the ways that God can be experienced is that assurance and knowledge of security. Even when we are stripped of security in all other ways, God’s promises of belonging, of security, of hope and of home can carry us through deeply desolate times and places of severe want.

Sometimes when we are panicked, that desire for security can compel us to seek shelter and safety in questionable places and practices. Western culture’s practice of taking native or aboriginal children was one of those practices. Because our ancestors were encountering so many new practices and peoples they didn’t understand, they set out to fix those practices and people to make the strange people more like themselves.

Yet when we really accept where home is and with whom we most belong, we know that God is our home and that God’s household is with whom we most belong. What often may confuse us is how God has invited all to live in and with the community and household that God is building. We may be confused out of a lack of worth for ourselves—if that “wonderful” person is beloved of God, then how can God love me? Or, we may be confused by God’s invitation because we feel that we belong with God and others are so different that they cannot—this isn’t necessarily out of arrogance, we just can’t understand how people so different could be loved by the same God.

But how can we trust God unless we do believe, truly believe, that God loves us unconditionally—despite our weakness, sin, addiction, conceit, or any other thing we are or do. And we can trust that God will do as God has promised—and that those promises are eternal.

Honestly, that’s what makes me feel most at home with God—more at home with God than when I am in the presence of almost anyone else. As I have told others before, I can trust that God understands why I do certain things and make certain choices, I’m not sure other people will understand or give me a chance to explain. Knowing that God loves me and that I can trust God with all the thoughts and feeling of my mind and my heart means that every thought and feeling is a prayer to God in some way. I want to be more intentional and systematic in my prayer life—for my own sense of discipline and structure—but I know that God hears me whether or not I take the time to do it. What conscientious and systematic prayer can do is build our awareness that God is listening to us throughout the day. It’s almost a paradox—we pray on a regular basis, not because God isn’t listening all the time, but because we need to be reminded that God is always listening.

Trusting God and feeling at home in God’s presence can be bolstered by building that relationship—I’ve said it before and I will say it again and again and again, “You can’t know someone you haven’t spent time with, communicating with, sharing your deepest feelings and thoughts—that’s why we pray. And we need to know God’s feelings and thoughts, too, that’s why we study scripture—to hear how others have experienced God’s word and presence in their lives. We need to know God to trust God—and we know God the same way we know others by talking to and listening to God.”

As we know God by staying in relationship with God, we hear Ephesians suggest that praying in the Spirit means being centered in the place and/or person where one belongs, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. . . Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” This is the opening and closing—the description of wearing the armor of God was Paul’s way of describing how it is that the church could within the strength and power of God. In other places Paul speaks of wearing a new person after baptism—here he continued that way of describing the life of faith in stronger language—speaking of armor and weapons. I read this and heard it this way.
Use what God has given you so that you will survive times of torment and weakness, inside and out. Stand tall so that you can wrap truth around you, holding you together. Live with thoughts and actions centered in Jesus to keep you distant from evil choices, if possible. Wear the comfort of hope and possibility—to reveal the serenity and peace that God gives. Shield yourself always with the faith that you bear—assuring you of God eternal presence, no matter what else may happen. Rely on salvation to protect your heart and grasp firmly the word, knowing it well.

If we pray in the Spirit out of sense of belonging to the body of Christ—the community of the faithful—Paul writes that will awaken compassion as we pray for a minister to all the saints, which are all of God’s people. I believe this means caring for everyone because I believe that everyone belongs to God whether or not they know it. And it requires being centered in a place and being where we belong because compassion takes risk—we risk rejection, loss and pain. When we have compassion, we are with another—from the “com” of the word—in the midst of their feelings of pain, sorrow or other feeling or “passio.”

To have compassion means having the courage to step out into the lives of other people and it means caring in ways that they need, not just in ways that we want to care. Courage means having the heart or “cour” to do something. Though we may think of courage in times of war and violence, courage is necessary in moments where we are called to love and care for as well. In the last few months, I’ve reconnected with several people from high school and have learned about some courageous acts from people I hadn’t heard about for years. One was the little brother of a woman who was in my high school graduating class. My school was smaller than Cuba High, there were only 13 in my class, so I knew most of the high school. Anyway, I saw that he was talking about traveling to Kenya in Africa and had adopted orphaned children there. At one point, he described how his young son had died after a long battle with diseases associated with AIDS. I would never have predicted that kind of courage of him only knowing him as a young kid. In my eyes, that kind of centered compassionate courage can come only from a deep and real relationship and sense of belonging to God. When I asked his sister if he was in ministry, she said, not officially, but yes, that’s how she saw it.

To live the kind of life to which God calls us takes trust in God. In my life the people I trust the most are the relationships where I cultivate conversation and connection, so to cultivate my trust in God, I feel that it is important to be in conversation with God and connect to God regularly. I continue to work on that conversation and connection, not only in prayer time, but in the other ways that I live. We need the courage in difficult and challenging times to reach out in connection rather than to isolate ourselves in survival mode. We have to trust that God has put us here for a reason—other than survival—and continue to educate, minister to and care for people we meet as those who live in the body of Christ have always done in different ways at different times.

When the body of Christ and the life of Jesus are internalized by each of us and by the community we accept our mission as the embodiment of Jesus in a particular time and place. Or as the gospel of John says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” We abide in Jesus, not simply because our salvation depends upon our faith and connection, but because we are given life to share, life to give, life to extend toward others. We have a home through the life of Jesus so that God’s intentions for all of humanity can be carried out through us and through all who accept God’s life-giving intentions for creation.

How is it that your connection to Jesus has given you life that can be shared? It’s sometimes hard in the middle of heartache, desolation, loneliness, depression or loss to recognize, but as we look back we realize that our trust in God was affirmed, though it may not have been in the ways that we thought. When a loved one has died, the first desire is to have that person restored to us, to go back to a time before the loss; what God often does instead is weave within us a tapestry of memories that we can experience and learn from. Through the pain that we feel, we are strengthened to minister to others in the midst of their grief and loss if we have allowed ourselves to accept death as an integral part of mortal life. God can heal us; God gives us eternal life; yet God also makes us resilient when we do experience the deaths of loved ones, not only comforting us through the knowledge of resurrection, but revealing truths about ourselves in those losses and giving us strength to grow beyond them.

Our lives in Jesus Christ can be full of life if we allow the heart and hope of Christ to fill us, trusting in the promises that God made thousands of years before and trusting in the promises that we life in now. Let us recall that God’s statement of delight at the sight and sound and taste and touch of creation, “It is good.” And—the implication—it will stay that way with out stewardship. We recall God’s promises of survival to Noah, a promised land and a son to Abraham, a nation to Moses, a throne to David and his descendents and place of belonging for each of the faithful is affirmed throughout each covenant. We can trust in the promises of God—though we may not always receive what we think we want or ask for. But we can trust that God’s love for us is where we belong.

In the name and in the love of God: Life’s Source, Savior, and Sustainer. Amen.