Sermon July 29, 2012

2 Samuel 11:1-15

Psalm 14

Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

“God Is with Us”

Psalm 14 begins “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” And while many of us wouldn't say, “There is no God”—at least out loud—most, if not all, of us have acted this way a few times in our lives. We've acted like we have all the answers and understood all the questions without doubt or any acknowledgment that life is full of mystery and wonder. We pretend that we don't have unsolvable problems—unsolvable without the presence, assistance and gifts that God provides through divine intervention. And that God hasn't helped us and been present to us through the wondrous presence of friends, family, strangers and human society and culture including church.

Fools do say in their hearts that there is no God and God knows we've all been fools a few times—and some of us more than others. One of the tenets of a twelve-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous is acknowledgment of a higher power. In other words, the alcoholic or other addict has to be able to say, “There is something out there somewhere that is more powerful than I am.” An addict has to recognize the previous foolishness of “There is no God,” and trade it for the relative wisdom that something somewhere is more powerful than his or her addiction, than he or she has been in dealing with that addiction. That's the base line for growth in wisdom—a recognition of powerlessness against problems that are more powerful than each one of us is alone.

The psalm goes on to say that God looks down to see if any have wisdom and sees that the people who do evil take bread from others and don't ask God for help. Then it states that,

There they shall be in great terror,
   for God is with the company of the righteous.
You would confound the plans of the poor,
   but the Lord is their refuge.¹

There is something about the people who are willing to acknowledge their powerlessness without God that makes it possible for God's power to be present in their lives. And there is something about people who recognize God's presence in their lives through direct action and through the support of family and friends and other institutions in human society that makes it possible for them to help others. When we know we didn't do it alone, when we know that God has brought us thus far—we can know that we play a part in bringing others along, too. God blesses us through others so that others can be blessed through us.

There is the miracle that happens through the generous sharing of the blessings of creation and the miracle that occurs by such mysterious means that we can do nothing but stand in awe at the power of God in our lives. God is with us either way—the questions, will we recognize God? And how do we recognize God?

In the context of John's gospel, the point is that God is with and within Jesus and John is out to show us the answers to those questions. John wants to show us how not to be fools. So he shows us how God is with and within Jesus by what Jesus does, especially in a story like the one we heard today.

So, we learn who Jesus is by what he does (isn't that true of everyone – don't actions speak even louder than words?), but John's powerful discourses by Jesus are not free-floating. The words Jesus said (the discourses) connect to these stories about what Jesus did (his signs, or amazing works of wonder). And so we have the disciples, down-to-earth (even up on a mountain) and overwhelmed by the crowd, computing the cost of feeding so many people. "Impossible!" they say, but we know that all things are possible with God, of course, especially, with Jesus, "who redefines what is possible".² So this story is just as much, if not more, about the power of God in Jesus as it is about Jesus' compassion for the hungry crowd. God's power, after all, is "far more than all we can ask or imagine," as we read in Ephesians 3:20b.³

This story is about what can be accomplished with the help of God—God with Jesus Christ, God with the farmer who grew the barley, God with the fisherman who caught the fish, God with the basket-maker who wove the baskets, God with the boy who generously offered his lunch with compassion and kindness and God with the disciples who were lost in pragmatism and logic.

In each of the persons and situations that this story draws from and touches, God's power and action could be evaluated and acknowledged—God's wonders were performed. In each person from the individuals of the crowd to Jesus, Messiah and Son of God, the signs of God can be found. Where do we recognize ourselves individually and as a community of followers of Jesus in this passage?

As a community made up of followers of Jesus, we find ourselves acting in many ways and in a variety of situations—we seek sustenance as a community, at least spiritual sustenance because we do come together in worship to pray and to share corporately in song and other forms of praising God. We seek nourishment, too, as we look for faithful community or fellowship when we eat, play and work together rather than always alone. We also seek to be fed because we know in some way that we are not complete without the God who made us and sustains us: we are sometimes sadder than we want to be, lonelier than we seem to be or needy in some way that is hard to describe.

Together we seek nourishment because we have a vision of who we could be and who we have been. We want to grow in faith and we want to grow into the church we could be with God's help. We have a vision of where God may be calling us together, which will take more than we seem to have today—but not more than God can provide. We could stay like the disciples were in today's story and just wonder how or we can stick with Jesus and see the miracle happen. We will see the great and fantastic place where God is leading us here in this community—if we stay faithful to the road where Jesus has walked.

And even though we are among the ones in this story who are seeking sustenance—among the ones who are hungry for something—we also experience abundance when we realize how much we have in the context of this global community we live in. When God is with us, we see how much we have to give, how much we have to share with others. We have relative material abundance and we have the knowledge of lifetimes lived in faith. We have valuable experience we can share as long as we can share it without the cynicism that is also pretty abundant in this world. Cynicism says, “Six months wages won't buy enough bread!” Wisdom says we have something, so lets bless the bread and fish and start passing them out anyway.

God is with us this day and God is with us always. We can sometimes recognize the power of God without quite understanding it. When Jesus fed the crowd, for instance, in their shortsightedness they wanted to throw away the imperial power of Rome and replace it with a crown for Jesus, they wanted to shorten the story to their scope of understanding, but Jesus knew there was more.

God is with us this day and God is with us always. The disciples were starting to realize the power that was in Jesus—and yet he still surprised and terrified them when he walked on the water. God's power in Jesus is revealed more and more clearly as we read this gospel and as we experience what God can do through him in our lives as individuals and as church.

Let us be wise and not be fools—let us trust that there is a God as we do the work of Christ together. Let us be generous with our love and with our lives as we seek to thrive and grow in this place and time. Let us admit that we can't do this thing called church or this thing called life without the power of God within us. Let us know that God is with us, not advocating all of our choices, behaviors and actions, but calling us to faithfully work together as Christ's body accomplishing “ more than all we can ask or imagine.”

To the glory of God. Amen.

1Psalm 14:5-6

2Texts for Preaching Year B, Charles Cousar http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/july-29-2012-seventeenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

3http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/july-29-2012-seventeenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html

Sermon July 22, 2012

2 Samuel 7:1-14a

Psalm 89:20-37

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

“Vision of Unity”

Several years ago, I worked with a church renewal program which had as an article of faith that each and every church has all the tools it needs to thrive if only the church would choose to use them for the purpose they were given. As an illustration, they would show a covered wagon type vehicle with square wheels or no wheels where the round ones should have been or with the cover that could be a sail folded up instead providing a place where the Holy Spirit could move the church forward into the future God had given it to live. Often the items necessary would be stored inside the wagon so they would be broken or used up.

Part of what I really like about the ideas within this program was that it didn't claim to know what each church needed, but only that God had given each church the gifts and tools necessary to do ministry in the time and place where the church lived.

Yet within the conversations we would have, there were differences about how gifts should be used—and how and where people were willing to use them. There were differences of opinion about how the church could and should live—with some of the folks seeming to have the right answers or simply disagree with anyone who offered other answers or suggestions. In other words, if you didn't agree with them on each and every point, you must be wrong.

I have also experienced groups of Christians who have particular views of prayer, bible study, theological position or teaching, use of language, denominational identity or personal experience where they stood so firmly (or stubbornly) that no one else could ever be quite as completely right as they were themselves. There is nothing wrong with having a strong faith and yet it is something else to have one's own religious rules and regulations condemn another person's carefully and prayerfully considered way of life according to their study, prayer and experience of God, God's Holy Spirit and God's Son.

There are some incredible spiritual renewal processes in the world that have renewed churches worship experiences beginning with individuals and small groups. Yet sometimes, in our human weaknesses, some of those programs have people convinced that, unless another person experiences them in the same way, they just don't get what God is doing in people's lives and in the world.

In the letter to the Ephesians, the Pauline writer begins with a blessing—which was read in last week's worship. In part, this blessing invokes God as the Father of Jesus and uniting God of all creation—as Christ brought all creation into the plan of salvation and through Christ all of this was done, once for all. And it the first chapter of the letter, the recipients were told that this salvation was in effect from the beginning of time and came into fruition when Jesus came, teaching and living and dying and rising according to God's promise of redemption for all creation. Through this blessing, unity is proposed for all of creation because of what God had already done in creation and in and through Jesus Christ.

In chapter 2 of the letter, Paul reminds the listeners that before meeting and following Jesus Christ, they were dead because sin was the dominant characteristic of their lives. They lived, as do we all without Jesus' way of living, following selfish desires and self-focused goals only—with anger at obstructions our reaction to anything or anyone that makes us slightly unhappy. He continues that it is by the grace of God in Jesus that each person was and is given life because survival and self-focus is not longer the dominant characteristic or purpose. We can become, in this way, what God created us to be to begin with. And part of what we are to be is united with God and one another and with all of creation through the way of life and redemption of Jesus Christ.

Today's text applies this idea of unity to the specific situation of the people of the community or church in Ephesus. The Jewish followers of Jesus—who lived according to the covenant God made with Abraham and Moses, including circumcision—felt or acted superior to the Gentile followers of Jesus—who were not circumcised on the seventh day of their young, male lives and did not keep the law of Moses in the same ways.

The Jewish followers of Jesus, it seems from this letter were feeling superior to the Gentile followers and let them feel this way—they were the spiritual insiders that already knew the answers to all the questions. Or that's the way it seemed to some.

Many of us, in my experience, feel like or act like that kind of insider. If you or I have grown up within one congregation or one denomination set of understandings, you or I may feel like we have all the answers. I heard at one time or another, often meant with compassion, “I can't imagine how people live without knowing (Jesus, God, salvation, justification, pray, love, faith, etc.) for certain.” And while that statement is meant, I think, to say, “I couldn't have done it without my faith in God, Jesus, or without my church,” sometimes it sounds arrogant as if we have “IT” and no one else does.

Or maybe you've been on the receiving end of that kind of statement because this church and denomination doesn't teach from a doctrinal statement. That we are somehow suspect or not quite Christian because of it. Have you heard that?

In our defense, I would hold up these texts from Ephesians as evidence of the early church's wrestling with the same issues. I would lift up the universality of description, how Paul taught that Jesus brought two (or more) parts of humanity together instead of making one superior to the other. Paul taught that Jesus was about building a house where God's children could live together and not a ghetto where God's children were segregated or where they segregated others.

And in the spirit of peace, which this letter proclaims as a gift of Christ to the faith, “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”¹ In the body of Jesus Christ, God has brought all followers of Jesus together in spite of the differences we continue to proclaim within that body—and even within this body, this congregation.

Though we look to the day when unity within the body of Christ is made real, we also live within a world that likes to lift up our differences. Instead of pointing out how different we are, perhaps we can proclaim how we want the same goals. Poverty, hunger, homelessness, loneliness, depression, despair, uncontrolled anger, abuse, addiction and so many other conditions of humanity can be addressed with the compassion, grace, gifts, and love of Jesus Christ from within the church who carries out his ministry. I pray that we can leave behind the injuries that have been done to us by other Christians and Christian leaders and do the work that we still have to do. I pray that we can lift up the household of God that Paul says we have been given no matter how we might disagree on some things.

I pray with great hope that our vision of God's dwelling-place remains the vision toward which all of us strive—a vision where we see ourselves living and working with faith and with the hope that Jesus Christ has given us.

To the glory of God, God of promise to all of Creation. Amen.

1Ephesians 2:13-14

Sermon June 10, 2012

  1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20

  Psalm 138
 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Mark 3:20-35

“Listening to God”

When I was fifteen and sixteen years old I wanted nothing more than to fit into the mold that was valued by my peer group. But I was not athletic, I wasn't interested in popular kinds of activities and I wasn't attractive to the males my age. I saw that much of the popularity was shallow and based on fleeting strengths and quickly forgotten accomplishments. I was different, so I pretended that that's exactly what I wanted—and somewhere in the middle of that muddle, I realized that it was okay to be different, but it's still really hard and painful to remember those weeks, months and years of distance from my peer group.

I think that communities who are creating structures and institutions go through similar states of development to those of individuals. The nation of Israel was born over a long period of time and in trying circumstances. They came from wandering nomads and displaced kinfolk and feuding families. They sold themselves into slavery, wandered for forty years and were born by the waters of the Jordan into the promised Land. They entered the land of Canaan and were governed as tribes by judges, including Samuel. He was raised in the temple, so he had priestly credentials, was a prophet chosen by God and was respected by the people. It was his authority that the elders needed if they wanted to have a king acceptable to the rest of the nation. So they came to him and asked him for a king. “We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”¹

As they entered their adolescence as a nation, they no longer wanted to be a loosely connected group of tribe and tribal governments whose major decisions were made by judges—they wanted the regal and majestic wealth and power of a kingdom. The powerful nations around them probably intimidated them—and may have even threatened the tribes who could not defend themselves from a nation state. The Promised land may have felt very vulnerable to them. They wanted the army and the institutional power of a monarch for the kind of safety and security it seemed to offer them. They may have seen it as moving from childhood—with little structures for efficient government to a new kind of adulthood as a nation. At least that's how I have seen it—it's probably a very natural sociological movement from tribal government to national identity and government, but that kind of change has a price.

And God told them the price—with the strength of a standing army, they would lose their sons because a king needs soldiers and warriors to march and drive the chariots of war. The warrior king and kingdom they wanted—needs institutional structures to uphold the machine of war. Then men who weren't fighting and and the women would be needed to work in the palace and create the accessories of nobility and monarchy. Namely, the bible says, there would be perfumers and cooks and bakers out of the population of women. Women would tend the vineyards that the king would take—or he would take at least the fruit of the vineyards as his tithe or tax. He would tithe the grain and the best of the all the produce of the land to use and to sell to support the institutional standing army that would be necessary to have a warrior king to defend and eventually extend the reach of the kingdom.

“This,” says Samuel, by the word of God, “is what you are asking for when you ask for a king. You will rely on this man for your security and your safety and he will take whatever is necessary in an attempt to provide that security. Is this what you want? When you have a king, no longer will you rely on God, but you will have a king.”

And they said, “Yes, we want a king like everyone else.”

To live like other nations, they had to live with the consequences of their choice—as do we all. And God let them make this choice, though God told Samuel, “It is not you they are rejecting, it is me.” Samuel had just made his sons judges over Israel—and the elders rejected his sons.

I think that's really interesting—that God let them make this choice, to reject the rule of judges, so that they could follow in the direction of kingdom. And God doesn't completely abandon them, but simply says that they will have to live with that choice. God will not take back the kingdom structure, once this choice was made, it was made forever, I guess.

They listened, in a way, and chose to have a king anyway. And God listened to their choice and didn't abandon them, but allowed them to live with their decision to live as a kingdom until that kingdom fell apart due to its own weakness.

When we listen to God, as the elders and leadership of Israel learned, we may not hear what we want to hear. God is a lot like a good parent here saying, “I'm going to let you live with the consequences of your choice. I will love you and care for you still, but this choice is irreversible, and the consequences of your choice will follow.”

I opened the sermon by describing that I was different from the very small group of peers I had in high school. I think that's one of the important parts of that time of life. In adolescence, at least as it is understood today, we explore who we are compared to who our friends are, who our parents want us to be and who we understand ourselves to be. Many of us find this more easy than others—some folks find it incredibly difficult and people are everywhere in between for many different reasons.

In their adolescence they chose to be a kingdom. And God judges them according to this choice from this point on. I don't mean that God holds it against them, but that God wants them to live as a kingdom as justly and lovingly as possible. So God criticizes how the kings take advantage of the poorest of the people. God critiques the priests and other leaders for allowing the kings too much power without check. God sends prophets to criticize the overuse of power and violence against people.

Just because God let them choose to have a king didn't mean that God let them live without the standards of justice and love that God had given them years before on Mt. Sinai. Love God and love your neighbor were still God's standard code of conduct and one couldn't do one without ding the other.

They had to live within the choices and consequences they made—this choice and many others. Within this choice they had to listen to God's standards of living—and God would continue to speak this standard, this wisdom and teaching throughout all time. God's steadfast love and faithfulness were still sovereign—even after they chose to have a king. The king might want to live outside the law, but God stood firm in love and faithfulness.

Though Jesus' life and teaching were transformative, his life and teachings were also a continuation of the basic message of God throughout the biblical witness. Hidden beneath layers of story and sometimes frightening consequences of choice, God called the people of Israel—and through them all nations—to love God and love neighbor. Whenever Israel felt the consequences of injustice, they understood themselves be punished, but truly they were just consequential experiences. When they did not love God and neighbor, their nation was broken and scattered (like other nations were). When standards of justice (which includes fairness, faithfulness, equity and mercy) was strong, they were stronger.

Jesus' life was an example of this kind of living—he healed those who were broken and taught that blessings were on the meek who would inherit the earth. He fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and maybe some fish and he taught, that blessings were on who hunger and thirst because they would be fed. He was angry at those who hoarded power and wealth; he got angry in the temple and threw out the bankers and moneychangers and taught,

“. . . woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”²

When he said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother,” he claimed all who embraced mercy, healthy relationships, loving and healing and hope. He embraced all who stood up against evil (or injustice) and embraced good (mercy and just ways of living.) He said that those who didn't hadn't stepped into the household of God.

When we listen to God, we can tell if it's God who is speaking because God has been pretty consistent over the millennia of divine messaging. The steps may be complex, but the big goal is clear and simple. When the poor and the vulnerable are damaged, that's not God's will. When the weak and the oppressed are made weaker and oppressed more, that's not God's will. When the sick and the lonely are ignored, that's not God's will.

When we are listening to God, when the vision of God appears on the horizon of our lives, we have to decide how we get their using all the tools that God has given us. If our table is welcoming, how do we make sure everyone who comes has a place to sit?

Let us continue to listen to God as we have been, stepping carefully, but confidently forward, toward the table where we all have a place we belong and where all of our choices will lead us.

Let's listen as God speaks . . . Amen.

11 Samuel 8:19b-20

2Luke 6:24-26

Sermon June 3, 2012

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17John 3:1-17

“Sensing God”

When we hear of some dates in our lives, they sometimes bring sights and sounds to our minds—our hearts may even skip a beat. If I say December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor), how many of you could tell me where you were or what you heard on that day? April 12, 1945(FDR died)? Or June 6, 1944 (D-Day)? November 22, 1963 (JFK assassinated)? April 4 or June 5, 1968 (MLK and RFK assassinated)? July 20, 1969 (peopled moon-landing) or November 9, 1989 (Berlin Wall fell)? Can you imagine what was going on around you in these moments or something very vivid about the environment around you?I remember that on April 19, 1995 (OKC bombing) I was eating hamburgers with some friends of mine in a little restaurant in Enid, Oklahoma. Why April 19, 1995? We started talking about how God worked in our lives. We discussed the nature of evil in the world and whether or not God intervenes in our lives when we are suffering. The pain and shock of that moment makes it memorable, so memorable that I know where I was when I found out that it had happened. And our words of comfort or confusion—at least the topic—are memorable to me, too.


When important and sometimes painful things happen they stick with us. We might even remember the sights and smells around us when they do. We might notice particular things that we've never noticed before. Smells often remind me of particular times—especially ones that seemed mundane. I spent a summer at a camp in southern Texas and the smell of cedar trees, especially in the heat always brings the memories of that summer back to me. What we see, hear, smell, taste and feel around us when we are aware of our surroundings can reveal something of God to us as well. Important dates, important times, even revelation will often move us more if those sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings are awakened.


We are reminded of the importance of events, like Isaiah was reminding the people of Israel . . .“In the year that King Uzziah died . . .” “remember that? Remember what you were doing when Uzziah died,” he said. Remember how things changed—for good or for bad, they changed. I remember for many reasons, but the biggest reason is the one I'm going to tell you about.”


The year that king Uzziah died was important to Israel, to Isaiah and likely to many people. This spiritual experience emphasized that transition of power for Isaiah even more fully. Not only did Uzziah die, he seems to be saying, but he said, “I had this incredible experience of God that made me see myself, my people and our inner selves more clearly than I had before this time. One events makes another more important—they enhance one another. When Uzziah died, I remember this because I saw God—or maybe even, I saw God and realized the great day of transition that was happening in the kingdom of Israel.”


In this vision, he saw God's throne in Jerusalem, enthroned in the temple. He saw that God was the ruler and king of Israel, ruling from the place of worship. God's political kingship had been rejected long before, but this was a reminder that whoever was ruling—God held the sceptor, the throne and the power. And this was the time when he was told about his purpose and the meaning for his life—he volunteered, or obeyed the call of God and so God gave him the message, a very difficult message to carry out.


But in these first moments, he was nervous, anxious and wondered if he were truly the one who should be witnessing the vision of God sitting in the temple. That was bad enough, to be worthy to worship God—then God had a job that needed to be done.


A question I contemplated this week in preparation for this morning was, “Can you remember a time when someone asked you to do something you didn’t think you could do?” And my answer? I remember thousands of times—or at least I remember that I doubted my abilities thousands of times. I remember the first time I was supposed to read a lesson in Sunday School—and I cried. But I also remember reading scripture in church later on. I remember forgetting a piece that I had memorized for a piano recital; and the next year panicking and refusing to participate. I also remember playing a full senior recital when I graduated from high school.


The doubts I have had of my own abilities rarely stemmed from a lack of God-given ability—but a lack of faith in those talents and an overwhelming anxiety at the possibility of failure when I would use those talents without adequate preparation.


When God calls upon us to use what we have been given to build the household of God in this time and place, God does not guarantee our success—even if we do it to the best of our ability with God's help. But God does call upon us to respond to whatever God calls us to do even if we anticipate failure. Whatever we do to promote the realm of God in this world is not failure, even if the results don't meet our own expectations.


Part of our anxiety is that we aren't always aware or able to pinpoint the presence of God or the action of God within our lives unless we look back—hindsight may be 20/20, but knowing what's ahead for us is usually lacking. We can know that God is with us—but we can't always know where exactly God is leading us beyond knowing that God's standards are love and justice.


The important moments in our lives—like those with which I began the sermon often make us more aware of God in our lives, even though sometimes we experience those times as profound absence or confusion. But even that absence can shock us into realizing how God has moved in our lives previously—we can remember what God has done even if we are confused about what God IS doing. Through those moments, in times of great loss, we also realize what it is that we have to give. Often we know, in those moments when national or global tragedy strikes, we have a chance to respond. And through those times, our eyes are opened to the everyday kinds of place where our gifts are needed, too.


I don't believe that God creates tragedies or other icon smashing events in our lives, but I read a quote this week that expresses very closely what I do believe. “Almost anything that happens to us may be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. The cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the tapestry of world redemption.”¹


A small church in Louisiana is being renewed by virtue of purpose in a world of tragedy—and I'm sure it wasn't the only one, but First Christian in Slidell, LA chose to thrive instead of die or panic as some did. They built a small building as a fellowship hall or community center and opened it up to people to work on cleaning and rebuilding homes after hurricane Katrina. They didn't do it alone, they were in partnership with other churches from many denominations.


This is from their website at First Christian Church in Slidell, Louisiana.
Mission Station Stats As of January 7, 2012, 1,072 volunteers from 27 states (KY, NC, MO, WA, IN, CT, VA, PA, IA, NY, IL, FL, OK, MS, MI, OH, GA, TX, AL, CO, CA, NE, AZ, KS, NV, VT, NJ) and 81 churches, and 7 denominations have stayed in our Mission Station. We have fed a total of about 2,390 people over the course of our Tuesday night meals, including our own members who bring food and stay to share the meal and visit with the volunteers. It is estimated that the 1,072 volunteers have put in about 33,232 hours of labor at a cost savings of $648,024 for the people who have been helped.²


I don't believe God sent a hurricane to revive churches in Louisiana or anywhere else, but I do believe that even when hurricanes hit, bombs drop, rivers flood, buildings are collapsed, leaders are assassinated—God calls us to respond by sensing where God wants us and how God wants us to respond. The answers or even the responses aren't easy—but the act of responding with compassion and justice is not an option. The idea of realizing our hand in tragedy is also not an option as Isaiah said, “I am a man of unclean lips.” We have to know that the poorest of the poor suffer most in most natural and human caused disasters because of where they live. We have to realize our responsibility when the most vulnerable only see violence as their only recourse to injustice.


Can we do what God is calling us to do? Can we decide where to we act—where to find God's work? Where is God speaking in the mildew of flooded homes? What does God say in the flattened remains of buildings? Where is God leading us as we step onto the surface of another orbiting body, such as the moon? What does each glorious achievement or tragic act of sin or of nature call us to do?


Let us look deep within at how God speaks to us—all together and one by one. Let us find our purpose through our pursuit of God, in our experience of God through all of our senses. Let us find ourselves walking with God toward the people we are called to serve, for the glory of God. Amen.

1Dr. Martin Luther King, “Shattered Dreams” a sermon preached at Dexter in 1959. Copied from an unfinished draft of this sermon, p. 8. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol6/July1962-March1963DraftofChapterX,ShatteredDreams.pdf

2http://www.firstchristianchurchdoc.com/mission-station.html