I'm Not Going!

What was it like the day before the Israelites crossed the River Jordan? Do you suppose that any of them didn't want to go? This sermon is about someone like that. He wanted to stay in the desert because... You'll have to read my sermon to find out why. You might even know him!

The whole Israelite camp was excited. It was virtually humming with activity! The women were packing cooking pots and utensils, and the men were gathering the sheep and identifying their own animals. Even the children were helping by rolling their clothing into bundles that were easy for them to carry. Why all this commotion? Because, at long last, the Israelites finally were getting ready to cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land. On the day before, Moses had called them together and reminded them of all that God had done for them during their 40 long years in the desert. He had assured them that God’s presence would continue to guide them. And then, God had commissioned Joshua to lead the Israelites after they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land. No wonder that everyone was excited! Everyone, that is, except Micah. That’s Micah’s tent right over there. He’s not doing any packing. In fact, he’s not doing anything at all right now. He’s sitting inside his tent with his arms crossed, glaring at anyone who comes by, and muttering, “I’m not going.”

That didn’t make much sense to the rest of the people. Why would anyone choose to stay behind in the desert when the Promised Land is just across the river? So some of his friends decided to ask him. They had weathered Micah’s moods before; so they marched into his tent and got to the point.

“Micah, we heard that you aren’t coming with us tomorrow when we cross the River Jordan. Is that true?” Micah’s scowl and crossed arms gave them the answer. “Why in the world are you doing this? We’ve been waiting 40 years for this to happen! Look at how beautiful it is on the far side of the river! Look at all the green grass and trees – fig trees and olive trees! Why stay here in the sand?”

“I like the sand,” growled Micah. “It’s cool on my feet in the morning and warm in the evening. Besides, the sunrises are beautiful out here; and at night, I can see the stars.”

“There will be sunrises and stars in the Promised Land, too,” his friends replied. “And I’m sure that the grass will be just as cool on your feet in the morning.”

Micah’s only response was, “I’m not going.”

His friends tried again. “But Micah, think of all the wonderful food that there will be in the Promised Land. God has promised us milk and honey to eat! Aren’t you tired of eating manna day in and day out?”

“Manna’s fine,” Micah muttered. “Besides, I’ll bet that we’ll have to work for that milk and honey after we cross the river. God does the work on this side. All we have to do is go out every morning and pick up the manna off the ground. I like being taken care of.”

“So, let me get this straight,” one of his friends drawled. “You’re willing to give up all the promise of a new land because you don’t want to do any work? That doesn’t make any sense! You’ve always been one of hardest working men here!” Micah said nothing. His friends shook their heads. “OK, then. We’ll miss you.” And off they went.

Then, Micah’s family came to see him – his sons and their wives, his daughters and their husbands, and his whole brood of grandchildren.

“Papa,” they cried, “what is this that we hear? You’re not coming with us tomorrow?”

“You heard right,” Micah answered, “I’m staying right here.”

“But why? All our lives we’ve heard stories about the Promised Land. And now – you’re not coming with us?!”

“Nope,” said Micah.

They pleaded and they cajoled and they begged; and none of it did any good. Micah refused to change his mind. Finally, after many tears and hugs, they, too, left Micah alone.

All but one. Micah’s granddaughter Deborah couldn’t bring herself to leave him. After the rest of the family went on, she crept back to Micah’s side as he sat in the shadows of his silent tent. “Papa,” she whispered, “why are you doing this thing? What is going on in that stubborn head of yours?”

Micah’s face softened, and there was a long silence. “For forty years,” he finally answered, “for forty years, this desert has been my home. I’ve gotten used to it, and I know how to live here. What would I do in a Promised Land? Where would I fit in? Better that I stay here.”

“There will be room for everyone in the Promised Land,” Deborah assured him. “We will all have to learn how to do some new things. But God will be guiding us! You don’t have to be afraid, Papa!”

“I’m an old dog,” said Micah, heaving a huge sigh. “I can’t learn new tricks! You youngsters learn easily, but me… My learning days are over. Why, I could never learn to do that newfangled thing that all you kids are wild about! What is it called? Writing? Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s too hard for me!”

“Then let us do the writing, Papa,” Deborah replied. “We need you to do something else. We need you to keep telling the stories that you told us. If you love the past, that’s OK. But don’t keep it in the desert – bring it across the Jordan with us! What would we do if we forgot the stories about how we had to make bricks in Egypt; or about how we crossed the Red Sea while Pharaoh’s army chased us; or about how God talked to Moses and it sounded like thunder at the top of Mt. Sinai. Why, Moses was gone so long that everybody thought he was dead! But he came back – and he brought us God’s law. You need to remember those stories for us, and tell them like your mom and dad told them to you.”

Micah’s eyes filled with tears. “My mom and dad,” he whispered. “My mom and dad are buried somewhere out there in the desert. So is your grandmother. How can I cross the Jordan River and leave them all behind?”

“Oh, Papa!” Deborah cried, flinging her arms around Micah. “They wouldn’t want you to stay here! How many times did your mom and dad say to you, ‘We’ll never see the Promised Land; but one day you will.’ And how many times did you and grandma talk about how beautiful it would be? They always kept moving ahead, even when they weren’t sure what might happen! They would want you to do that, too.”

Micah was silent for a moment, and then he said slowly, “Maybe… I’ll think about it…”

So… How did the story end? Did Micah decide to cross the river with the rest of God’s people? Or did he stay in the desert because his past was there – and so was his comfort level. You’ll have to decide for yourself how the story ends, because Micah’s story is your story, too – and mine. Even though God calls us to move ahead into the future, God doesn’t insist that we go. Every single day, we can decide to follow God’s leading and travel to places we have never been before; or we can decide to stay put. After all, even the Promised Land can be threatening, because it means trying some new things that we’ve never done before. But as you’re deciding whether to stay or to move ahead, remember God’s assurance to Joshua: “I will go before you and be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. Don’t be afraid, and don’t be discouraged.” That’s God’s promise to us, too. So… what’s the decision? Stay… or go?

Gobsmacked

Have you ever been so surprised by something that you had to completely reconsider what you thought you knew? Paul had that experience on the road to Damascus. If that makes no sense to you, read my sermon. It may well have happened to you, too!

What comes to mind when I say the name “Saint Paul”? You might think of a couple of things. You might think of Paul as the great missionary to the gentiles – all those people in the Roman Empire who were not Jews – and so, was one of the founders of the Christian church. You see that represented on the picture of Paul by his holding the Church in one hand. Or you might think of Paul as a letter writer. After all, his letters comprise almost half of the New Testament. One of them, the letter to the Romans, influenced Martin Luther so much that he started what became known as the Protestant Reformation. In Paul’s picture, the church in his hand rests on the Bible. You might even recall that Paul wasn’t much to look at. We have found mosaics from the first century that picture Paul. They show him as short and balding with eyes that are a little bit googly, just like he looks in the picture. There is even evidence that he might have stuttered when he preached. Missionary to the Gentiles; letter writer; very ordinary looking. That’s how we usually think about Paul. But few people think of Paul as a man who struggled with his faith. After all, in his New Testament letters, he seems to have everything worked out: who Jesus was, what the resurrection means, and how we are saved. But Paul didn’t come by those insights easily. In fact, it took a dramatic event for him to reevaluate what he thought he knew. He had to be gobsmacked first.

Now, unless you’re from Great Britain, you may not know what “gobsmacked” means. Your mouth is your “gob,” and when you get a real surprised, you “smack” it. (You look a little bit like the boy in the movie Home Alone.) That’s what happens when you’re gobsmacked. Now, little surprises like an unexpected letter don’t gobsmack us. But we are gobsmacked if that letter turns out to be from Publisher’s Clearing House and it says that we just won $7 million! Yeah, that would qualify as a real gobsmack! Paul’s experience of meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was a gobsmack something like that. It quite literally knocked him off his feet! Paul was headed to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus, and he ended up becoming one of them instead (Acts 9:1-18). That encounter really pulled the rug out from under him! Paul tells us in his own words how it affected him, in his letter to the Galatians (Galatians 1:11-18). After he met the risen Christ, he went to Arabia for some time alone to think things out. It took him three whole years to get his ducks in a row. After all, his faith has been upended and thrown topsy turvy. In the blink of an eye, Paul had to reevaluate everything he thought he knew!

Paul was like lots of people who have a sudden insight and then have to rethink all kinds of things. For example, consider the pastor who had spent his 30 years in ministry preaching that gays are abnormal and perverted – maybe even evil. And then he discovered that his own son was gay. That was a gobsmack! His son was one of the kindest, gentlest people on the face of the earth. Why, he visited nursing homes and sang to the residents who lived there. He was a faithful church member, and had always been one. He even carried plastic bags in his car that were filled with bars of soap, little bottles of shampoo, energy bars, and even a $10 bill in case he met someone who was homeless and needy. That pastor had to completely reevaluate his opinion of gays; because he realized that what he thought he knew was all wrong. That’s what can happen after you’ve been gobsmacked.

Now, I don’t know exactly what Paul did while he was in Arabia. What I do know is that he did a whole lot of thinking. Paul was a very good Jew; and he was a very educated one. Paul was convinced that following the Law was the only way to salvation. He was also convinced that this Jesus fellow who had healed on the Sabbath and condemned Paul’s fellow Pharisees was the worst kind of a scoundrel. Paul had to rethink all of that. He had to wrestle with questions like “What does God want from us?” “How are we acceptable to God if not by following the Law?” and “How does Jesus fit into our lives?” And through it all, Paul’s thinking changed, and he grew in his faith. Even though I don’t know all the details, I can guarantee that it was not a comfortable process. I saw a cartoon recently that hits the nail on the head. A character labelled “Growth” is sitting on one side of the table while another character labelled “Comfort” is sitting on the other. “This relationship,” says Growth, “is just not going to work out.” There’s a lot of truth to that. Growth and comfort rarely go hand in hand. Whenever we are gobsmacked by a reality that we haven’t recognized before, we have two options. We can ignore it, and stay in our comfort zone. But if we want to grow, we can’t stay fat and happy; it just doesn’t work that way. We have to step out of our comfort zone and do some hard thinking.

Maybe you’ve heard the story of the mule who simply couldn’t be trained. His owner had tried everything, and that mule was dumber than a box of rocks! Then one day, his owner heard of a new trainer in the area who guaranteed success with any animal. The mule’s owner packed him up and took him to the new trainer. “Are you positive that you want me to work with him?” the trainer asked. “Oh, yes,” the owner replied, “Whatever it takes. Go right ahead.” “OK,” said the trainer; and he picked up a length of 2x4 and hit the mule square between the eyes. “Wait a minute!” roared the mule’s owner. “I want you to train him, not kill him!” The trainer replied, “I can’t do anything with him until I get his attention.” Do we need for God to get our attention? I’m pretty sure that all of us – me included – need to be gobsmacked about something. Every one of us needs to be pulled out of our comfort zone so that the Spirit can help us to grow in our faith. Now, what that looks like is different for each one of us. And most of us won’t be struck blind by the spirit of Jesus while we are driving over to the Pearson House for lunch. (At least, I hope we won’t be!) But we may well experience a sudden insight that sends us reeling! If you do, don’t worry. It just might be God giving you a gobsmack. And that’s not something to be afraid of; it’s something to celebrate! After all, Paul became the great missionary to the gentiles. Imagine what God might do with you!

Going the Distance

Life isn't always easy. At times, we are faced with difficult questions. What do we do then? Do we run away from them? Do we respond with unthinking answers? Or do we honestly wrestle with them so that our responses are the best ones that we can give? This sermon offers a biblical model for such wrestling matches. I hope it helps you as you yourself wrestle with the questions that you face.

“Slick.” That could have been his name: “Slick.” Nowadays, he might be a used-car salesman; one of those smarmy types who is ever so friendly, because he knows he’ll get a fat commission if he sells you a car. Oh, yes; he was slick, all right. But his name wasn’t “Slick;” it was “Jacob.” And that was an appropriate name for him, because in Hebrew, that means “the grabber.” Jacob grabbed, all right, and he always got exactly what he wanted, regardless of what he had to do to get it. He was only honest when it suited his purposes, and that didn’t happen very often. It was always easier for him to trick people into giving him what he wanted. First, there was that affair of his brother’s birthright, the right of the firstborn son to receive double the inheritance upon the father’s death. He took that away from his older brother Esau in exchange for a bowl of stew. Then he stole the oldest brother’s blessing from Esau by tricking their old, blind father. He dressed up in goatskins and told Isaac that he was Esau, and he took the blessing that should have gone to his brother! He got away with it, too. His mother shipped him off right away to his uncle Laban before Esau could get hold of him. And even when he was with Laban, he was a double dealer. While he was taking care of Laban’s sheep and goats, he made sure that he got the strongest ones for himself! Slick, I tell you; he was always slick.

But now – well, now the chickens have finally come home to roost. Jacob has decided that he’s rich enough to go out on his own, so he’s left his uncle to come back to his old home. He’s sent a friendly message to his brother Esau just to let him know that he was coming. Well, Esau is coming to meet him, all right – with four hundred men! Jacob must have realized that he couldn’t wiggle away from his past any more. Oh, he sent some nice livestock on ahead of him as a gift for his brother, hoping to pacify him – but Jacob knew that it might be all to no avail. Esau and his men might slaughter him right along with his wives, his children, and all his servants, and take Jacob’s flocks and herds for himself, the same way that Jacob had taken away his birthright and his blessing. So Jacob had two choices. He could try to run away from the consequences of his actions one more time. Maybe he could flee to some country where no one knew him and start over. Or he could face the music.

For what might have been the first time in his life, Jacob decided to stay put and face the music. And because he chose to stay, he wrestled all night with a nameless opponent. He was grabbed from behind as he was standing on the bank of the Jabbok River. Jacob didn’t have a clue who it was. Was it a robber hoping to overpower him and take his money? Was it an assassin sent from Esau? Was it Esau himself? Maybe it was even a demon: one who lurked in the wilderness and prowled in the darkness of the night. Or maybe Jacob was really wrestling with himself. After all, he must have wanted to run away to avoid the wrath of his brother Esau, and to save his own skin. Maybe the physical struggle with the mysterious stranger reflected one that was going on inside Jacob himself as he considered and reconsidered what action he should take. Oh, it was a bitter struggle. In fact, it was such a bitter struggle that Jacob’s opponent wrenched Jacob’s hip joint just as dawn was breaking. But Jacob held on, despite the pain and the disadvantage of a wrenched hip. He held on so tightly, in fact, that his opponent had to ask to be let go. And because Jacob wrestled with such persistence – because he went the distance – he received a blessing. But this blessing wasn’t like the one that he stole from his brother. No, this blessing was one that he had earned through pain and persistence. This blessing was the real deal! In the end, the actual wrestling match was a stalemate; no one won or lost. But by wrestling his opponent honestly – by not avoiding the match or running away from it or “fixing” it to his own advantage – Jacob himself was the big winner. Maybe that’s why he was blessed. For the first time in his life, Jacob had confronted a situation honestly and realized that he might lose! Maybe he received a blessing not because he had won the wrestling match, but because he had wrestled at all.

Have you ever thought about how many people in the Bible had to face tough decisions? Oh, they might not have fought a physical opponent, but they all had to struggle for their blessings. Jacob’s grandfather Abraham had been commanded by God to sacrifice his son. Until the very last moment, he thought he would have to kill his only son and burn him on an alter as an offering. Queen Esther risked her own life to save the lives of all the Jews in Persia. She risked going to the King without being summoned – an offense punishable by death. But before she did it, she fasted and prayed for three whole days to summon her courage. The toughest struggle of all may have been Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew that he was facing a long, painful death, and he prayed, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Luke tells us that he struggled so hard that his sweat was like blood falling on the ground. They all wrestled with difficult situations – Jacob, Esther, Abraham and Jesus. And in the end, they all received a blessing because of their struggles.

Maybe these faith ancestors of ours are offering us a model in their struggles. A life of faith isn’t always easy. In fact, the most difficult times may be the very times when the biggest blessing awaits us. But we don’t get that blessing by turning away from the struggle. We get it by wrestling our best, by wrestling persistently, and by continuing to wrestle even though we may be in pain. We can all remember times that we have wrestled with difficult situations. We don’t look for them; they just pop up like mushrooms when we least want to deal with them. Sometimes we wrestle individually. When an elderly aunt is nearing the end of her life, suffering with inoperable, terminal cancer, what does our faith call us to do? Do we prolong her life as long as possible in hopes of a miracle; or do we stop what is probably ultimately futile treatment and release her into God’s arms? Sometimes we wrestle as a congregation with questions like “Should we move into new areas of ministry? What will that mean for the ways that we spend our time and our money?” The answers aren’t always clear. And sometimes the biblical text itself becomes the midnight wrestling opponent.  When we venture away from stories that are familiar and comforting, we risk wandering into the wilderness of challenging passages that are seldom read and almost never preached on. But even they offer us a blessing if we will face them. Some years back, biblical scholar Phyllis Trible wrote a book entitled, “Texts of Terror.” In it she examines Old Testament stories that are both hard to read and hard to understand. She writes in the introduction to that book: “To tell and hear tales of terror is to wrestle demons in the night…. The fight itself is solitary and intense. We struggle mightily, only to be wounded. But yet, we hold on, seeking a blessing…. If the blessing comes, it does not come on our terms. Instead, as we leave the land of terror, we limp.”

Oh, yes, in the struggle, we risk being permanently changed. Jacob limped as he left the scene in the light of the new day’s dawn. Maybe he limped for the rest of his life. Can’t you just imagine his grandchildren asking him about it? “Grandpa, why does your hip always hurt you?” But instead of a story about a bad tackle in a high school football game, he would tell them about a wrestling match with a mysterious opponent in the dark of night, and about a blessing given only at the break of day.

It isn’t easy to wrestle with thorny issues and difficult questions. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that thorny issues and difficult questions are a part of life. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that we can’t avoid wrestling with them. We can’t steal life’s blessing through any trickery that we might dream up. To get it, we have to wrestle through the night and through our pain. But as the dawn breaks, its light will allow us to see clearly enough to identify our opponent. And when we do, we will realize just what has taken place and with whom we have really been wrestling. We will realize that the God we thought had abandoned us was closer than our own breath, struggling right along with us. God’s presence – God’s love – will not let us go. And then, together with Jacob, we will be able to say, “I have seen God face to face!”