Asking the Right Question

You can't get the right answer if you don't ask the right question! Jeremiah reminds us of that truth as we read what he said to the ancient Israelites. They had forgotten to ask the right question, with disastrous results!

You learn a lot when you live with children. You may have completed 12 years of formal education, graduated from Ohio State University with honors, and have a wall covered with post-graduate diplomas – but when you live with children, you learn things that you never knew before! That’s especially true when your children are teenagers. You learn all kinds of skills when you live with teenagers! One very important skill that you learn very quickly is how to ask the right questions. For example, you learn that, “How was school today?” is not the best question to ask, because it only gets a one-word answer in response; usually, “OK.” Instead, you ask, “Is there anything that I need to sign and return to your teachers?” That question has a far better chance of getting a useful response. (After having raised two daughters, my husband and I have developed interrogation skills that rival those of any CIA agent!) Learning how to ask the right questions is a vital skill!  After all, we all need answers not only from our teenagers, but to all the questions in our lives. We have lots of things that we need to know! We need to know how to best live our personal lives. We need to know how to behave as a church. And we certainly need to know how to live together in our country! It should be obvious that we won’t get good answers if we don’t ask good questions!

We can take some comfort in the knowledge that we aren’t the first ones to have this problem. The Israelites didn’t know how to ask the right questions, either! That’s obvious when we read this morning’s Old Testament text (Jeremiah 2:4-9). As it begins, God is complaining about the people of Israel and how ungrateful they are. God sounds a little like the parent of an ungrateful teenager! God says to Israel: “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things? Why, they became worthless themselves! Nobody asked, ‘Where is the Lord, who brought us up from the land of Egypt.’ All you cared about is what worshipping idols might do for you!” It sounds like Dad lecturing his teenaged son. We all know what he’d say. “When are you going to straighten up? Your behavior is an embarrassment to your mother and me! We’ve given you everything that you ever wanted! Who bought you all the clothes in your closet? Who bought you the high-speed computer in your bedroom? Who gave you that new sports car in the driveway? This is the way that you repay us? I didn’t raise you to be a good-for-nothing and like this!”

You may wonder what Israel’s problem was. They weren’t asking the right question! Jeremiah sums it up like this: The people forgot what God had told them in the past, so their behavior turned rotten. The rulers forgot to ask God for wisdom as they ruled; and so their country turned rotten. In the end, they worshiped Baal instead of God, and even their worship turned rotten! They really were like teenagers who get to be too big for their britches. They did whatever they felt like doing without ever once asking, “What should I do?” And it’s all because they never asked the only question that really matters: “Where is the Lord?”

As amazing as it may sound, there are still people around who aren’t looking for God. Some of them are even in our churches! Others want to look for God, but they don’t know how to do it. If you’re one of those people who are asking “Where is the Lord,” good for you; and I have some suggestions as to where to look. First of all, if we want to know where God is today, we need to remember what God did for us yesterday. Jeremiah knew what God did, and he reminded the Israelites of it. “[God] brought us up from the land of Egypt,” he said. “[God] led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, in a land where no one lives.” God led a bunch of rag-tag slaves out of Egypt, despite everything that the Pharaoh tried to do to keep them there. Then God led those slaves through the wilderness for forty long years until they crossed the River Jordan into the Promised Land. And we know that God did something else, too! When the time was right, God came to us in Jesus Christ to save us from sin and death. That’s what God has done for us! God has loved us, accepted us, liberated us, guided us, and saved us.

So… Where is the Lord? A good place to start looking is in the places where we find love, acceptance, liberation, and guidance; because wherever we see those things happen, we know that God is there. And those are the things that every Christian and every church congregation should be worrying about doing: accepting, liberating, and guiding. Whenever we worry about anything other than that, we risk worshiping something else instead of God. But some churches, I’m sorry to say, worship only themselves. They don’t worry about helping other folks out, because they are only concerned about their own survival. They are preoccupied with how many people are in the pews on Sunday mornings, and with what other folks in town are thinking about them. Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned with sharing the gospel with other folks so that they can join us in our mission, but when we want members only because we’re worried about our own survival, we have stopped worshiping the God who has promised to guide us safely and started worshiping the idol of security. I know about a church that has a $3 million endowment. (The church will remain anonymous.) Now, you would think that they would celebrate that gift by using it for mission! They don’t, though, because they don’t want to risk using any of it! That church reminds me of an episode of the TV show MASH. Hawkeye needed an incubator to do blood cultures so that he could diagnose illnesses quickly and prescribe the proper treatment for his patients. And he found an incubator! In fact, he found three of them, all bright and shiny new, ready to be used, stored in a supply station. But when Hawkeye asked the supply sergeant for one of them, he was denied. “Why?” Hawkeye asked. “You’ve got three of them!” “Yes,” the sergeant responded, “But if I give you one, I’ll only have two.”

Let’s not be churches like that. Let’s not hoard what we have because we worship the idol of security! Let’s worship the Lord, instead – the Lord who calls ourselves to give ourselves away generously, and the Christ who asks us to give up our security in following him. Let’s worry about being loving, accepting, liberating, and guiding. Let’s look day and night for God, because only when we seek him will we find what we are really looking for. Where is the Lord? It’s the only question that matters, because it’s the only question that can help us to live as faithful Christians. As we move ahead into an unknown future, may we never forget to ask it!

The Wide-Angle Lens

What do we pay attention to in our lives? Does that really matter? Oh, my, yes! Just as what we focus on affects a photo, what we pay attention to affects our attitudes! Isaiah told us that nearly 2,500 years ago. Are we listening to his wisdom?

I grew up with cameras. My father was a professional photographer; and so, while my childhood friends were talking about bicycles and roller skates, my own vocabulary included “film speed,” “f-stop,” and “darkroom.” I knew how develop photographs while I was still in grade school, and I could use an industrial photographic drier long before I could drive a car. Photography has changed a lot, though, since my dad was in business. These days, cameras are digital, photos are stored on a computer, and negatives don’t even exist. In fact, the kind of film that I used to use isn’t even made any more! But some things haven’t changed at all. Taking a good photograph still involves more than standing in front of a tourist attraction and holding up a selfie stick! In fact, some of the best photographs aren’t of ourselves at all, but of the world around us. And although capturing images of what’s around us no longer means holding up a light meter and fiddling with camera settings, it still involves some choices.

One choice that we still have to make is what to use as the focus of the photo. Are we going to focus on something very small, something very large, or something in between? Usually our photos are those in-between shots – a photo of the gathered family in front of the Christmas tree, for example. From time to time, we decide to take a picture of something very small. Some years ago, I took a photo of a tiny grasshopper who had settled on the windshield of my car. It was a very lucky shot; you can see the ridges on the hind legs of the little guy! But every now and then, we want to capture a whole vista. Those are the photos that have the potential to take our breath away! Who doesn’t stand in awe of a picture of the moon rising over the ocean; or of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains? It’s tough to get that kind of photograph with a pocket-sized digital camera or a cell phone. To really capture the vastness of a landscape, you still need a camera that has a wide-angle lens. That kind of lens captures a wide field of view, the kind of view that we don’t often stop and enjoy. Oh, when we’re on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains, we might park the car at a pull-off spot and look around in awe. But every day? No, we don’t look through a wide-angle lens every day. But maybe we should, especially on the days when everything seems to be going wrong. On those days, we tend to bury our noses in our problems and ignore what’s all around us. Now, there’s a good reason for that. We concentrate on what’s bothering us because we want to figure out a way to get rid of it! If you’re walking with a blister on your heel, you’re not very likely to be thinking about the beauty of the scenery along the way! But even – maybe especially – in the middle of difficulties, we should be looking through that wide-angle lens every single day!

Looking through a wide-angle lens is, in fact, vital to our spiritual health. Let’s get in a time machine and visit ancient Babylon in the year 586 BCE. The Babylonians have conquered the nation of Israel, burned the city of Jerusalem, carried off everything that was in the Temple, and dragged the people off into exile. The kingdom of King David and King Solomon that has lasted over 400 years suddenly is now no more. The Israelites are desolate! Their nation is gone. Their holy city, Jerusalem, is gone. The temple that had stood in Jerusalem is gone. They are afraid that God is gone, too. And now, they have to endure the sarcasm of the Babylonians who are reminding them over and over that their gods are stronger than the God of Israel! If you want to see what despair looks like, just take a look at Psalm 137.

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplar trees we hung our harps.

There our captors asked us for songs; our tormentors demanded songs of joy.

They said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while we are in a foreign land?

Right in the middle of that terrible experience in Babylon, though, an amazing thing happened. One day, somebody lifted his eyes out of the dust and looked through a wide-angle lens. That person started saying things like, “God is still here! God’s temple in Jerusalem may be gone, but God is still here! The heavens are still here. The earth is still here. God will get us out of this mess, even though I don’t know how that will happen!” The text that I read just a few minutes ago come from that time (Isaiah 40:21-31). “Look through your wide-angle lens!” Isaiah is saying. “Stop focusing on your problems and look around! God has everything under control even if we can’t see it.” Isaiah even compares human beings to that little grasshopper who took a rest on my lawn chair. People are tiny things compared to the God who spoke creation into existence. Even the greatest nations in the world like a piece of dry leaf that the wind whisks away. “Why are we so worried?” Isaiah asks. “God is bigger than any problem that we have! Just look through your wide-angle lens if you need a reminder!”

That isn’t a bad thing for us to remember today, either, as we are sometimes overwhelmed by problems: medical care, climate change, and the upcoming presidential election. Even the church has its problems! We are split into hundreds of denominations, most of whom don’t even talk to one another, let alone work together. We don’t agree on how to understand the Bible, and because of that, we don’t agree on what to do about social problems that cry out for our attention. In some places, Christians are even persecuted for their faith. You can’t even carry a Bible in North Korea! Our local churches have their share of problems, too. You know some of the ones that we face here at Nashville! Our income hasn’t been enough to cover our expenses for… oh, a couple of years, now. Our congregation is getting older and less able to participate in church and mission activities. Worship attendance isn’t what it once was. The pews that were once crammed with worshipers on Sunday morning are now not crammed any more.

Now, I don’t have a solution to any of these problems, and I don’t know anyone who does. But I do have a suggestion. Why don’t we take a look though a wide-angle lens? While we can’t ignore what’s wrong, we can’t forget that many things are right! I invite you to focus on the fact that God is way bigger than we are, and that God has promised to remain faithful to us. God has given this congregation many strengths, the kinds of strengths that allow us to run and not to grow weary. We all have gifts, talents, and resources to do the ministry to which God is calling us. If we lift our eyes out of the dust, we might even see opportunities that God has put right in front of our noses so that God can guide us into the future! Yes, we need to look through that wide-angle lens every now and then, especially when we start saying “Woe is me!” It’s always a good thing to remember what Isaiah said so long ago: “Why do you think that God doesn’t care about us anymore? Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? God is everlasting. God never gets tired. God understands everything! God gives us strength even when we don’t think we can go on another step. In fact, God gives us so much strength that one day we will fly like eagles” as God’s Spirit carries us aloft and bears us along on the wind!

Harvey

A lesson from a goldfish? You must be kidding! Not at all. Read on...

His name was Harvey; and he was a goldfish. Although Harvey was a very small goldfish, he made a tremendous impact on the little boy who owned him. That boy’s name was Howard Friend. He’s all grown up now, a Presbyterian pastor who writes books. I’m going to tell you about Harvey in Howard’s own words. (from Recovering the Sacred Center by Howard Friend, 1998, Judson Press, p. 5-6)

For my sixth birthday I received from my grandmother a goldfish I named Harvey. After school I would pull a dining room chair up to the bay window where we put Harvey’s bowl and carefully pinch in just the right amount of food. As I watched him swim in the shimmering afternoon sun, something caught my eye. Harvey always swam around his bowl in the same direction, in the same path, at the same speed – an inch inside the rim of the bowl, an inch below the surface of the water, round and round like the hands of a clock. If I stirred the water with my finger, or pinched in the food along a different trail, he would change direction – but only for a minute. Then back he would go to his predictable, boring pattern. When Harvey’s bowl turned cloudy, Grandma announced, “It’s time to change his water. We’ll fetch him out with that little net we brought from the pet store and put him in the spaghetti pot while we clean his bowl.” I had a better idea. “Let’s put Harvey in the bathtub while we clean his bowl,” I suggested. Harvey could swim from one end of the tub to the other, back and forth, along the bottom and across the top. “He’ll have a terrific time!” I said. Grandma carried Harvey’s bowl up the stairs to the bathroom, eased it over the edge of the tub, gently lowered it to the surface of the water, and poured Harvey in. “C’mon, Harvey,” I said out loud. He just lay there at first, a little stunned, I guess. Then he perked up. He was ready, I was sure, to begin some real exploring. But to my disappointment and amazement, Harvey began to swim in a circle about ten inches across and an inch below the surface of the water, like the hands of a clock – just like in his bowl!

Harvey’s behavior made quite an impression on Howard. To this day, he remembers how puzzled he was that Harvey refused to take advantage of the opportunity to swim all the way around that big bathtub. Many years later, he realized that Harvey isn’t the only one who behaves like this. Some people do the very same thing! Even when their situation changes, when fresh needs arise and new opportunities appear, they keep swimming in the same old circles, doing the same things over and over again. We look at them and wonder, “Why don’t they change? Can’t they see that they need to do something different?”

Unfortunately, churches tend to follow the very same pattern. They do what is familiar and comfortable, resisting change until it is thrust upon them, and they can escape it no longer. Some of them refuse to embrace change until it is too late, and they are forced to close their doors. Why in the world do they behave like that? I could explain it by telling you that we sometimes can’t see beyond the ends of our noses; or that we can imagine new possibilities, but we’re afraid to act on them; but I’ll bet that you know those things already. And simply being aware that we are in a bad situation doesn’t influence our behavior as much as we would like to believe that it does. (If you have ever tried to argue someone out of a political opinion by using reason, you know very well what I’m talking about!)

So we just keep doing what we’ve always done. We forget that our God is a God of novelty! God does new things all the time! When the Hebrews fleeing slavery in Egypt stood on the bank of the Red Sea, God parted those waters and asked them to step out in faith; because God was going to do something that had never been done before in the history of the world! When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, none of them expected that when Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians, he would let all those homesick refugees return to their homeland. And when Jesus of Nazareth appeared and claimed to be the Messiah, not very many people believed that this peasant from a Podunk village in Galilee would set them free, not from the Roman Empire, but from sin and death itself! And when God does new things, God invites us to get with the program and join in the new things that God is doing!

As you join in the program of discernment that our congregation is beginning, I invite you to listen for God inviting us to do something new! We will have plenty of time to listen for God’s voice, to discern what God is calling us to do, and to plan how we’re going to proceed into the future. All kinds of possibilities are open to us; and God will accompany us as we discern which of those possibilities we will live into. Let’s learn a lesson from Harvey, shall we? God has given us a very big bathtub. Let’s swim in every bit of it!