The Lesson of the Wilderness

Exodus 17:1-7

            I have often wondered why the LORD took the Israelites wandering forty years through the wilderness of Sinai after delivering them from slavery in Egypt.  If I were God I would have turned north and headed up by the Mediterranean Sea and taken the King’s Highway.  The trip would have lasted only a couple of months and there would have been plenty of food and water.  But hey, God is God.  He is who he is and he does what he does.  But God is not arbitrary.  He had a reason for taking them into the wilderness – to teach them faith by providing for them in the most extreme of circumstances.

            So, God took the Israelites through the wilderness to teach them faith.  This is a hard one I think for us to grasp.  You see, we are not accustomed to saying that God brings hard times upon us, that God causes or lets suffering happen to us so that we can come to know him better and grow in faith.  We find it very difficult to say that God brings suffering to his people, his daughters and sons, that they might come closer to him.  We like to say that bad things happen because this is a messed up world or because we brought them upon ourselves and that God will somehow work things out because he loves us.  Rarely, if ever will anyone say, “The LORD has brought me out into the wilderness.  The LORD is doing this to me.” 

But, you know, if we are going to be truly biblical about things; if we are disciples of Jesus born from above in him by the free gift of the Holy Spirit so that we are God’s children with him; if we are such, we are going to spend some time in the wilderness and it’s going to happen because God is going to take us there.  He will indeed lead us into the wilderness, into the valley of the shadow of death where our souls are ripped to pieces rather than take us where he makes us to lie down in green pastures beside the still waters so that our souls are restored.  He will lead us to painful places where we are forced to ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  In a world so utterly broken and corrupted by sin, the LORD must bring us to places where in the depths of despair, of grief, of poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of boredom where our only resort is to turn to the LORD and ask, “Are you here?” 

In the wilderness we float.  We wander.  We wait.  We cannot help but ask “how am I going to survive out here?”   By nature we, like the Israelites, will complain.  We will want to turn back to the way life was before instead of moving forward.  We will doubt the LORD’s motive of love.  We will take matters into our own hands and serve and worship things that we believe will make us feel better.  We will try to bargain with the LORD.  We will say “Lord, get me out of the wilderness and I’ll do my best to be a better person and come to church more.”  But, God’s got bigger plans for us than just wanting to get us to behave a little better or come to church more often.  The grace behind the wilderness is that it is not punishment.  It is the only healing way for us to move forward in Christ Jesus and the new life he has for us.

To endure the wilderness we must keep asking the questions “Who are you Lord and why have you brought me here?”  This entails that we must keep coming before the LORD in prayer.  We don’t come asking for what I perceive I need for things to be better.  You see, the LORD brings us into the wilderness to strip us down and show us who we really are.  So it is important while we are in the wilderness to pay attention to what we are feeling for chances are we have felt these painful feelings before and buried them but now the LORD is bringing them forth from the tomb to heal us. 

There are things we can do in the wilderness to aid in our growth in Christ. We should feel free to rant at the LORD.  We are taught not to complain to the Lord.  But, God’s a big boy.  He can handle it.  Rant, for sooner or later God very cleverly turns our rants back on us and reveals to us the truth about ourselves. 

Once I was in a wilderness and I got on a rant with God.  I was complaining that I always seemed to be the one to make painful sacrifices so that other people can be happy.  He turned that one around on me one day when he told me, “That’s exactly what I do for you.”  I shut up about that and realized it’s part of what love is.

When you’re in the wilderness read the Bible listening for something to stick out to you and then spend the day or days pondering it.  Keep a journal of those things so that you can see the patterns that arise in what you hear so you can discern what is actually from the LORD and what are the things you want to hear. 

The wilderness is also a good place to draw together with our brothers and sisters in Christ to worship, to share, to pray and to study.  For it is by the love of our brothers and sisters that we are built up in Christ and equipped and nourished in Christ.  The thing to note about the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites was that they all went through it together.  There were no Lone Ranger sufferers.  This is the single most significant strength of the small congregation.  If one of us suffers we all feel it.  This fellowship and support is what the church is all about.
The fellowship in the LORD is something I really appreciate about this church.  Many churches have lost their Christian fellowship amidst a culture that is consumeristic.  People visit churches asking what programs a church has that can meet what they think they or their family’s religious needs are, religious rather than actual faith needs.  Then, if the programs aren’t there, they go elsewhere.  Fortunately, we don’t have the resources here to meet every perceived need that comes through the door.  What we do have is a home to offer those who come here asking who is the LORD and why has he brought me to the place that am at in life.  Well, the LORD is the mystery of the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He dwells here richly and he calls people here to meet him.  The people who come to this church searching for this or that program will not stay.  But those who come looking for the Lord, will find him and be well fed and stay for the Lord is among us.  Amen.

Go and Make Disciples

Matthew 28:16-20

In 1963 Dr. Robert E. Coleman released probably the most influential book ever written on the topic of evangelism: The Master Plan of Evangelism. He sought to answer one simple question – What was Jesus’ strategy for evangelism? He concluded that the way Jesus did evangelism was to devote the majority of his time to the twelve disciples letting them get to know him so that they could become like him and teaching them the nature of his Kingdom so that they could live accordingly. He then sent them to disciple others in his name. Jesus changed the world not by converting the masses but by discipling twelve men who went out and discipled others. We have developed plenty of ways of going about evangelism: going door to door with evangelistic tracks, holding big evangelistic events, working at the food bank, inviting a friend to church hoping the preacher can get through to them, good signage, worship services with catchy music and uplifting messages. Unfortunately, that’s not the way Jesus did it. Jesus did evangelism through making disciples who made disciples who made disciples and so on.

Many years ago at one of my last Presbytery meetings in West Virginia, the chair of the Presbytery Finance Committee was lamenting on how the financial situation of the Presbytery was becoming drastically weaker in correlation to our congregations become smaller and financially in crisis. He diagnosed that the problem was evangelism, mostly the lack there of. This rings true here in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Our churches and our denomination are dying, but nobody is doing evangelism.

One could ask why that is and the obvious answer would be our churches have been good at producing members who call themselves Christians, but we would be quite near to lying if we said the people in our pews were actually disciples of Jesus Christ. Speaking for myself, in my 31 years of commitment to Jesus Christ I have only brushed up against something called being discipled on less than a handful of occasions mostly in university. I have simply been well churched through attending worship and Adult Sunday school and Bible studies – two things that have also dried up in most PCC churches. I’ve been well churched, but not discipled.

What is a disciple? I have two definitions for you. Greg Ogden in Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ says: “Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip and challenge one another in love to grow towards maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well.”[1] Disciples grow in maturity in Christ and equip one another to disciple others.

Another definition, when Jesus called his first disciples he said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” In Discipleshift: Five Steps That Help Your Church to Make Disciples Who Make Disciples Jim Putman and Bobby Harrington unpack that verse and say that “a true disciple is a person who follows Jesus, is transformed by Jesus, and joins with Jesus on his mission”.[2]

A disciple follows Jesus. This is first a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, a commitment to do his will in all things, a commitment to study his life teachings and live accordingly. It is a commitment to know him, to have a relationship with him in prayer, in scripture study, and in others. We must also remember that following Jesus is not an individual exercise, but something we do with a group of others in which there is accountability.

A disciple is someone whom Jesus is transforming to be more like him by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit. A disciples’ relationship with Jesus among other disciples changes us. We learn we are beloved children of the Father. He changes our very nature to be like him. He doesn’t make us to be what we imagine him to be like. He gives us deep impressions of who he is that change us.

Several years back I took up the task of memorizing the Sermon on the Mount a verse a day. I would memorize the verse and as best as I could I kept reciting it to myself throughout the day. About 2/3 of the way through those roughly 110 days one afternoon on a run while I was reciting that verse Jesus impressed upon me a sense of how patiently non-judgemental and forgiving he is. It changed me and has taken the rough edge off of how cut and dry I could be towards others. He took me off my judge’s bench. When I find myself trying to resume my place on that bench I recall that feeling and I instantly become more understanding of others.

A disciple joins Jesus in his ministry of bringing about the Kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven. This means that our homes, our work places, our neighbourhoods, are places to which Jesus has sent us (placed us) to be living witnesses of who he is and to be part of the means through which he invites and draws people to come and be his disciples. Jesus has placed us in every significant relational network we are in to be witnesses to him so that through us he might draw others to himself.

Discipleship is something we have to intentionally do if we are going to grow into the new life Jesus freely gives us and calls us to in himself. Timothy and I would like to introduce intentional discipling into the churches of the Coop. We would like in each of the churches that groups of 2-4 women and 2-4 men form and commit to meet together roughly once a week for a total of 25 weeks and work through this resource: Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ. This resource builds Christian friendship, personal devotion, and teaches the faith. It trains you so that when you finish working through it with the initial group you will go and start another group and work through the resource.

Jesus told us to go and make disciples. If I were a super-evangelist and got one person a day to make a personal decision to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, after 16 years I would have 5,840 decisions for Christ but no way to feed all those people so that they grow in maturity in Christ. But if I disciple two people through this resource and they in turn disciple two people who disciple two more and so on, after 16 years there would be 65,536 well fed disciples of Jesus Christ. As of 2015, the Presbyterian Church in Canada had 980 congregations and 91,036 members. If we started discipling, that would change quickly. Maybe we should start discipling. Amen.






[1] Pg. 17


[2] Pg. 54

When We Don't Forgive....

Matthew 18:21-35

I don’t know about you folks, but this parable, The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, really troubles me.  The lesson is quite obvious.  We, the disciples of Jesus, are to forgive as God has forgiven us.  That seems only proper, right, and obvious.  As God is forgiving and we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit as the Body of Christ, we are to be forgiving.  It’s that image of God thing. 

That doesn’t trouble me.  What goads me is there at the end of the parable when the King in a fit of wrath turns the unmerciful servant over to be tortured until every last penny of the debt is paid.  Then Jesus says, “So my heavenly Father will also do to each one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from the heart.”

I don’t know about you but this troubles me for a couple of reasons.  First, it says there is a wrathful side of God.  I like a God who is full of patience and healing mercy and love and all that, not a wrathful God.  This wrathful God image plays too easily into the hands of evil people who use it to perpetuate fear and provoke acts of hatred against those who are different from themselves.  We must be careful when we tread the precarious ground of God’s wrathful side.

Second, Jesus says that God the Father will be wrathful towards us, the disciples of Jesus – his beloved children in Christ whom he has laced with his very self by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – if we don’t forgive one another from the heart.  God will hand us over to be tormented if we do not take the path of forgiving.  The forgiving Jesus speaks of isn’t just the lip service, legal transaction kind of forgiving we cop out on where the offender says “Sorry” and the offended says “Forgiven.”  It is a deep kind of forgiving, unconditionally forgiving from the heart, which is the seat of our motives and drives.  I’ll get to that momentarily. 

The effects on us of being unforgiving are akin to a form of torture or torment.  We have to ask what Jesus means by torment.  The Greek word originates in the world of commerce for a coin tester, the coin-biter who tests authenticity.  Its scope of meaning grows to include testing the character of a person by torture or torment.  Ultimately, it can be the evil of torment for the sake of torment.

In Matthew’s Gospel this concept of torment occurs more than anywhere else in the Bible.  It means afflicted with disease (4:24) and suffering to the point of psychosomatic paralysis (8:26).  Jesus healed people suffering from these torments.  The demons who possessed the two “Garasene demoniacs” when they recognized Jesus shouted out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God.  Have you come to torment us before the time?” (8:29).  Jesus cast them out into a herd of pigs.  Then, immediately after Jesus feeds the 5,000+ he sends the twelve disciples out on the Sea of Galilee in a boat by themselves and a perilous windstorm erupts.  The boat is tormented (battered) by the waves.  Jesus comes walking on the water.  After Peter’s failed attempt at walking on water, Jesus got in the boat and calmed the storm. 

In all these cases Jesus ends the torment and heals its effects on people.  For the demons, he turns it back on them.  But here, according to this parable, if we take the route of unforgiveness, we choose to revert back to a “prior-to-meeting” Jesus state of torment.  When Jesus comes into our lives he sets us free from our inclination towards unforgiveness and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart that desires to forgive and be at peace with God, with ourselves, with those who have hurt us and also with those whom we have hurt.  If this parable does one thing, it points us to the fact that reconciliation, which means working the process of forgiving, is our primary task as Jesus’ disciples.  Being faithful people means being forgiving people.  In this world of sin broken relationships, the restored image of God in us, the disciples of Jesus, looks like people working towards all-encompassing forgiveness; i.e., reconciliation, among ourselves and in all of society.

In the last few decades there have been a number of studies done on the effects of unforgiveness on our health and relationships that add some depth to our discussion.  An article by the Mayo Clinic[1] lists the relational effects of harbouring unforgiveness.  It can cause us to: 1) bring anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience; 2) become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can't enjoy the present; 3) become depressed or anxious; 4) feel that your life lacks meaning or purpose, or that you're at odds with your spiritual beliefs; 5) lose valuable and enriching connectedness with others.

Looking more at the realm of physical health, unforgiveness increases the levels of stress hormones in our bodies.  This in turn leads to increased blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, weakened immune systems, and anxiety and depression all of which puts us at a greater risk of stroke, heart disease, cancer, and chronic pain.  Unforgiveness has a huge health cost.

 My summation of all this is that being unforgiving leads us into a life of lonely, bitter isolation and sickness and the costs are deadly.  As I see it, the path of unforgiveness follows the same destructive course that addictions do on our health and relationships.  In the course of my ministry I have known a Christian who chose the path of unforgiveness and, sadly, I had the displeasure of watching that person stay that course against repeated attempts to turn her back to Christ.  She routinely attacked members of her church as if possessed by a demon.  She was lonely and bitter when she could have been so loved and supported.  The people of her church did a remarkable job of maintaining her in their midst despite her attacks.

Unforgiveness is a choice, so therefore is forgiveness.  It is remarkable that Jesus uses the imagery of debt to define unforgiveness.  Unforgiveness is pridefully holding on to a feeling that we are owed something by someone who has or whom we believe to have wronged us.  Forgiveness is letting go of this pride-filled demand for restitution of our honour.  But, in the Christian it is more than that.  It is striving to be in a reconciled relationship with those who have wronged us and even more so wanting them to know the peace and love we have in Jesus. 

Forgiveness is a process, a spiritual discipline that we must work at.  This will be the first and probably only time I will agree with Joyce Meyer, who is a populist Christian writer and speaker.  She gives some helpful practical advice on how to forgive on her website.[2]  First, decide to forgive.  We won’t do it if we wait until we feel like it.  Decide to forgive, desire to forgive, and God will in time heal our emotions.  Second, we are powerless over unforgiveness so we must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit to help us forgive.  Third, do what the Bible tells us to do: pray for our enemies and do good to them and bless them rather than curse them.

I add to her advice that we should also follow Jesus’ direction in Matthew 18:15-18.  As a matter of first course go to the person and address the situation.  If that doesn’t work, take two others.  If that doesn’t work, announce it to the church.  If that doesn’t work, then you’re done with them.  Let God deal them, but still keep praying.

To be faithful disciples of Jesus is to forgive.  There’s no way around it.  There's a cost when we don't forgive.  Amen.

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[1] Forgiveness: Letting Go of Grudges and Bitterness; http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/forgiveness/art-20047692

[2] The Poison of Unforgiveness; https://www.joycemeyer.org/everydayanswers/ea-teachings/the-poison-of-unforgiveness

The Great Symphonizer

Matthew 18:15-20

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them (Mt.18:20).”  There is no doubt that this is one of the most quoted passages in the Bible particularly when we start talking about what the church is.  Jesus is in our midst when we gather together as his disciples.  That’s our foundational given.  Yet, it is a given that begs some questions, questions like, “How do we know he is here?” or more simply, “What does he look like?”

How do we know Jesus is here?  What does he look like?  Let me give you an image.  I once knew a man back in my university days who was a musical genius.  He was a one-man band/orchestra on the synthesizer/keyboard, which was a relatively new piece of technology in the world of music back in the late ‘80’s.  We got into a discussion one day about recording because I was doing a little bit of that and so he had me over one afternoon to demonstrate how he put music together using just his synthesizer/keyboard.

I sat in the corner of his basement studio and he set to work.  Keep in mind, he’s not using any music.  He was making up a song there on the spot.  He started out making the keys of the keyboard be different kinds of drums and by tapping out a beat on the keys he programed in some drums.  Then he switched it to piano and added a basic chord progression and recorded it on top of the drums.  Then he changed it to an upright bass, then some guitars, and strings and horns.  He had it all sequenced over each other, a basic sound track of a song.  Then, he added in saxophone solos, trumpet solos, keyboard and guitar solos – all from this keyboard.  Then, he tweaked with different kinds of percussion.  I was gobsmacked…and all just off the top of his head.

This man is what I would call a symphonizer.  He heard the music in his head and he had the ability to make the music happen.  He understood music in all its intricacies and how everything worked together, what needed to happen where for it to sound better.  He made sounds, silence, and time come into the state of agreement we call the harmonies that make up what we call symphony.

To talk about what Jesus looks like in our midst is to talk about symphony or rather symphonising among the troubled relationships of human community; doing with human relationship what this man was doing with his keyboard.  Jesus is the Great Symphonizer.  He is in our midst working at human relational symphony that looks like him. 

Symphonizing is what Jesus points us to in verse 19 when he says: “Again, truly, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything the ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven (NIV).”  Unfortunately, that is a severely botched translation easily misunderstood to say such ridiculous things as if two of you agree in prayer that your minister should be wealthy and drive a Cadillac, God the Father will make it happen.  What this verse really says is “Whenever two of you prayerfully symphonize in any matter of Christian community on earth, God the Father will do it for them in heaven.”  Now let me give my case for why it should be translated this way.

The word for “agreement” there in the New Testament Greek is the verb form of the word from which we get our word “symphony”.  It is “symphoneo” or symphonize.  This is a word rooted in musical imagery in Greek just as it is in English.  The image Jesus is giving us is that we are to prayerfully go about the work of making our Christian fellowship look like musical harmony, particularly when we are broken and there are conflicts.

The word “anything” is not there in the Greek text.  Jesus is not telling us to pray for anything and agree about it and God will do it.  Jesus says “all pragma”.  Pragma is the word we get “pragmatic” from.  As most of you are farmers you know pragmatic means sticking to the simplest things that work in order to get it done.  Pragmatism – “If it works, it’s true.”  In Greek, pragma are the things we do – our deeds, our actions.”  Prayerfully working to come to agreement, symphonising, in the things we do as Jesus’ disciples is the direction Jesus is pointing us in.

So, what are the pragma we are to symphonize?  Well, Jesus begins verse 19 by saying “Again.”  This means he is referring to things he has just said.  This passage comes near the end of a discourse Jesus has been giving his disciples about the nature of community in his kingdom.

The first pragma is conducting oneself according to childlike humility. Chapter 18 begins with the disciples coming to Jesus and asking, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Jesus answered by pulling a child to himself and saying, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”.

Next, Jesus tells the disciples to be careful in their conduct.  They must not by their conduct put temptations before others or cause others to fall away.  We may not consider something we do to be a sin, but if it causes another to judge us or fall away from Christian fellowship, then we best not do it.

Next, if we do cause someone to fall away from our fellowship, like a shepherd seeking a single lost sheep we must seek that person out to bring them back.  Our typical reaction when someone leaves the church is to consign their leaving to being either their problem or regard it as a matter of their private faith in which we shouldn’t meddle.  And so, we don’t do anything.  In Christian community we seek out those who go astray from our fellowship and very pragmatically try to fix what went wrong.

Similarly, when someone in the church wrongs another one of us, in the majority of cases the one sinned against should discreetly approach the one who wronged them.  This means that as a matter of first course we don’t react violently, or hold a grudge, or malign the character of the one who harmed us.  We go to them and try to work it out as quickly and pragmatically as possible even though they wronged us.  If at first they don’t listen, then we bring others into it remembering that reconciliation rather than retribution is the goal.

This discourse ends with Peter asking Jesus how many times he must forgive his brother who repeatedly sins against him.  Jesus answers, “Seventy times seven”.  This means always.  Because God has forgiven us and stays in a relationship with us even though we never seem to cease sinning against him, so are we to bear with one another continually pointing each other to Jesus where there is healing.

Healing relationships is our pragma. Whenever we prayerfully come to agreement in any “pragmatic” matter of Christian community on earth, God the Father will do it for us in heaven.  Jesus is the great symphonizer.  We are like that keyboard synthesizer through which he makes the symphony of human community in his image arise.  When we prayerfully enter into this work with him, the Father will make it here on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

Turning Aside

Exodus 3:1-15

When I was young I had a best friend.  His name was Ronnie.  We met the summer before we started first grade and were best friends up until we graduated high school and life took us our separate ways.  As in any friendship there is a certain amount of give and take that must occur for two people to tolerate one another.  Although Ronnie and I were closer than brothers, there was one thing about him that I just had to tolerate.  He had this habit of whenever he saw something that fascinated him he would turn aside and study it. 

This gift of his interfered with just about everything we did together.  For example, we lived not far from a Rose’s department store and often we would go there to buy something.  The trip should have only taken maybe a half hour to walk through the field, cross the railroad tracks, through the parking lot to the store, go make the purchase and come back.  Ronnie’s gift of turning aside would often make this little trip take a couple of hours. 

There was no limitation to the things that fascinated him.  Walking through the field he would have to study bugs.  If there happened to be a dead animal on the way, look out because he was really fascinated with skeletons.  We would have to walk up and down the railroad tracks to see what was there.  Then in the parking lot, we would have to go to the dumpster to see what Rose’s had thrown away.  In the store, we would have to wander through the toy section so he could pick up stuff and study it.  The sales clerks would often follow us around thinking we were shoplifters.  Then on the way home he’d have to do it all over again.  I never understood this simple fascination he had with the oddest things and why he had to turn aside and study them, I just learned to live with it.

Now, as I have grown older, I have changed my mind about Ronnie’s giftedness.  Life is so busy, busy enough that even a walk to the store is most times inconvenient and out of the question. I have found it important and necessary to turn aside and take notice of little things, like watching squirrels and birds, or listening to the wind blow and then there’s my all time favorite thing to do and that is stare at the trees.   No two trees are the same.  The details in the bark manifest caricatures in the same way clouds do.   We have to approach life with a certain sense of fascination otherwise it becomes boring and we get grumpy.  Like Ronnie, we have to turn aside from time to time from our busyness or even from our lack of busyness to discover how miraculous life really is and to enjoy it.  Often it is when we turn aside that we gain a certain sense of insight into our lives, a certain sense of renewal, or a new sense of direction. 

This is apparently what happened to Moses when he became fascinated with a burning bush in the middle of the Sinai. There was Moses out a little further in the desert wilderness of Sinai than he needed to be shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep.  One can only conjecture that Moses may not have been too proud of himself at the time.  He, the adopted grandson of Pharaoh was forced to flee his home, left behind everything, simply because he had heard the cry of one of his own enslaved Hebrew people and as a result murdered an Egyptian taskmaster.  He fled out into the desert to the home of Jethro, the Midianite priest and married one of his daughters.  He had nothing of his own to offer his wife and instead his father-in-law had to take him in and support him.  There’s being an adult and having to live with your parents, then there’s having to live with your in-laws.  That’s as low as you go.

Moses went from being a prince in the house of Pharaoh to being a shepherd in his father-in-law’s house.  During this “low point” in his life out in the desert wilderness he see’s a burning bush. He turns aside to study it.  He met God in a personal, “I know your name” kind of way.  In this encounter God gave him a new purpose in life, that of going back to the house of Pharaoh to speak for God, to “tell ole Pharaoh, “Let my people go’”.  Then, Moses would have to retask his shepherding skills in a new and bigger way; shepherding God’s people back to the mountain of God to worship.  This little incident of turning aside to study something fascinating completely turned Moses’ life around.

Burning bushes, sensing holy ground, meeting God personally, discovering a calling – these are not things we encounter every day.  Please don’t misinterpret the way I started this sermon by thinking that staring at trees and watching squirrels are surefire ways to mystically connect with God.  My friend Ronnie grew up to be very artistically gifted.  Seeing beauty in details is the way he’s wired.  When we take the time to turn aside like he does it awakens us to beauty and that has its positive effects on us, but that’s not necessarily “the burning bush” though for some it can be.

Nevertheless, where do we find our burning bushes?  I would like to suggest taking the time to turn aside and take notice of the people around us.  A man who was man “Canadian father” used to say “There’s nothing stranger than people.”  He was right in that.  We humans with all our complexities are quite the wonder to behold and ponder.  The Psalmist says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  We are made in the image of God, which means we are relational beings as the Father, Son, and Holy Sprit are relational being.  When we take the time to turn aside and get to know people, to set ourselves aside and actually listen and pay attention to other people – well, I think this is where we find our “Burning Bush” and come to know God more personally and become grasped with a greater sense of what God wants to do through us.

This is what you could call seeing with “people eyes”.  Through Canadian Ministries Timothy and I and the Coop leadership have access to a ministry coach, Stan Ott of The Vital Churches Institute.  Stan likes to talk about “people eyes”, about training ourselves to see past the exteriors of people, past our judgments about people, and taking the time to actually get to know people.  We are in peoples’ lives and people are in our lives because God has put them there.  The love of God, which he has poured into us in Christ – the Holy Spirit – gives us the compassion to be fascinated enough with other people to turn aside and take notice of them.

The relationships we have and the ones we make are holy ground.  God is there.  Using our people eyes, turning aside and taking notice of other people in all their strangeness, talking to them, befriending them, showing kindness and patience, showing hospitality, showing compassion, this is the way God reveals himself and acts in this world through us and for us.  Use your “people eyes” and see.  Amen.