Enfleshing Hope

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Ezekiel 37:1-14

One of my favourite pastimes is watching a show called Startalk on YouTube.  The host of the show is the one, the only Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He’s a very popular astrophysicist and author and has a real gift for making very complicated topics in science accessible and exciting.  I was watching an episode of Startalk on death.  It was entitled: Why do We Die?  The guest was the world’s foremost expert on the science of dying/aging, Venki Ramakrishnan.  There was nothing spiritual about the episode.  It was mostly about the science of aging and anti-aging.  When they did talk about Death, they presented it in such a way as to say if you take death out of the equation life goes stagnant.  You put off until tomorrow what you could do today and so you sit and do nothing.  But once you get it that you know you are going to die, life becomes more special.  You want to live every moment realizing time is short.  

deGrasse Tyson summed it up at the end of the show with his Cosmic Perspective.  He said: “I, at this stage in my life, value the knowledge that I will die because that gives meaning to every day that I’m alive; knowing that there’s one fewer days left in my future to love, to have new ideas, to make discoveries, to embrace all that it is to be alive in this world.  …If the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to being alive, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all if you can just put off to tomorrow what you could’ve done today…for now, knowing that I’m going to die is what’s keeping me going.”  

When I first heard that, at first blush, it sounded quite wise.  Live every moment to its fullest for you never know what a day may bring.  I’ve done some hospital chaplaincy work inclusive of EMERG and I know without a doubt that there is a place called left field and things do come flying out of it.  So, yeah, don’t put off until tomorrow or the next day or the next to do what needs to be done or would be good to do.  But I have a problem with saying “the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to life.”  That’s something that people with means and privilege say.  

Here's something along that line from the more churchy side of things.  Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s it became fashionable to tell young university age people that God’s calling could be found is where their greatest passion and the world’s greatest need meet up.  That sounds really wise but...who’s going to clean the filters at the sewage treatment or pick the apples?  It takes a certain amount of means and privilege for me to be able to do what I believe will make my life meaningful.  At least 90% of the world’s population does not have the means or privilege to pursue their dreams.

As far as I see it, death is not what drives our pursuit for meaning.  I rather think that death is the capstone on the monument of futility that this disease we call Sin has made of human existence.  Sin robs life of its beauty and meaning and purpose and the fact that we die just makes it all the more futile.  If death does anything, it ends the futility.  That philosophy of “live fully because you’re going to die”, it’s good advice but it totally ignores human nature and how we are affected by Sin.  

For most people, knowing you’re going to die doesn’t change much.  A study was done a couple of decades ago on humans and our seeming inability to change.  I wish I had the time this past week to dig through my books on why churches don’t change even when faced by imminent death to make sure I got it right, but… in the study people were told by their doctor that if they continue on living the way they are living – the lack of exercise and poor diet – they will be dead in less than five years.  Did they change?  80% of the study participants did nothing to change their habits.  Some tried and gave up.  A handful succeeded.  Such are we.  So, knowing we are going to die doesn’t change much about how we live.

deGrasse Tyson would place himself in the category of being an atheist.  Unlike some of the more popular atheists today, he is not belligerent towards people of faith unless those people of faith are using their religion to violate the rights and dignity of others as often is the case.  As a scientist, he is quick to point out that faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing what’s really there.  The same can be said in reverse, that a lack of faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing how this unimaginably immense Creation everywhere glorifies its Maker.  God created this universe and called it very good.  What God created and called very good, God will not resign to the futility of Sin and Death.  Death is not the last word in God’s very good Creation.  Jesus Christ and him raised from death is God’s final word that heals everything.  As it went with him, so will it go with us.

Well, I don’t want to give you an Easter sermon just yet, so I’m going to hold off on the topic of Resurrection and go back to the topic of meaning. Knowing that I’m going to die doesn’t compel me to do the things I find meaningful.  The fact that they are meaningful compels me.  In the struggle to find meaningful life in the face of the futility caused by sin and death, I think it is important to consider purpose.  Life will be meaningful if it serves a purpose so what is my purpose.  

As Christians, when we talk about purpose and meaning our thoughts will likely be undergirded or at least informed by and maybe even formed around three theological thoughts: one, God created us; two, God created us to live full and meaningful lives, three, on God’s terms.  The one who made us knows what will make life meaningful for us and give us joy so seek out what God wants.  In searching for what this is I find the first question in the Westminster Larger Catechism of the Christian Faith helpful.  It asks: “What is the chief and highest end of man?”  It answers: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”  Let me give this a paragraph or two.

When we talk about glorifying God, we are not talking about a Great Leader Cabinet meeting in front of the press where you go around the table and everyone shamelessly grovels and lies about the great things the Great Leader has supposedly done.  The biblical concept of glory is like a solar eclipse, when the moon passes in front of the sun.  There comes a moment when the moon perfectly overlaps the sun and all you see is a black circle encircled by a crown of pure light – the glory.  To glorify God is for us to live our lives such that the glory of God shines around us.  It is to live lives of compassion, kindness, humility, and patience.  It is to bear with one another, forgiving one another.  It is to dress ourselves in love and thankfulness.  Love is patient and kind.  It doesn’t envy nor is it boastful and arrogant, rude, and self-seeking, or irritable keeping a record of wrongs.  Love rejoices in the truth!  Be filled with the Holy Spirit.  People will know the Spirit of God lives in us when they see the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’ve left out one word thus far – hope.  Our God is the God who raises the dead.  This world is rapidly filling with darkness, yet again.  Wars, lies, cover-ups, sinking economy, climate disaster.  I could go on.  God has not absconded.  God is being eclipsed by the vainglorious misdeeds of men who think they are gods.  But just like in the midst of a solar eclipse the crown of glory of the sun encircles the moon and the darkness then starts to fade so are we who live in by the Spirit in the image of Christ.  Friends, breathe the Spirit of God and be enfleshed with hope.  The glory of God shines through us into this dark world.  Glorify God and you will know what it is to enjoy him and this world will glimpse its one hope – Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

A Heart of Humility

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1 Samuel 16:1-13

Earlier in the week I searched my files to see if I had ever preached on this passage before and oddly, I couldn’t find anything.  Verse seven of this passage is so popular when it comes to the topic of choosing leadership, it surprises me I haven’t brought it out when elder elections were upon us or during civic elections.  “For the LORD does not see as mortals see; for they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  The world would be a different place this morning if we elected leaders on the quality of their character rather than on how well our ears get tickled by their spiel or by their party affiliation.  Good people will do their best to do what is peaceable and right.  Bad people…well that one’s obvious.  There’s that maxim Jesus said: Good trees bear good fruit.  Bad trees bear bad fruit.  You’ll know them by their fruit. 

Unfortunately, a person’s true character is difficult to discern because it involves seeing what so often can’t be seen outwardly.  The heart we wear on our sleeves is too often not our true heart.  Yet, true character shows up in what a person does when no one is looking.  We need to see how they treat animals, how they treat children, how generously they tip even when the service is bad.  Do they have moments of worship?  Do they know humility?  This may sound crude but it is a character tell, will they clean a toilet.  Maybe it’s more important to know if they even know how to clean a toilet.  I can think of at least one world leader out there starting wars who has never had to clean a toilet and wouldn’t know where to start.  I think it was Jesus who said: “The greatest among them will be servant of all.”  If only that were the way of the world instead of this delusion that the greatest must be served by all.

I may never have given a sermon on this passage but I’ve used it quite often for a youth group study.  I would assign roles to each of the youth and we would act it old.  I would have the biggest and oldest in the group be the first brother and so on down the line to the youngest and scrawniest and hopefully nerdiest kid being David.  After we acted it out, we would talk about things like how it felt to be picked over and it’s especially poignant if whoever played the eldest brother was someone who always got picked.  We would talk about judging people by appearances and how just because someone looks the part doesn’t mean they have what it takes.  

The lesson ended with talking about the true qualities of David that would make him fit to be a king.  He definitely did not fit the bill for what one would expect a king to be like.  He was the youngest of the brothers, kind of scrawny, and for all shapes and purposes rosy-cheeked and “pretty” like an 80's big-hair heavy metal star.  He may have even been red-headed.  He shepherded the family flocks.  Back then, shepherds were on the bottom rung of society as far as public esteem went.  They were always dirty and smelled like sheep, usually had no education, and had reputations for being crude and rude.  His brothers didn’t think too highly of him. If you look at the story of David and Goliath there’s a conversation between David and his brothers that reveals that they thought he was arrogant and irresponsible, nothing more than their father’s errand boy.  He was too puny to fight the Philistines and they accused him of only coming to the battle to watch the Israelites lose like those people who go to NASCAR races just to see a crash.  

But there was more to David’s character than what we would deduce from appearances.  The Bible’s overall picture of David was that he was a man after God’s own heart.  Even after the affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, he remained a man after God’s own heart.  He wanted to please God above anything else.  He was a poet.  He wrote worship songs.  The 23^rd Psalm is probably the most often recited poem in history.  David the shepherd wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”  There is something more to this shepherd thing than the stigmas attached to it.  In the writings of the Old Testament prophets, God calls himself the shepherd of Israel and referred to the leaders of Israel as shepherds.  What his brothers called arrogance was actually courage.  In his work of shepherding, he had had to kill lions and bears often having to go hand to paw with them.  Goliath the giant was nothing to be afraid of.  David wasn’t coming to the battles to watch.  He was there bringing supplies in obedience to his father.  David knew what it was to serve.  He knew humility.  So, David was worshipful, creative, courageous, and humble and did what he was asked to do.  He didn’t abandon the sheep when there was danger.  All of these qualities could have easily been looked over if he were judged by the outward appearances of being the youngest and a shepherd.

If I could pontificate for just a moment on what I think was David’s greatest quality.  I would say it was his humility.  He didn’t act like the kings around him.  The one time that he did, the affair with Bathsheba which led to him having her husband murdered, in the end served to reveal his humility.  He was deeply remorseful knowing he had trampled on God’s little lambs.  He did not grasp at power nor did he wield it for his own sake.  He was simply a shepherd who cared for his sheep.  Everything he needed to know about being king he learned from tending the flock.  Humility. 

I am reminded of a man from my childhood named Charlie.  He was the janitor at my elementary school.  He was a quiet man who always had a smile and a “Hello” and he would have a brief chat with us kids when paths crossed.  If he saw you crying in the hall he wouldn’t walk on by.  He kept the classrooms, the hallways clean, and especially the bathrooms.  Sometimes those bathrooms could be a bit trying especially when you get little boys seeing who could stand the furthest from the urinal and still hit it.  Or, when the mischievous boys in the higher grades made wads of water-soaked toilet paper stick to the ceiling, he was the one to get the ladder and scrape it off.  When we threw up, he was the one who came to clean it up and he would be sure to speak kindly to the little one who got sick.  Charlie was an African American man looking after an all-white student body at a time when many of those white children would have been silently taught by parents and grandparents to be wary of black men. Regardless, we all loved Charlie and he loved us.  When Charlie died the local paper prominently displayed his obituary.  As you would expect, Charlie never went to high school.  He was deeply loved by his family and his community.  Charlie went to church every Sunday.  Charlie was one of those in whom we caught a glimpse of Jesus.  He had a heart of humility.

Applying this passage to real life situations where we are choosing leaders whether it be for the church or for the nation, I think one question to consider is whether a particular candidate measures up to the standard Charlie set.  Heck, do each of us measure up to the standard Charlie set.  Let us remember what Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel when his disciples were arguing over which of them was the greatest.  He said: “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22:25-27).  If the royal scepter a leader wields is a toilet brush or a broom or a basin and towel, we’ve likely got the right person in charge.  Amen.

  

Water for the Thirsty

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Exodus 17:1-7

A long time ago back when I was in seminary, my first wife and I decided we would like to graduate from campground camping and take a stab at backcountry camping.  This was something I had done plenty of times when I was young and in scouting, so it wasn’t a completely foreign experience to me.  But for my wife...well, she would have to trust me.  So, we acquired what extra gear we would need to backpack into a place and camp.  

For our first and only attempt, we chose a side-trail just off the Appalachian Trail in the George Washington National Forest in Virginia not far from where we were from.  The trail descended rather gently to level ground good for camping, but it was about a 1,600ft climb to come out with a waterfall along the way.  The trail book said that backcountry camping was permitted and most importantly there was water available but filtering was highly recommended.  What it didn’t say was that water may not be available year-round.  The topographical map pictured in the book had a clue that we weren’t privy to.  The line that indicated where the stream lay was not a continuous blue line but occasionally had dashes and dots meaning not a year-round source of water.  A bit of an oversight, you might have guessed.

We planned our trip – hike in on Saturday, stay overnight, and out on Sunday.  We packed up and headed for the hills.  When we got to the ranger station at the entrance to the Skyline Drive we learned that there was a complete fire ban which meant we couldn’t even use our cookstoves which meant no food so we decided to just go make a day hike out of it.  Thinking there would be water along the way we thought we would be ok with just a small water bottle between the two of us and the filter.  Off we went. It turned into a very hot day.  Our water ran out quickly as we descended into the bottom but we didn’t worry as there would be water in the bottom. We got to where the stream was supposed to be, but there was no stream to be found, just a dry bed.  There we were.  We had no water and a couple more hours of hiking in heat with a 1,600ft climb at the end.  

I was a runner accustomed to long runs on Saturday morning so my body was familiar with thirst.  But my wife…I was worried.  She wasn’t in any kind shape for what lay ahead.  As we got into the steep ascent alongside the non-existent waterfall, she was getting redder and redder.  We had to stop often with no choice but to soldier on.  I’m sure she was wondering if I had brought her out there to die.  It was well into late afternoon before we came off the trail and still had a bit of forestry service road to walk to get back to the car.  We met another hiker who after remarking that we weren’t looking too good, offered us some water.  We made it back to the car where we had water.  We never made another attempt at backcountry camping.  The marriage lasted five more years.

Thirst is dangerous business out in the wild.  It does not take long for dehydration and heat exhaustion to get life threatening.  I don’t think we were far from that point.  We should have picked a place we were familiar with for our first attempt at backcountry camping as a solo couple.  Some trust was destroyed that day.  

Looking here at Exodus, we could say it was a bit of an oversight on the part of Moses to lead the people out into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula apparently without a plan for food and more importantly water.  One of the biggest gambits we can make is to assume that God will provide.  We like certainty, self-sufficiency, security and we admire people who can forge their way through life never owing anybody anything.  We want Frank Sinatra to come sing his anthem at our funerals.  If we’re thirsty, hungry or without a roof over our heads, then we presume that we have miscalculated, made some huge errors in judgement and can only blame ourselves or those whom we thought we could rely on.  

Such was the case with Moses and the Israelites.  The sparseness of the wilderness made it difficult for the Israelites to trust Moses, much less the God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt.  For 400 years they had lived in Egypt.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had seemingly abandoned them to slavery there.  There’s no way to know for sure but it is highly likely they had forgotten the God of their fathers and given themselves over to Egyptian religion which was largely utilitarian in nature.  If you wanted crops to grow, children, safety, power there were sacrifices to be made to the particular gods who oversaw such things and nothing was guaranteed.  The gods were capricious and certainly did not love those annoying humans who were always wanting something from them.  

For Moses to claim that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, had heard their cries and for love for his people was delivering them from Pharaoh with a mighty hand, well, that was a bit much to chew and swallow.  And here they find themselves in the middle of nowhere with no water.  Four days is about the max a human can go without water.  They are about a couple hundred thousand in number.  I would think that Yahweh, the God of their fathers was appearing quite capricious to the Israelites and Moses looked like a short-sighted zealot.  They play the blame game.  “Have you brought us out of Egypt to kill us?”

Then came the clincher question, “Is the LORD among us or not?”  Had they not noticed that their God had plagued the Egyptians and delivered them from Pharaoh's army by parting the Red Sea.  They crossed on dry ground and Pharaoh's army got drowned.  They had been following a whirlwind cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  And yet, they couldn’t see past the life and death nature of their thirst.  Though God was obviously among them, they couldn’t see the obvious and so they complained against God and blamed the leadership.  The true question was not whether God was with them, he obviously was.  It was whether they were with God.  

So well, it’s the third Sunday in Lent.  Thirst, thirsting for God, is the traditional theme.  The Israelites were literally thirsty to the point of it being life threatening.  God provided the water and nobody died.  Yet, there are other times after this when some Israelites do die for complaining against God in times of crisis, specifically for longing to return to slavery in Egypt and to the gods of Egypt…which was apparently an easier life because it didn’t require so much actual faith from them.  It’s easier to believe God doesn’t care.  It’s easier to believe that God is capricious, unfeeling, and uninvolved.  It’s easier to believe that God has left us here to fend for ourselves…than to believe that God actually is with us, among us, in our midst; that God actually is involved in what is going on in our lives; that God actually does love us…especially when a crisis is involved.

We live in a culture that is having a crisis of faith.  The people who do polling on matters of faith and religious affiliation as well as the national census are telling us that the institution of Christianity in our culture, the Church we all grew up in and cherish, has been abandoned to the point of extinction.  Less than 10% of the Canadian population actively participates in the life of a congregation.  There are two statistical categories that are kind of catchy but so relevant, “Nones” and “Dones”.  The percentage of people with no religious affiliation, the "nones" is nearing 40% and many of them do not like the privilege that particularly Christianity has enjoyed in our culture particularly in the area of tax breaks, moral policing, and political influencing.  They really don’t like it when money they donate to things like hospice care gets used to pay a chaplain.  Then there are people who are “done” with the Church.  They may still have beliefs in or about Jesus but they got sick of church politics and the lack of social compassion and left.  They are done and are not coming back.  

All the while, there is a growing thirst that is at an epidemic level.  I’m not sure I can call it a thirst for God but it certainly has arisen in conjunction with the demise of Christianity in Canadian culture.  This thirst goes by the name of loneliness.  If we are to believe the results of mental health pollsters, almost 60% of our population is suffering loneliness or had a bout of it in the last year.  In the five years prior to Covid, the world of medicine announced that sitting all day was the new smoking.  To sit all day at a desk at a computer is as lethal as smoking nearly a pack a day.  Now in the wake of Covid, studies are showing that loneliness is the new smoking.  Lack of meaningful human contact takes its toll on us emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  Two social events have accompanied this rise in loneliness: the introduction of smartphones and social media and the demise of social institutions such as the church and civic organizations.  

For the senior citizens who make up the bulk of our congregations, who for the longest time made up the bulk of those who suffered loneliness in our culture, the church family is living water.  But for the younger crowd, most of them addicted to a device, with no religious affiliation and an inexplicable antipathy for anything Christian…well, we have to stand firm in trusting that the God who is with us is somehow with them as well and at the right time God will call up a Moses who smites the rock from which the living water will flow.  

Until then, it is gravely important that we who are imbibing of this water, that we love our literal neighbours.  More than half of the people we encounter in a day are dealing with the effects of loneliness.  They are thirsty.  Be that person on the trail who notices and give them a drink.  Amen.