Lack of Updates?

If you're wondering whether I've stopped preaching, I haven't. It's just that my sermon writing style has progressed a bit, and I'm not putting them down on paper in sentence by sentence form anymore, rather I'm writing the sermons as outlines. They are never preached word for word anyways, and this also allows me to move around and away from the pulpit as I don't find myself focusing on saying something in a specific way.

Therefore, I'm not posting sermons here for the time being. If I end up writing a manuscript for a sermon in the future, it will end up here.

Exodus 3:1-15 "A Burning Bush"

This last week all eyes were upon Denver as the Democratic party nominated Barack Obama as their candidate for President. This coming week eyes will turn to Saint Paul as the Republican party does the same for John McCain.

When we look at the leadership that these two candidate offer this country and we look at Moses who we read about this morning and who was the greatest leader in Israel’s history, we see that there is much that is very different than the leadership they promise and the leadership he offered.

Where Obama is known for his wordcraft and ability to speak eloquently about many topics, Moses didn’t want the leadership job precisely because he didn’t feel that he spoke well at all, and he feared that he could not connect with his people. Where McCain has spent years in service to this country, both in the military and then in the senate, Moses spent his life disconnected from the people he would lead, growing up as a part of the Egyptian ruling family that subjugated his people to slavery and without any leadership experience at all.

But there are also things that both candidates have in common with Moses. Moses, like McCain, entered into his leadership at a late age, Moses was 80 when God came to him in the burning bush. And Moses, like Obama, had someone with him who made up for the areas where he seemed inexperienced. Obama has Biden, Moses had his brother Aaron.

These are interesting comparisons and contrasts to make, but we aren’t going to spend our time today looking at present day politics and seeing what Moses has to tell us about them. Rather, we’re going to look at our own lives, our own journeys with God, and see what Moses has to tell us about following God’s guiding in our lives.

I. From Shepherd to Leader

Chapter 3 of Exodus begins with Moses as a shepherd. It is amazing to me how God continues to go to shepherds and give them such important roles in his story. We have Moses, we have David and of course, we have the shepherds who were the first to see baby Jesus. So Moses is a shepherd, and not a young one. He is 80 years old. He had spent the first 40 years of his life growing up as an Egyptian prince. He was adopted by a daughter of the Pharaoh and lived the life of royalty. But then he struck out at an Egyptian who was mistreating an Israelite slave. And he killed this Egyptian. The Israelites feared him and the Egyptians were after him. He ran away to the Sinai Peninsula. In Sinai he married and became a shepherd and spent the next forty years of his life. And now, after having lived two full and very different lives, Moses was probably ready to sit down and retire. He was probably ready to enjoy the last years of his life in peace and quiet. But as he is caring for his sheep he sees something that amazes him. A bush that seems to be on fire, but that doesn’t burn up. And Moses is curious so he goes to check it out. This is where things begin to get weird for him. For he hears a voice call to him from within the bush, and the voice calls him by name, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses responds, “Here I am.” This is the first thing to notice about Moses’ call, it is a call given directly to him. It is a message for him alone. God calls out to him by name. When we are called to serve God it isn’t always as clear as it was for Moses. I don’t think I know one person in any sort of ministry who has seen a burning bush that called to them by name. But putting that aside, it is worth knowing that God does call us specifically. God doesn’t have a bunch of things he wants done in this world and just pick names out of a hat and assign them. It may sometimes feel like that, after all, we often find ourselves doing this sort of calling at church. We need this many Sunday School teachers and so we are just going to ask people until we get enough people to say yes. But this is not the way that God works. No, God prepares us for ministry and prepares our ministries for us. Everything that Moses had done up to that point was preparing him for leading Israel out of bondage. Moses had gone through much and it was all designed very intentionally to make him ready for what would come. The same is true for us. The joys we’ve had, the struggles we’ve faced, all these are there to prepare us for what is to come in our lives. We can think, like Moses, that we’ve already done everything that is important. Instead we need to be prepared to allow God to send us. And we need to be ready to hear God’s call when it comes, and not ignore it but allow it to speak to us, to call us by name. When you get that call from the Christian Education committee or from the Nominating committee, listen to see if God is speaking to you through them. Is God calling you by name? Is God pushing you to continue a ministry you are involved in or move into a new kind of ministry in your life? How are you going to respond to the call?

Moses responds to God’s calling him by name by saying “here I am”. It is a simple response. It is a safe response. He acknowledges that he is there, in God’s presence, but he hasn’t committed to anything yet. Smart.

II. Holy Ground

But then God asks him to do something unusual and strange, something that doesn’t make sense to us: he asks him to take off his shoes because he is standing on holy ground. God doesn’t start right away with asking Moses to do anything crazy, lead the people out of slavery or anything, not God begins by asking Moses to take off his shoes. “Um, okay God, if you say so.”

But there is an important question here, what is it that makes this ground holy? Is it just holy because of where it is? Are there places in this world that by their very nature are holy? Or is there something more to it. Perhaps it is holy because of the bush that is burning on it. Or perhaps it is because it is a place where God is speaking.

Other people have crossed over that spot of earth since Moses. We can be sure of this. And no bush burned and no voice spoke to them. The place wasn’t holy when they passed over that space in the same way it was holy when God spoke to Moses there. I think what made the place holy is that it was a place where a person met with their God and where God gave that person a mission. God gave Moses a purpose. God gave Moses direction. And I believe that this is what made this into a holy place. A holy act was about to happen, and so God created a holy place for it.

We gather in this sanctuary and worship God here. We like to think of this as a holy place. We treat it different than other places we inhabit. No, we don’t take off our shoes as we enter this place, but there are certain unwritten rules that we follow in the sanctuary. They’re different for each of us. For some of us, we show it’s holiness by the way we dress. For others, we act different in church, more subdued. There are certain things that we would never think of doing in this place. The college I went to had originally been owned by the Catholic Church and was a school for Nuns. The chapel in the college was beautiful. When the nuns were ready to sell it there were two interested parties: our college and a police academy. The police academy wanted to take the chapel and turn it into a shooting range. Even though our college offered less money, the nuns sold it to us because we would continue to treat their chapel as a holy place. What is it that makes this place holy to us? Is it holy to us because it was holy to our parents and grandparents before us? Is it holy to us because we are told that it is holy? Or is it holy to us because it is also a place where we meet our God and where we find our mission?

III. God’s Mission and Moses’ Arguments

And now we come to the part in scripture where we see God give Moses his mission, his call. God doesn’t just tell Moses to go do this. He explains the need to Moses and gives Moses the chance to get behind it. He tells Moses about the suffering of the people of Israel and how he has heard this suffering and is going to act on their behalf. When God calls us he prepares us for this by making the need known to us. He gets us excited about making a difference. He fills us with a passion for that which he sends us to. If he is calling us to mission work, he fills us with a passion for the lost. If he is calling us to ministries of compassion and justice, he fills us with a passion for the poor and the weak. If he is calling us to work with children, he fills us with a passion for the young.

Last spring we watched the movie Amazing Grace on a couple Wednesday nights here at church. The movie is about William Wilberforce and his crusade in 18^th century Britain to end the slave trade. William felt that God called him to this mission and he worked at it year after year of failure and frustration. He almost died because the mission he was on made him so sick. And many of those who he worked with including a black former slave minister, Equiano, died before the mission was realized. It makes me wonder, does God call you to something that he won’t equip you for? I don’t believe so. I believe that God does equip us with every good gift we need to fulfill the mission he has called us to. Sometimes we might not see the results of what he is working through us, but at the same time, God doesn’t send us out there on our own just to watch us fail. God gave Moses the things he needed to lead the people of Israel. He gave William Wilberforce what he needed to put an end to the slave trade in Britain. He will give you what you need to do what he asks of you.

But we, like Moses, can argue with him about this. We can make excuses. We’re too old, we’re too young, we don’t know what we’re doing, nobody will take us seriously, we’ve already got too much going on in our lives with work and family, we cannot commit to something else, anyway that’s that pastor’s job, isn’t it? The list of excuses can go on and on. But if God is really calling us to a ministry, the excuses will not last. I have to say that in seminary I talked to a number of second career pastors who talked about having the call to ministry on their lives long before they accepted that call. They again and again talked about fighting that call in their lives. And they again and again talked about how God eventually wore them down and here they were in training for ministry. And their stories were always told as “don’t let this happen to you” stories. There is no pride in their struggle with God. It is not something that they are happy they did. They all wish they had given in to God’s will sooner. They wish they hadn’t spent so much time arguing with God.

Don’t let the fact that they all ended up going to seminary fool you though, for sometimes that is the place that God calls us, and other times God calls us to other ministry opportunities that are quite different. We are all called to ministry within our church; within our community; within our families. This ministry looks different for each of us. What is God calling for you to do? Don’t believe for a second that God is done with you. He still has a use for each of us. And don’t believe that he only calls some of his children to ministry. We are all called to lives of ministry in all we do. So what is God calling you to? How does he want you to serve him? How are you able to serve? Open yourself up to God’s call. Listen to see where he might send you. And when he calls, follow. Moses discovered that he had no option but to go where God led. He discovered that as God called him to ministry, God provided his resources for him in ministry. God will do the same for you. Perhaps God is calling you to full time ministry. If so, answer this call. But more likely, he is calling you to some other ministry in this church, in this community. Are you going to listen? Are you going to answer his call?

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 "Asking Too Much"

People have been asking about our mission trip and how things went. In the coming weeks you will get the opportunity to hear from those who went on the trip about what it was like and how it affected us. It was a powerful experience for all who went and we all have stories to tell about the trip. There were times of elation and there were times of disappointment. There were times where we realized that we were making a difference. There were times where we wondered whether we were helping at all.

As a group, we were working with each other and with two other church groups and with YouthWorks to do ministry in the community. Some of us worked with a kids club, playing with kids, showing them love that they don’t always experience in their homes, teaching them about Jesus, building relationships. Laurie, for example, had a little girl, Jaz, who would not leave her side each day we were with the kids. Others of us had the opportunity to go and help paint and clean up around some neighborhood houses. On Monday, they finished the second coat on a house that the group had worked on the previous week. Then, on Tuesday and Wednesday they moved on to another house. Unfortunately, rain hit on Wednesday. This kept them from being able to finish the work that they were doing, and the house will be completed next week by another group. The rain also affected the kids club. We were going to have a water day outside and enjoy playing in the water, but instead we had to come up with other plans. Not only that, but instead of the 30 plus kids we’d had the previous two days, only 11 showed up.

So, in the midst of the excitement, in the midst of the ministry that we were all doing, we found ourselves a bit disappointed. We weren’t able to do as much as we’d like. We weren’t able to finish up, and the rain kept kids away from us.

One of the things we’d learned is that there are definite joys in ministry, but there are also struggles and difficulties and at times we find ourselves up against a wall. It is interesting to look at Jesus’ ministry from this perspective. When did he find himself frustrated by the work he was doing? When did he feel overwhelmed? When did it seem like too much? And what did he do when this happened?

I. Difficulties in Ministry

We don’t always like to think about the frustrations that Jesus faced in his time in ministry. He was the Son of God! He had a direct communication with the Father that many of us would dream of. He could do amazing miracles and speak with an authority that we truly cannot understand. And yet he still found himself, at times, butting up against difficulty in ministry. Ministry in Jesus’ day was not easy, and he had an almost impossible task, to help God’s people to see where they’d fallen away and redirect them into right relationship with God; to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God; to prepare his followers for his own death and resurrection.

Now Jesus didn’t have some of the problems that many of us have. Last week we talked about how sometimes God’s followers find themselves reading God and his word wrong and head off in a wrong direction. I talked about how we need to be sure that when we are speaking for God that we are actually speaking God’s word and God’s truth and not our own thoughts. Jesus didn’t need to worry about this. He spoke God’s word and God’s truth each and every day. He was God’s Word. No, for Jesus the problem wasn’t communicating with God. It was communicating with humans.

I mentioned it last week and it is still true. Humans are not always terribly good listeners. God communicates with us, often quite clearly, and we somehow find ourselves getting what he is saying mixed up, confused and backwards. But that isn’t the only problem, either. Sometimes we ask too much of God. Sometimes we set up hurdles that we want God to jump over, tests that we want God to pass. This is what Jesus found himself butting against in today’s scripture.

II. Dancing to the Flute/Mourning to the Dirge

“This generation is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’”

You see, the people of Israel, the people that Jesus was trying to reach, would not be happy with what God was giving them. When God reached out to them one way, they complained that he didn’t do something else. So God did something else and they complained that he didn’t do the first. The people were putting God in a box and telling God how they wanted him to connect with them. And when he didn’t meet them the way they wanted, they dismissed him altogether.

They were saying, “we want to play the tune that you will dance to, we want you to meet us where we are at this moment.” They changed the rules so they didn’t have to listen to the messengers of God and could instead do what they wanted.

Jesus goes on to explain what this is about. You see, John the Baptist spent his life of ministry living the life of a hermit out in the desert. He wore clothes made of camels’ hair, he ate locusts and honey. He protested in the way he lived and what he ate against the self-indulgence of the world around him. And he called for people to repent, to turn from their selfish and sinful ways and turn back to God. He had an important message, one that prepared the world for the message of Jesus. And many were convinced by his message. But many others dismissed him and his message. “Look at that wild man living in the desert. He doesn’t eat or drink, he’s crazy, he’s got demons. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s crazy.”

And then there was Jesus and his ministry. He didn’t go off to the desert as radically as John the Baptist did, though he did spend some time in the desert. And he ate food and drank wine. Instead of separating himself from the self-indulgent and sinful, Jesus went to them and ate with them and visited with them and encouraged them to change their ways. And, in the same way as John, many were convinced by Jesus’ message, but others dismissed him, “He’s a glutton, he spends too much time hanging out with sinners, he likes sinners and their sins a bit too much, by spending so much time with tax collectors and prostitutes he is saying that their actions are okay. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s a glutton.”

And Jesus points out the absurdity of this reasoning. You can’t have it both ways. Stop with the character assassinations and listen to the message that both Jesus and John the Baptist are spreading.

Do you see that Jesus and John the Baptist had the same message? They both called people to repent and turn from their selfish and sinful ways. And yet they had radically different ways of sharing that message. John stood aside from the world and stood up as an example. He distanced himself from the sins so that people could experience the example that he set. Whereas Jesus entered into the dark and dirty world where people lived and met them where they were so that he could call them out. John called to them from a distance, asking them to repent. John stayed stationary and people came to him to hear his words of truth. Jesus traveled among the people and into their towns, to their dinner tables.

III. Ministry / Rest

After making this point, after venting some of his frustrations about the fickle nature of his people, Jesus then proceeded to call woe down upon the cities and towns he was visiting. We didn’t read these woes. We skipped over them. But they’re there, and they’re real. Jesus was frustrated. He and John had both been working to bring God’s truth to these people, and they were staying self-righteous and keeping with their older understanding of truth. They were allowing their own understanding to preempt God’s messengers and Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus prays about this with his Father. He takes his frustration to the Father in an interesting way. He praises God for those wise people who don’t get it, who have had God’s truth hidden from them. He praises God because though the truth is hidden from the wise, it is revealed to children. He celebrates the message that he has, knowing it is from God the Father, knowing that those who follow him will learn God’s truth. And then, in the midst of this discussion about God’s truth being hidden from the wise and revealed to the children, in the midst of this discussion about how God’s truth is only revealed to those for whom Jesus chooses to reveal it, in the midst of this problem that Jesus has with people not taking the message that he has seriously, Jesus speaks some of his most powerful words of comfort and peace: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I will give you rest. I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Knowing how ministry sometimes is, I understand this need. I wonder if Jesus himself was reminding himself that God would bring him rest for his soul and then he felt the need to share that rest with his followers. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus says. “This ministry thing, that is so difficult, that can be so complex and hard, that can at times be so frightening and frustrating, take that yoke upon you.”

On the mission trip we realized the need for rest. We were exhausted each day with not enough time to relax or recoup. And yet, as we served, even as we found ourselves frustrated, we realized that Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. For there is joy in serving God. There is peace in doing his work. There is power in being intentional about seeking God’s will. I encourage you to talk with those who were on the mission trip. Hear their stories, find inspiration in their journeys, and find ways to take Jesus’ yoke in your own life. You may find it frustrating at times, you may find it difficult. But Jesus does promise that he will give rest and there will be joy and peace. Amen.