Summer Sermon Series June 14, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Jeremiah 29: 4-14 + Hebrews 11: 8-16 + Luke 17: 20-25
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Every time we have a Scripture reference to Abraham and Sarah’s story, I wish that I could ask them if they weren’t just a teeny tiny bit annoyed with God. After all, Abraham and Sarah went through A LOT in their lifetimes. Promises from God about descendants as numerous as the stars given to an infertile couple….as well as promises made by God to Abraham and Sarah that those yet unborn descendants would possess the land between the Euphrates and Nile Rivers. (cf Genesis 15: 18-21). God didn’t make a broad, general promise about this land either. God specifically listed the inhabitants who would ultimately be dispossessed of their territory: the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites. But that never happened.
Yet, as we are reminded in our reading from Hebrews today, Sarah and Abraham obeyed when they were called, they moved forward with purpose toward that place, living in the land as resident aliens. Then Sarah gets pregnant in her old age. And they died in faith, never having obtained what had been promised to them, the land between the Euphrates and Nile rivers, but instead welcoming it from afar.
It seems that if God makes a promise, the least we can anticipate is that it might come to pass.
We do well, when we read stories like Abraham and Sarah’s, to remember that the story of God’s people is not a story of occupation. It is not a story of empire. God’s people were more often than not resident aliens….exiles…..living in a land that did not belong to them and awaiting a time when the conditions would be favorable for them to return to the promised land.
Translated into today’s headlines, God’s people would not be living comfortably in the homes in the neighborhoods or even in the country their ancestors had lived in. They would be trying to cross borders….from Syria to Turkey….from Eritrea to Greece….from Mexico to the United States. They might well find themselves living in a country that is arguing loudly over what to do with them…..they who risked physical harm to be there.
God’s people, Israel, also had a similar experience. They did not wish to live in Babylon after Jerusalem was overtaken. They wanted to be back at home. And this is what God told the prophet Jeremiah to speak to God’s people in exile, from our first reading today: “Build houses to live in. Plant gardens and eat what they grow. Marry and raise daughters and sons. Multiply while you are there. Do not decrease. Rather, seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I exiled you.” In other words, live your lives. Do the normal, everyday things that you would do otherwise. Trust that this is a part of my purpose for you, says God, later in this reading. “I alone know my purpose for you, says YHWH, my purpose for your prosperity and my purpose not to harm you, my purpose to give you hope with a future in it.”
It is very easy for us, as the people of God, to see land and buildings as belonging to us. As defining us. The model of the Church for many long years has been one of inhabiting our buildings and expecting others to come to us. And that model has stopped working.
So our task, as the people of God, is two fold, as I see it.
One is a stewardship task. You have heard me say many times that stewardship is defined as what we do with what we have been given. And the task very squarely ahead of us in these coming months will be to determine how we steward the property we have been given and how we do it in ways that allow us to respond from a place of mission and ministry rather than from a place of anxiety and fear or sentimentality.
The second task is an evangelism task. And it ties in closely with the stewardship task. Evangelism is sharing God’s story with the world. How do we best tell that story? Is the story best told with our lips or with our lives?
We are going to be having important conversations in the weeks and months ahead. Conversations about who we are as the people of God. Conversations about what will not change and about what could. And these conversations may sometimes feel uncomfortable. But in order to figure out our stewardship and our story telling, we will need to be vulnerable enough with each other to name what frightens us. And to confess our shortcomings. And to acknowledge that we might not all agree with each other and we might not even agree with ourselves from day to day, but we need to stay in the conversation anyway.
With all that is in me, I believe that God is up to something in this place. That God does indeed have a purpose for us, the people of God at Luther Memorial on this corner and at this time. And with all that is in me I would love it if God would let us know, in detail, what that might be. Is it affordable housing on our property? Is it sharing some common space with our neighbors in that plan? Is it retaining all of our current building or only a part of it?
The hardest thing about being God’s people is trusting that God is at work in the world even when we can’t see it. It’s so much easier to trust ourselves, to believe in our own plans. So how do we know the difference? How do we know the difference between the movement of the Spirit and the false prophets? How can we be faithful to what God is calling us to do and to be?
All three of our readings today offer us answers to that question. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us to call out to God, to pray, and to seek God wholeheartedly. The writer of Hebrews offers Abraham and Sarah to us as examples: “By acknowledging themselves to be strangers and exiles on earth they showed that they were looking for a country of their own, a heavenly one.” And Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, tells the Pharisees that the reign of God is already among us. God is already at work, not just here in this building, but all around us. God uses all people and all circumstances and our task is to figure out how to participate in what God is already doing.
Sisters and brothers, it is only natural to want to get to the promised land….to want to see things to their completion….to want what God has promised us. God’s promise to us is life with God, as it is here and now and as it will be in the life to come. God’s promise to us is not necessarily that we are safe from harm or temptation or tragedy or difficulty. God’s promise to us, God’s beloved children, is that God is with us. These are the words that strengthen us each day. These are the words that we keep before us as we discern what lies ahead. These are words of comfort and challenge. God is with us.
And what we do with that parking lot property will say nothing at all about God. But it will say everything about us. About our ability to see beyond our own desires. About our capacity to envision the reign of God in front of our very eyes. About our willingness to obey when we are called and to go to that place where God is calling us to go, not knowing for sure where we are going, only that it is God who is calling us and God who is with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.