I got soul, but I'm not a soldier!

The title today comes from a song by The Killers that I just downloaded called All These Things That I've Done. It's a great track and these words happen as part of a breakdown in the bridge. Click the title to visit their website.

This is a sermon I gave two years ago next month. It's pretty weird to read something like this in light of the last few months. And I think I am a way better writer these days. Too many metaphorical ship references, too disconnected. But there is some value to it I suppose. I know it was a good thing for me to think about for a few minutes-that push and pull between faith and fear.

On Second Thought
Sermon for First UCC February 8, 2004

I begin with a question that I cannot answer.
How would we react if Jesus performed a miracle here?

The people in our scripture reading this morning in the region of the Gerasenes saw Jesus bring out a demon and heal the mind of a troubled soul, but were afraid at this display, and they asked Jesus to leave there community. It is human nature to fear, or at least our conditioned existence here in 2004 in the United States of America.

In the 90’s the crime rate and murder rate dropped in this country, drug use decreased across all age groups, but especially among high school kids, our life expectancy soared to the mid 70’s, we found life improving medications for literally thousands of diseases, and we had the most successful economy in the history of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.

But to watch the news you wouldn’t have known these things. Headlines full of gun violence, murders, kidnappings, drugs, gangs, suicide bombings, police brutality, all the way down to shark attacks have led to great ratings for news organizations and that has led to 24 hour news organizations which pump these images over and over into the homes of in-creasingly scared Americans. In this post 9-11 world we have come to ignore already orange alerts and elevated security. We expect longer lines at the airports, we expect to take off our shoes to be scanned, and we expect the people that “look like terrorists” will be watched closely at all checkpoints.

Our politics too has been consumed by fear. We support who we support based on how safe they make us feel or how protective of us we perceive they are. At least in a terror related way, because we have long ignored the atrocities wreaked on our environment and our culture and our civil freedoms and our economy. As long as we are safe we can deal with these problems later it seems we are left to decide. And listen to any politician speak, in any political party, and you will hear their commitment to safety and security these days long before you hear them speak on other things that affect as many or more Americans.

And our advertisements are chock full of fear. Buy this product or you won’t get the girl, be popular, have money, have health, or have happiness. This is the world of living up to the neighbors, or rather being superior to them. New and improved, best, better, everywhere you want to be, the quicker picker upper, the breakfast of champions, the ultimate driving machine, when it has to there overnight, when you care enough to send the very best, the right stuff, the real thing, this is the language of advertisements, and I’ve left out the most vile offenders like beer distributors, cigarette manufacturers, and drug companies.

All of these slogans and lines have an opposite and ad agencies know this; the old, the worst, nowhere you want to be, the slower dropper downer, the breakfast of losers, when it needs to arrive 3 days late, when you don’t care enough to send much, the wrong stuff, the fake thing. And these opposite things are negative and what we’re supposed to fear and why we’re supposed to buy their product.

I don’t understand from a logical perspective why these things are as they are in our country.

Do we actually think that 24 hours a day all that is taking place in America is the most evil bad thing we can conjure?

Do we actually think that one group of upper class middle age white men make us safer than another?

Do we actually think that our happiness can be somehow altered by our clothes, our car, our cereal our cola preference?

We are a scared group of people. And if you think I’m making a large leap then you look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never done anything to fit in or avoid rejection, for that’s one of things we all fear.

And there are other fears closer to home. We fear superficial things like being alone, gaining weight, losing hair, and having no money. And that’s just me. We fear lifestyle changes, institutional changes, physical changes, changes to our routine, changes to our perceived understanding of the world, and changes to our knowledge and norms. But perhaps saddest of all we fear changes and challenges to our spiritual understanding of things.

The people in the story of the demon possessed man must have been glad in a way that Jesus saved the man, drove a demon from among them, and righted some cosmic wrong. But their fear of what seeing this and meeting him meant drove them to drive him away. I wonder how much differently we would react?

Now, I promised to you a long time ago, that I would use my time at this pulpit to check in and tell you my experiences and my concerns. When I first wrote this sermon I was confronted with two of my own fears that have changed how I interact with you and brought pause to my work here. The first is a fear I have echoed in the past few weeks, it is probably my deepest personal fear. I have seen a group of timid and questioning kids, numbering at a youth event between 6 and 10 depending upon which age group, become strong and inspired young men and women, numbering at a youth event somewhere between 12 and 23 depending upon which age group. They are vocal and they are focused and they are committed and they are amazing. When they were griping to me about how some of you refuse to get out of your comfort zone a couple weeks ago I challenged them to get out of theirs.

They looked over the upper deck of their ship and saw colder waters below, but they leaped into it, because they value words only if those words are followed by action. They stand on the back of this vessel we are traveling in and they want so much to chart a course that leads to bluer skies and calmer waters, and I wish so much that I could give it to them. But they will lose their anchor in coming years and they will not have a captain to guide them unless you bring them to the front of the ship, or some of you join them in the back of it.

My fear is that the work God called me to do will not be continued when I am called away from it.

This has changed me in recent months, this joyous work has become a little sad. My other fear is a greater one in scope and a much more discouraging one as I look to the future, for I know the kids I now serve will be fine in the long run, I do not however know if the vessel we are standing in can survive the storms ahead. And we have big storms coming if we are to travel anywhere but here. My fear isn’t that you cannot sail through the storms, my fear is that you won’t choose to.

I fear you will very much anchor yourself to a past and a way of thinking that I for one don’t think is relevant in the world today. And while I understand how comforting it must be to have one place in the world that has not changed in a lifetime while all else has, I cannot understand and will not try any longer to comprehend why so many Christians seem to prefer a museum and a reenactment to a living evolving relevant church.

But these two fears are for another sermon, a sermon I’m not going to give, because I realized something when undertaking this idea of fear. And that is simply, that it has no place. It has no place in my life or in my heart because I pledged over a decade ago that those two things belonged to someone else. It has no place because for all my doubting, for all my sadness, for all my anger at those of you who cannot see what is at stake, there is this voice that has not gone away and will not go away that continually tells me that I have nothing to fear. This is the voice of God.

I don’t know when we as a society, as a community, as a church, as people stopped listening to this voice. I know I only hear it when I’m desperate or brave enough to shut out all other voices; the ads, the 24 hours news, the politicians, the people I know that say this voice doesn’t exist, the people I know whose fear has overcome this voice. And I can’t help but wonder when I see Christians crippled with fear but think if they are still listening for and to the voice of God.

There are no times in the Bible where the words stay put appear. There are 3 times the words stand still appear in the Bible. Once in Joshua chapter ten there is a reference to the sun standing still. Once in Isaiah there is a reference to standing still to see the great thing God has done in chapter 12. And once in chapter 39 of Job the Bible reads one cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

On the other hand the words go, follow, come, move, walk, run, and stand make appearances totaling 3,346 times in the Bible. This says to me that God is a moving acting God, and we should have a moving acting faith.

Faith, what is that? Could it be the answer to fear? Could it be the thing we are forgoing and forgetting when we show fear, is faith? I hate to keep bringing this up, because I now how sparingly we use such knowledge in our daily lives, but did you know in the Bible all the times God uses the phrase “Do not be afraid.” God the Father is credited in saying this directly to Abraham, to Moses, to Joshua, and to Daniel. Angels are credited as saying it to Elijah, Jesus’ mother Mary, Joseph, shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth, and to Mary Magdeline and the women at the tomb three days after he was crucified. Jesus is credited as saying it to the disciples numerous times, to the men on the road to Emmaus, to Paul on the road to Damascus, to John the writer of Revelation, and to somebody else…who was that? Oh yeah, US!

In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew chapter 10:28-31
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Wait, is he saying that we shouldn’t fear dying? This guy is a radical. Worth more than sparrows, can’t kill my soul, numbered hairs, yeah, yeah. And I guess it would be easy to pass this off as some weak teaching if Jesus hadn’t lived it out. It’d be easy for us to make this message trivial if we didn’t have an account for the painful way in which Jesus’ community killed his body. Am I saying there is such a thing as a soul, yes, I believe so. I am waging my life on it. Am I saying Jesus died and went to Heaven, yes, I think we all do. Am I saying that when we realize the thing we would fear the most has been conquered, can be conquered by us, that it makes all of our fears in this life petty, yes, we should have faith.

Not blind faith, I don’t want us to start passing out the snakes or anything, but faith that informs our actions. Our faith should affect what we buy, what we watch, and who we vote for, and what we base those decisions on, not fear. And so I come back to my biggest fears and I offer this new outlook.

On second thought, I believe that our Youth group will be stronger in five years than it is now. I believe this because I have faith not only in God, but in the kids who sit in this sanctuary and the adults who love them as much as I do. I believe there is a limitless future to what they can do as youth and as people, because I have spent a great deal of time with them and there are few people who have shown me more of what God’s love is.

I believe this church is about to set sail for uncharted waters, not because it has to, but because it wants to. Because you, sitting in your comfort zone, in your designated spot, in your museum of uninfected continuity are slowly beginning to hear God speak to you about what could be. I believe it will be the back rows, the gal-lery, the saints who built this church the first time who will inspire it the sec-ond time. I believe they will see that this world has become one continuous half-time show of standards below what they should be, of ploys for things that are not of value, of dreams that are no longer lofty or visionary or chal-lenging, but are the weak conjurations of scared half believers. I believe those of you who won’t change love the church more than I do. I know it, because I could walk away from it if it drops anchor and refuses to set sail.

But if you love something, the test of that love is what you’re willing to sacrifice to save it.

There were three people crucified the day Jesus of Nazareth was. One criminal to Jesus’ side hurled insults at him, in this moment of fear, that we all will face in some way, this dying man was furious at God and wondered why Jesus wouldn’t just save himself with a miracle. The other criminal saw it a different way, he knew Jesus was not a criminal like he, but a man being unjustly punished. For this Jesus offered him these words according to Luke, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” The miracle of the cross is not that a good man was killed unjustly, that has happened many times throughout history even in our day.

The miracle of the cross was that Jesus had said there was a bigger picture, a much longer never ending timeline, a purpose to his life and his death and that was love and he lived it out and he carried through his message.

You all know this story, you’ve heard it, and say you’ve believed it. Then why are we so scared? Why are we not miracle expecting, miracle creating people? Why do we not look at this world like Jesus did and say, I can make it better because I can do this. Have you considered that? No matter who you are or what you are figuring out what you have to give.

Someone I love dearly said something I disliked greatly to me recently, she said I couldn’t understand what I was talking to her about because I wasn’t old enough. Okay, when am I old enough. Simultaneously, I hear many of you say things lie, “I’ve served my time” or just frankly “I’m too old.” How short is the window of time one is allowed to do anything, to think anything, to know anything?

Do I have to wait until I’m thirty and then stop when I’m fifty-five doing my part? Something tells me no! Something tells me that as long as I have breath, from my first one to my last one I have a part to play. Something tells me that that forty-something telling me I was too young, and that seventy something thinking they are too old are just two more instances of fear.

That something telling me this is the same voice I call God, the same gut feeling that tells me I will see all of you again and we’ll spend forever together.

I apologize if that ruins the afterlife for you that I expect to be there.

Is the world consumed with fear? Yes, and that is in itself a reason to be scared. But on second thought, it is a reason to be active, to be the people of God again in this world. And it starts today. Today, all of us, ALL of US have to commit to doing our job, some job. Those little jobs will become one big job. It’s the job of giving faith to people instead of fear, the job of lifting each other up regardless of age and ability, the job of acting and moving in this world as soon and as long as we are in it to share love without fear.

This is a job we are all capable of doing in our way. This is the job of letting God into our hearts and asking him to stay when he begins to perform miracles here. Nothing happening is not a miracle. Staying put and standing still is not a miracle.

Any weak-minded spiritually crippled person can do nothing.

But the faith inspired soul who listen for God cannot stand still, cannot stay put, cannot drop anchor for too long. I believe there are miracles coming to this place, to our church and to our world, and we may not see them as such, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are miracles. It may be a tiny thing one of our kids do, or a tiny thing one of our grownups do, or it may be a big thing they do together, but if you listen to God and sail ever onward my faith in God gives me faith in the promise of a miracle for you in the coming voyage.

Which brings me to the final question that I cannot answer.
How would we react if Jesus performed a miracle here?

May we all find that we not only have soul, but find our own ways to be soldiers!!!