Our Solution ... God's Solution
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle B
A familiar Yiddish folk tale goes something like this: a man goes to his wise and revered rabbi for advice. He complains: "O, Rabbi, my house is too small for my wife and my children and myself. We get on each other's nerves and drive each other crazy. What should I do?"
The rabbi sits pensively for some time, then asks the man, "Do you have a dog?" Puzzled, the man replies, "Yes." The rabbi continues, "Do you keep your dog inside or out?" "Out," the befuddled man answers. After another long moment of silent deliberation, the rabbi utters his profound verdict: "My advice to you is to go home, bring the dog to live inside the house with you and your family, and come back to me in a week." Confused, the man went home, and did as the wise rabbi said.
A week later the man returned. "O, wise and venerable Rabbi, may I dare say it is only worse." At great length the man moaned, groaned, whined, and complained about the state of affairs in his home. The rabbi, again, spent a great deal of time pondering the man's situation in silence. Finally, he spoke, "Do you have any sheep?" The man's brow furrowed, "Yes, we have four sheep." Nodding wisely, the rabbi pronounced, "My advice is for you to go home, to bring the sheep inside the house to live with you and your family, and to come back to me in a week." Shaking his head, the man departed from the rabbi.
So the folk tale goes. Goats. Pigs. Cows. Horses. Chickens. Finally, after the man, his wife, and his children have been living with an Old MacDonald menagerie week after week after week, the man returns, "O wise and venerable Rabbi, I am at my wit's end. We cannot live like this any longer. There must be something else we can do!"
After a ponderous silence, the rabbi said calmly, "Go home, take all of the animals out of the house, and come back to me in a week."
A week later, a relieved and radiant man returned, "O wise and wonderful Rabbi, you are brilliant. We have never been so happy and content in our house. True peace reigns there."
Sometimes we do a lot of complaining, when in fact we need to be reminded just how good we've got it.
Sometimes we look for solutions in all the wrong places, rather than to the One who is the solution.
The Story of the People of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story, is a story of a people who, again and again, think we have the solution to our every problem. Think we have the answers. Our story is a story of you and me, like the people of Israel, like the man who visits the rabbi, moaning and groaning, and whining, and complaining about the state of our lives, and about the solution God gives us in the beginning. It is a story of human wandering, taking the circuitous path, looking for answers in all the wrong places, foolishly trying to take things into our own fallible hands, rather than leaving them in the hands of God.
Biblical scholars say that the story of the people of God, our salvation story, is the Exodus story. The people of Israel had been living as slaves under the brutal and tyrannical rule of the Egyptian slave masters, making bricks, some say to build all those pyramids. They cry out to God. God amazingly, miraculously sets them free through a series of amazing acts of power and miracles on God's part: the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. God is leading them toward the Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, but the way there leads through the wilderness. In several commentaries, Bible scholars estimate that it's about a forty-day journey through the wilderness. That's right, forty days. But the people try to take the situation into their own hands. I don't know, I think I'd trust the guy who'd just made a pathway for me through the Sea, but no, they decide to take things into their own hands. Their solution is to moan and groan and whine and complain. Their solution is to bicker and fight. Their solution is to rely on their own power and wisdom, the result being that it takes them not forty days to get to the Promised Land, but forty years! Talk about not stopping to ask for directions!
In great and small ways they wandered far from the path. In great and small ways they moaned and groaned, whined and complained, and tried to come up with their own solutions rather than looking to the One who is the solution. For example, the story shows them complaining about the food in the wilderness. "Gee ... back in Egypt we had good meat with onions and spices. Here we just have this boring, tasteless hardtack." Their solution: "We want to go back to Egypt." Moses tries to remind them, "Yes, but you were slaves in Egypt. Remember the whip, the oppression, the abuse, the killing of all of our baby boys, the slaving away, brick after brick after brick, the crying out to God for rescue?" Nevertheless the whole congregation (and I thought I had it bad with just a few complaining) -- the whole congregation -- complained against Moses and Aaron for leading them into the wilderness! Was it Moses and Aaron who had led them there anyway? No, it was God, the One who just turned the Nile to blood, who turned day to night, who parted the Sea, who provided an Exodus -- a way out!
Moses goes to God. I imagine he too complained, "These people you gave me. They're driving me crazy! We're camping and they want fine dining! You rescued them, and they prefer the ruts they were living in! You got me into this. What do I do now?"
God's solution: "Tell them I have heard their complaining. I will send them quails every night and manna every morning." Literally, food from heaven. But the human memory is pathetically short. Almost immediately they complained again, this time about the food God showered from heaven: "This manna -- it's so boring, day after day after day. And there's only so much you can do with it." They also tried to take things into their own hands again. They'd been told to take only what they needed for each day, but they hoarded it, trying to come up, once again, with their own solution: "Maybe if we save up a bunch of it, we can do more with it." The hoarded manna turned rotten and bug infested. God's little reminder to us every time we try to take things into our own hands or come up with our own solutions. God creates a situation where we have to come back to God each day for what we need to get through that day.
In our confirmation class we have been studying the story of the people of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story. We have studied Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and are now finishing up Judges. There is a pattern in the book of Judges: the people turn from God, try to come up with their own solutions, try to rely on their own power and wisdom, and everything in their lives falls apart. The people repent, (which literally means, "turn"), turn away from their foolish ways and ridiculous solutions, turn back to God, cry out to God for help, and God gives them God's solution. God raises up a leader to help the people. This God-appointed leader, or judge, leads the people in the ways of God. Things go well for a period of years. The judge dies. The people turn away from God, try to come up with their own solutions, try to rely on their own power and wisdom, everything falls apart, people cry out to God, God gives them God's solution. God raises up a judge to be their leader, and so on and so forth. The pattern repeats itself.
Finally, the story of the people of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story, your story and my story, comes to a climax in today's lesson from 1 Samuel. "We're sick of these judges, who only rule for a little while. We want to be like everybody else. Why can't we be like our neighboring nations? They have a king! We want a king!" Moan, groan, whine, and complain. Wah, wah, wah! Developmental psychologists say that the people of God, psychologically, are adolescents. "They have pierced ears; why can't we have pierced ears? They have pierced noses; why can't we have pierced noses? They have tattoos; why can't we have tattoos? They wear their pants ten sizes too big with their boxers sticking out, why can't we? Their curfew is midnight, and ours is only 10 p.m." Moan, groan, whine, and complain. The people of God, like adolescents facing peer pressure. Wah, wah, wah! "Look at all our neighboring nations! They have a king. We want a king! We want to be like them!"
One girl in confirmation class asked: "Why does God keep helping them? Doesn't God get sick of it?"
Yes, God does. And, I think God gets angry too. The more you enter the story of the people of God, the more you understand the "wrath of God." The "wrath of God," a concept prevalent in the Hebrew Bible, always troubled me. Just a few years ago, when it fell upon me to preach on a passage that was all about the wrath of God, I researched it. In one of those eye-opening, soul-opening moments, I discovered, as some biblical scholars put it, that the word "wrath" could actually be translated, "the burning love of God." God was compared to a mother lion who roars with protective, burning love when her cubs are threatened or endangered in any way -- even by their own stupidity or foolishness. God is like us parents who burn with angry love when our children hurt each other, when they turn away from us, their fathers and mothers who love them, and foolishly wander down a wrong path, a path we know to be dangerous. In the Hebrew Bible God's "wrath" is displayed whenever God's children hurt each other, fail to treat each other as children of God, turn away from God, or turn from the Way of becoming the people God created and desires them to be.
The solution of the people of God, again and again, our solution, is to take things into our own hands, to look for answers in all the wrong places, to look for power and wisdom in mere human beings. Our solution is to think another human being, a flawed and mortal human king, is the solution to all our life's problems, rather than letting God reign in our lives.
In what ways are you in your life like the people of Israel? How often have you tried taking the situation into your own hands rather than trusting in God? How often have you complained, forgetting the One who acted powerfully in the past to bring you out of whatever bondage you were living in to a land flowing with milk and honey, the One who rescued you and showed you a way out, the One who will bring you to a new and promised place if you just trust? If you just realize how good you've got it compared to where you used to be.
Or how about us as a church? Yes, God has led us out toward a new place, and we're not there yet, so it sometimes does feel a bit like the wilderness. And all of us, myself included, sometimes look back at the small cozy little church family we used to be, and complain that things don't always taste as good here. We need to trust that the One who is leading us forth, is the same One who led us mightily in the past. We need to remember that if we pray for and sincerely seek God's solution and not our own human solutions, we could reach the Promised Land in closer to forty days than forty years. Although our house does sometimes feel a bit crowded, we could realize just how good we've got it.
Our solution could be to choose bickering, fighting, and division within the Christian community rather than God's solution of the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. God's solution of unity, oneness, many different gifts all meant for the growth of the body of Christ, building itself up in love.
The very first church I served as pastor was blessed with healthy leaders. One of the first activities we did together as a Church Council was an outdoor Group Obstacle Course. Twenty-six years old at the time, I was the youngest member of the group. The eldest was a man in his mid-eighties. We were about half male and half female. Some of us were very thin, even frail. Some of us were very large. There were a couple athletic types, but the vast majority were not. The goal was to get the entire group through or over several obstacles, from point A to point B. For example, each and every member of our motley crew had to cross a "poison" river, Tarzan style on a rope; as a group we had to lift each other's various size bodies through openings in a giant spider web; we had to hoist each other over a sheer ten foot wall. The miraculous thing is, we did it!
I must say I've been having a lot of fun fantasizing about our current Church Council doing this same activity together.
The goal is not for one or two -- the young or athletic -- to make it. Not that one or two could make it on their own anyway, for the course is designed in such a way that even the wisest, strongest, most athletic person needs to rely on others to make it through. Besides, the goal is to get everyone from point A to point B. If one person is left behind, you've failed your mission.
So it is with the people of God, the community of faith, the body of Christ. Sometimes in this life you or I try to make it on our own, only to realize that there are some obstacles that we cannot overcome unless we do it together.
Sometimes in the church, the body of Christ, we take things into our own hands, come up with our own, human solutions. The result is fighting, divisions, or getting so aggravated with each other that we think of leaving someone behind or of dropping out of the course. In either case, the whole, the mission, would fail.
So somehow we have to figure out how to put up with each other, how to carry the one who can be really heavy, how to help others overcome their fears, how to deal with the headstrong or the soloists -- the kingly types who think we should look to them for a solution. Together we need to pray and seek God's solution, let the Way of God reign.
Each week we are given a powerful reminder of the way we try to handle a situation. Each week we begin our worship with the words, "We confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves." Each week we begin our worship confessing our foolish and faulty solutions, all of which fall flat on their faces. But each week we then admit our need for God, and are reminded of, and granted, God's solution: forgiveness, freedom, the promised land, the unity of the spirit, the bond of peace, one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all. Each week we are reminded of something the Twelve Step programs point out for us, "That there is a God, and we're not it, thank God!" Amen.
The rabbi sits pensively for some time, then asks the man, "Do you have a dog?" Puzzled, the man replies, "Yes." The rabbi continues, "Do you keep your dog inside or out?" "Out," the befuddled man answers. After another long moment of silent deliberation, the rabbi utters his profound verdict: "My advice to you is to go home, bring the dog to live inside the house with you and your family, and come back to me in a week." Confused, the man went home, and did as the wise rabbi said.
A week later the man returned. "O, wise and venerable Rabbi, may I dare say it is only worse." At great length the man moaned, groaned, whined, and complained about the state of affairs in his home. The rabbi, again, spent a great deal of time pondering the man's situation in silence. Finally, he spoke, "Do you have any sheep?" The man's brow furrowed, "Yes, we have four sheep." Nodding wisely, the rabbi pronounced, "My advice is for you to go home, to bring the sheep inside the house to live with you and your family, and to come back to me in a week." Shaking his head, the man departed from the rabbi.
So the folk tale goes. Goats. Pigs. Cows. Horses. Chickens. Finally, after the man, his wife, and his children have been living with an Old MacDonald menagerie week after week after week, the man returns, "O wise and venerable Rabbi, I am at my wit's end. We cannot live like this any longer. There must be something else we can do!"
After a ponderous silence, the rabbi said calmly, "Go home, take all of the animals out of the house, and come back to me in a week."
A week later, a relieved and radiant man returned, "O wise and wonderful Rabbi, you are brilliant. We have never been so happy and content in our house. True peace reigns there."
Sometimes we do a lot of complaining, when in fact we need to be reminded just how good we've got it.
Sometimes we look for solutions in all the wrong places, rather than to the One who is the solution.
The Story of the People of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story, is a story of a people who, again and again, think we have the solution to our every problem. Think we have the answers. Our story is a story of you and me, like the people of Israel, like the man who visits the rabbi, moaning and groaning, and whining, and complaining about the state of our lives, and about the solution God gives us in the beginning. It is a story of human wandering, taking the circuitous path, looking for answers in all the wrong places, foolishly trying to take things into our own fallible hands, rather than leaving them in the hands of God.
Biblical scholars say that the story of the people of God, our salvation story, is the Exodus story. The people of Israel had been living as slaves under the brutal and tyrannical rule of the Egyptian slave masters, making bricks, some say to build all those pyramids. They cry out to God. God amazingly, miraculously sets them free through a series of amazing acts of power and miracles on God's part: the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. God is leading them toward the Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, but the way there leads through the wilderness. In several commentaries, Bible scholars estimate that it's about a forty-day journey through the wilderness. That's right, forty days. But the people try to take the situation into their own hands. I don't know, I think I'd trust the guy who'd just made a pathway for me through the Sea, but no, they decide to take things into their own hands. Their solution is to moan and groan and whine and complain. Their solution is to bicker and fight. Their solution is to rely on their own power and wisdom, the result being that it takes them not forty days to get to the Promised Land, but forty years! Talk about not stopping to ask for directions!
In great and small ways they wandered far from the path. In great and small ways they moaned and groaned, whined and complained, and tried to come up with their own solutions rather than looking to the One who is the solution. For example, the story shows them complaining about the food in the wilderness. "Gee ... back in Egypt we had good meat with onions and spices. Here we just have this boring, tasteless hardtack." Their solution: "We want to go back to Egypt." Moses tries to remind them, "Yes, but you were slaves in Egypt. Remember the whip, the oppression, the abuse, the killing of all of our baby boys, the slaving away, brick after brick after brick, the crying out to God for rescue?" Nevertheless the whole congregation (and I thought I had it bad with just a few complaining) -- the whole congregation -- complained against Moses and Aaron for leading them into the wilderness! Was it Moses and Aaron who had led them there anyway? No, it was God, the One who just turned the Nile to blood, who turned day to night, who parted the Sea, who provided an Exodus -- a way out!
Moses goes to God. I imagine he too complained, "These people you gave me. They're driving me crazy! We're camping and they want fine dining! You rescued them, and they prefer the ruts they were living in! You got me into this. What do I do now?"
God's solution: "Tell them I have heard their complaining. I will send them quails every night and manna every morning." Literally, food from heaven. But the human memory is pathetically short. Almost immediately they complained again, this time about the food God showered from heaven: "This manna -- it's so boring, day after day after day. And there's only so much you can do with it." They also tried to take things into their own hands again. They'd been told to take only what they needed for each day, but they hoarded it, trying to come up, once again, with their own solution: "Maybe if we save up a bunch of it, we can do more with it." The hoarded manna turned rotten and bug infested. God's little reminder to us every time we try to take things into our own hands or come up with our own solutions. God creates a situation where we have to come back to God each day for what we need to get through that day.
In our confirmation class we have been studying the story of the people of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story. We have studied Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and are now finishing up Judges. There is a pattern in the book of Judges: the people turn from God, try to come up with their own solutions, try to rely on their own power and wisdom, and everything in their lives falls apart. The people repent, (which literally means, "turn"), turn away from their foolish ways and ridiculous solutions, turn back to God, cry out to God for help, and God gives them God's solution. God raises up a leader to help the people. This God-appointed leader, or judge, leads the people in the ways of God. Things go well for a period of years. The judge dies. The people turn away from God, try to come up with their own solutions, try to rely on their own power and wisdom, everything falls apart, people cry out to God, God gives them God's solution. God raises up a judge to be their leader, and so on and so forth. The pattern repeats itself.
Finally, the story of the people of God, the people of Israel, our salvation story, your story and my story, comes to a climax in today's lesson from 1 Samuel. "We're sick of these judges, who only rule for a little while. We want to be like everybody else. Why can't we be like our neighboring nations? They have a king! We want a king!" Moan, groan, whine, and complain. Wah, wah, wah! Developmental psychologists say that the people of God, psychologically, are adolescents. "They have pierced ears; why can't we have pierced ears? They have pierced noses; why can't we have pierced noses? They have tattoos; why can't we have tattoos? They wear their pants ten sizes too big with their boxers sticking out, why can't we? Their curfew is midnight, and ours is only 10 p.m." Moan, groan, whine, and complain. The people of God, like adolescents facing peer pressure. Wah, wah, wah! "Look at all our neighboring nations! They have a king. We want a king! We want to be like them!"
One girl in confirmation class asked: "Why does God keep helping them? Doesn't God get sick of it?"
Yes, God does. And, I think God gets angry too. The more you enter the story of the people of God, the more you understand the "wrath of God." The "wrath of God," a concept prevalent in the Hebrew Bible, always troubled me. Just a few years ago, when it fell upon me to preach on a passage that was all about the wrath of God, I researched it. In one of those eye-opening, soul-opening moments, I discovered, as some biblical scholars put it, that the word "wrath" could actually be translated, "the burning love of God." God was compared to a mother lion who roars with protective, burning love when her cubs are threatened or endangered in any way -- even by their own stupidity or foolishness. God is like us parents who burn with angry love when our children hurt each other, when they turn away from us, their fathers and mothers who love them, and foolishly wander down a wrong path, a path we know to be dangerous. In the Hebrew Bible God's "wrath" is displayed whenever God's children hurt each other, fail to treat each other as children of God, turn away from God, or turn from the Way of becoming the people God created and desires them to be.
The solution of the people of God, again and again, our solution, is to take things into our own hands, to look for answers in all the wrong places, to look for power and wisdom in mere human beings. Our solution is to think another human being, a flawed and mortal human king, is the solution to all our life's problems, rather than letting God reign in our lives.
In what ways are you in your life like the people of Israel? How often have you tried taking the situation into your own hands rather than trusting in God? How often have you complained, forgetting the One who acted powerfully in the past to bring you out of whatever bondage you were living in to a land flowing with milk and honey, the One who rescued you and showed you a way out, the One who will bring you to a new and promised place if you just trust? If you just realize how good you've got it compared to where you used to be.
Or how about us as a church? Yes, God has led us out toward a new place, and we're not there yet, so it sometimes does feel a bit like the wilderness. And all of us, myself included, sometimes look back at the small cozy little church family we used to be, and complain that things don't always taste as good here. We need to trust that the One who is leading us forth, is the same One who led us mightily in the past. We need to remember that if we pray for and sincerely seek God's solution and not our own human solutions, we could reach the Promised Land in closer to forty days than forty years. Although our house does sometimes feel a bit crowded, we could realize just how good we've got it.
Our solution could be to choose bickering, fighting, and division within the Christian community rather than God's solution of the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. God's solution of unity, oneness, many different gifts all meant for the growth of the body of Christ, building itself up in love.
The very first church I served as pastor was blessed with healthy leaders. One of the first activities we did together as a Church Council was an outdoor Group Obstacle Course. Twenty-six years old at the time, I was the youngest member of the group. The eldest was a man in his mid-eighties. We were about half male and half female. Some of us were very thin, even frail. Some of us were very large. There were a couple athletic types, but the vast majority were not. The goal was to get the entire group through or over several obstacles, from point A to point B. For example, each and every member of our motley crew had to cross a "poison" river, Tarzan style on a rope; as a group we had to lift each other's various size bodies through openings in a giant spider web; we had to hoist each other over a sheer ten foot wall. The miraculous thing is, we did it!
I must say I've been having a lot of fun fantasizing about our current Church Council doing this same activity together.
The goal is not for one or two -- the young or athletic -- to make it. Not that one or two could make it on their own anyway, for the course is designed in such a way that even the wisest, strongest, most athletic person needs to rely on others to make it through. Besides, the goal is to get everyone from point A to point B. If one person is left behind, you've failed your mission.
So it is with the people of God, the community of faith, the body of Christ. Sometimes in this life you or I try to make it on our own, only to realize that there are some obstacles that we cannot overcome unless we do it together.
Sometimes in the church, the body of Christ, we take things into our own hands, come up with our own, human solutions. The result is fighting, divisions, or getting so aggravated with each other that we think of leaving someone behind or of dropping out of the course. In either case, the whole, the mission, would fail.
So somehow we have to figure out how to put up with each other, how to carry the one who can be really heavy, how to help others overcome their fears, how to deal with the headstrong or the soloists -- the kingly types who think we should look to them for a solution. Together we need to pray and seek God's solution, let the Way of God reign.
Each week we are given a powerful reminder of the way we try to handle a situation. Each week we begin our worship with the words, "We confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves." Each week we begin our worship confessing our foolish and faulty solutions, all of which fall flat on their faces. But each week we then admit our need for God, and are reminded of, and granted, God's solution: forgiveness, freedom, the promised land, the unity of the spirit, the bond of peace, one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all. Each week we are reminded of something the Twelve Step programs point out for us, "That there is a God, and we're not it, thank God!" Amen.
