What Does God Want From Us?
Sermon
Between Gloom and Glory
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
What does God want from us? The answer is simple, but it is not easy to put into practice. What God wants is you. What God wants is me. God wants our whole selves. The prophet Micah makes it fairly clear that ultimately God does not care too much about religion and the things that come with it. Religion isn't a bad enterprise. It is okay as a way of reminding us about what God wants, but in the long run being good at religion is not what God desires. What God requires is us. It is simple to understand but not necessarily the thing we would offer to God first.
I must confess that as far as I am concerned it is easier to give God something else. I know that if I could spend a couple of hours up in the attic of our house looking for my old Sunday school pins for perfect attendance I would be able to find them. I am certain that I could find my Jet Cadets for Jesus awards and medals up there, too. I really don't even have to look that hard, because in my office I have a few files filled with certificates and recognition letters showing my attendance at conferences and seminars. I would like to show these items to God and say, "See, I care about important things. I am a person of faith." I could easily gather all of the items and put together a good file displaying all of my religious endeavors.
The words of Micah make it clear though that those are not the things that God wants. God just wants Glen. God wants Glen to walk in the way of justice, love, and humility. Nothing more than that, but nothing less either.
The word "walk" in Micah's text is used to describe our complete orientation to life. It implies that in all that we do and say our "walk" will define how we are to live each moment of every day. This is similar to Jesus' request to "follow." Jesus is not as concerned with religious beliefs as he is with where your feet are taking you. To follow Christ has little or nothing to do with signing your name at the end of a statement of belief and everything to do with how you live your life. Where our feet take us every day says much more about our true beliefs than any well-thought-out statement of faith ever could.
What God wants is us. No matter what warts and problems we bring, God wants us. There is a story about a woman who discovers that her husband is having an affair. She has found the usual sorts of evidence -- matchbooks with phone numbers written on the inside, receipts from dinners she knew nothing about, rumpled clothes tossed in a closet that she hadn't seen being worn. Those sorts of things. She confronts him with the evidence. He listens quietly and admits that it is true. Then he says, "Wait here. I have a surprise for you." He returns a couple of hours later and hands her the keys to a brand new Mercedes. "It's sitting in the driveway and it's yours," he says with a smile. She divorces him. Years later she said, "You know, I could have forgiven him the affair, but I could never forgive him that car." Ultimately, what she wanted was him. Not a new car, not nicer house, but a relationship walking together with him wherever life may lead.
God, too, wants us, as we are, even if there is a stack of evidence that shows we have been less than faithful. Even if our lives have been anything but perfect, God wants us. The speaker in our biblical text asks in verses 6 and 7, "With what shall I come before the Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?" The questions are kind of silly. The person asking already knows what the Lord requires. The Lord wants the person, not the stuff. The Lord wants us.
As imperfect and sinful as we may be, God still wants us. God does not want a new set of proper and orderly beliefs or a bigger tithe (the finance department may want to quibble with that point!) rather, God wants you. The person asking the questions in the scripture assumes that God wants some thing. God wants no thing at all. What God wants is me. What God wants is you.
The problem, as we have noted, is that it is a lot easier to come up with a list of things to give to God than it is to give ourselves. The problem is further complicated by the fact that we often try to make these lists apply to other people too.
When I was a youth minister in San Diego I had some rough kids involved in the youth program. We had a Valentine Dance soon after I began my ministry there, in which we invited neighborhood kids to come. Much to our surprise, they did. Some of them were scary looking, too. The amazing thing was that some of these kids came back a week later and attended our youth meeting. Soon, many of them were attending all of the time. After a couple of months three boys from this rough crowd showed up at the early Sunday morning service. With their baseball caps turned backwards and their baggy pants barely hanging on to their backsides, these three guys walked right down the center aisle and sat next to me at the front of the sanctuary. A week later they came back. After the service I went to the senior minister and asked him what to do about these three young men. "They're hoods, Dick. I don't know what to do." "Well," he smiled, "are they really? Or are they just trying to look tough? From what you've said before, I would guess that they're basically good kids." I shrugged and said, "I know, you are probably right, but it bothers me that they don't show any respect for the church by the way they dress." He said, "It bothers me, too, but I really think they are looking for God. I believe they are trying to find a way out of their lifestyles. You and I need to look at the kids, not the hats and the clothes."
He is right. God does not look at the clothes or the car in the driveway or the address on the door or the cash available in the checking account. God looks at the person and asks him or her to give nothing more than himself or herself. We avoid this by making up rules for "proper" dress or appropriate behavior. We become exclusive in the name of Jesus in order to cover our own inability to give ourselves fully to God. Like the church in the Old West which banned members who drank, smoked, played cards, or fraternized with Methodists, we become self-congratulatory for not acting or behaving like those people. By doing this we successfully avoid dealing with anything of substance concerning ourselves and our walk with God.
In the First Letter of John, the author writes, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." Do you see the direct and clear message here? God wants us to understand that ultimately it does not matter how we arrange the pews or which version of the Bible we read or which theology we learned in seminary or Sunday school. As shocking as it may be for some of you, it does not even matter if we fraternize with Methodists! What matters is the manner of our lives, the reality of our faith, and the humbleness of our walk with God.
If we commit ourselves to love God and one another, to do justice, and to love kindness, we will discover what it means to know God. The rest is just details.
We need to be careful here for a moment. Living and walking this way does not mean that we have earned our way into the kingdom of God. Micah does not imply that we get in by acting a proper way. The invitation from God is given in spite of the fact that we haven't earned it, not the other way around. Nor will walking on this path help us avoid the dark places and valleys of life. There are no guarantees given. Loving God, doing justice, practicing mercy may in fact lead us into the valley of the shadow as often as it leads us away from it. But God is there in that place also. The old psalmist knew this. Do you remember his words? "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me...." We are promised, that on this walk, there is nowhere we can go where the very God of the universe will not be found also.
Even in the darkest of places, the pit of hell, the loneliness of death, God promises to be there also. The apostle Paul knew about this walk, too. He wrote to the church in Rome, "... in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Gods in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The walk has begun. God is with us. Let us join hands together and follow our Lord on the path to justice, mercy, and kindness, secure in the knowledge that we do not walk alone.
I must confess that as far as I am concerned it is easier to give God something else. I know that if I could spend a couple of hours up in the attic of our house looking for my old Sunday school pins for perfect attendance I would be able to find them. I am certain that I could find my Jet Cadets for Jesus awards and medals up there, too. I really don't even have to look that hard, because in my office I have a few files filled with certificates and recognition letters showing my attendance at conferences and seminars. I would like to show these items to God and say, "See, I care about important things. I am a person of faith." I could easily gather all of the items and put together a good file displaying all of my religious endeavors.
The words of Micah make it clear though that those are not the things that God wants. God just wants Glen. God wants Glen to walk in the way of justice, love, and humility. Nothing more than that, but nothing less either.
The word "walk" in Micah's text is used to describe our complete orientation to life. It implies that in all that we do and say our "walk" will define how we are to live each moment of every day. This is similar to Jesus' request to "follow." Jesus is not as concerned with religious beliefs as he is with where your feet are taking you. To follow Christ has little or nothing to do with signing your name at the end of a statement of belief and everything to do with how you live your life. Where our feet take us every day says much more about our true beliefs than any well-thought-out statement of faith ever could.
What God wants is us. No matter what warts and problems we bring, God wants us. There is a story about a woman who discovers that her husband is having an affair. She has found the usual sorts of evidence -- matchbooks with phone numbers written on the inside, receipts from dinners she knew nothing about, rumpled clothes tossed in a closet that she hadn't seen being worn. Those sorts of things. She confronts him with the evidence. He listens quietly and admits that it is true. Then he says, "Wait here. I have a surprise for you." He returns a couple of hours later and hands her the keys to a brand new Mercedes. "It's sitting in the driveway and it's yours," he says with a smile. She divorces him. Years later she said, "You know, I could have forgiven him the affair, but I could never forgive him that car." Ultimately, what she wanted was him. Not a new car, not nicer house, but a relationship walking together with him wherever life may lead.
God, too, wants us, as we are, even if there is a stack of evidence that shows we have been less than faithful. Even if our lives have been anything but perfect, God wants us. The speaker in our biblical text asks in verses 6 and 7, "With what shall I come before the Lord? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?" The questions are kind of silly. The person asking already knows what the Lord requires. The Lord wants the person, not the stuff. The Lord wants us.
As imperfect and sinful as we may be, God still wants us. God does not want a new set of proper and orderly beliefs or a bigger tithe (the finance department may want to quibble with that point!) rather, God wants you. The person asking the questions in the scripture assumes that God wants some thing. God wants no thing at all. What God wants is me. What God wants is you.
The problem, as we have noted, is that it is a lot easier to come up with a list of things to give to God than it is to give ourselves. The problem is further complicated by the fact that we often try to make these lists apply to other people too.
When I was a youth minister in San Diego I had some rough kids involved in the youth program. We had a Valentine Dance soon after I began my ministry there, in which we invited neighborhood kids to come. Much to our surprise, they did. Some of them were scary looking, too. The amazing thing was that some of these kids came back a week later and attended our youth meeting. Soon, many of them were attending all of the time. After a couple of months three boys from this rough crowd showed up at the early Sunday morning service. With their baseball caps turned backwards and their baggy pants barely hanging on to their backsides, these three guys walked right down the center aisle and sat next to me at the front of the sanctuary. A week later they came back. After the service I went to the senior minister and asked him what to do about these three young men. "They're hoods, Dick. I don't know what to do." "Well," he smiled, "are they really? Or are they just trying to look tough? From what you've said before, I would guess that they're basically good kids." I shrugged and said, "I know, you are probably right, but it bothers me that they don't show any respect for the church by the way they dress." He said, "It bothers me, too, but I really think they are looking for God. I believe they are trying to find a way out of their lifestyles. You and I need to look at the kids, not the hats and the clothes."
He is right. God does not look at the clothes or the car in the driveway or the address on the door or the cash available in the checking account. God looks at the person and asks him or her to give nothing more than himself or herself. We avoid this by making up rules for "proper" dress or appropriate behavior. We become exclusive in the name of Jesus in order to cover our own inability to give ourselves fully to God. Like the church in the Old West which banned members who drank, smoked, played cards, or fraternized with Methodists, we become self-congratulatory for not acting or behaving like those people. By doing this we successfully avoid dealing with anything of substance concerning ourselves and our walk with God.
In the First Letter of John, the author writes, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." Do you see the direct and clear message here? God wants us to understand that ultimately it does not matter how we arrange the pews or which version of the Bible we read or which theology we learned in seminary or Sunday school. As shocking as it may be for some of you, it does not even matter if we fraternize with Methodists! What matters is the manner of our lives, the reality of our faith, and the humbleness of our walk with God.
If we commit ourselves to love God and one another, to do justice, and to love kindness, we will discover what it means to know God. The rest is just details.
We need to be careful here for a moment. Living and walking this way does not mean that we have earned our way into the kingdom of God. Micah does not imply that we get in by acting a proper way. The invitation from God is given in spite of the fact that we haven't earned it, not the other way around. Nor will walking on this path help us avoid the dark places and valleys of life. There are no guarantees given. Loving God, doing justice, practicing mercy may in fact lead us into the valley of the shadow as often as it leads us away from it. But God is there in that place also. The old psalmist knew this. Do you remember his words? "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me...." We are promised, that on this walk, there is nowhere we can go where the very God of the universe will not be found also.
Even in the darkest of places, the pit of hell, the loneliness of death, God promises to be there also. The apostle Paul knew about this walk, too. He wrote to the church in Rome, "... in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Gods in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The walk has begun. God is with us. Let us join hands together and follow our Lord on the path to justice, mercy, and kindness, secure in the knowledge that we do not walk alone.
