This morning I am continuing a short series of sermons on the Word of God. In the Bible the Word of God appears in three forms: 1) The Word of God Spoken, 2) The Word of God Written, and 3) The Word of God Incarnate or Made Flesh in Jesus Christ.

Last week, we talked about the Word of God, spoken, especially as God spoke through the Prophets.

In Genesis 15 we read how “the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.” God frequently used visions and dreams, also called,”visions of the night,” to communicate with God’s prophets. At other times, God’s presence was more immediate. In Exodus 33 we read how God spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friends. Don’t take this phrase too literally. A little later in the same chapter we are told that God had to hide Moses in the cleft of the rock so that he could see his glory pass by. Sometimes the word of God simply came to the prophet, and there was no explanation of how it came. Thus, in Luke 3 we read how the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness, and the people went out to him to receive a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And, in Luke 5 we read how, when Jesus was by Lake Gennesaret, “the people pressed him to hear the Word of God.” Finally, I would mention that, in Philippians 1, St. Paul is grateful that his present imprisonment has served to inspire other preachers “to speak the word of God boldly, without fear.”

It is obvious from all these texts that the Word of God is often the Word of God spoken before it is the Word of God written. It is a contemporary word spoken in a particular time and a particular place to a particular person or a particular people. It is then passed on mouth to mouth until it is written down.

Not everyone recognizes the word of God, spoken or written. Even in the time of Jesus the Jews were divided over the contents of Scripture. On the one hand, the Sadducees accepted as authoritative only the five books of The Law associated with Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. On the other hand, the Pharisees accepted as authoritative not only the Law, but also that section of the Scripture known as “The Prophets,“ which included major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and minor prophets like Amos, Joel and Obadiah.

Jesus himself sided with the Pharisees, for he spoke of both the Law and the Prophets as authoritative. In Matthew 7 Jesus said, “So whatever you wish that (others) would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” Jesus accepted other books of the Hebrew Bible as authoritative, too. In Luke 24, just before his ascension into heaven, the Risen Christ instructs his disciples saying, “everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Jesus quotes from the Psalms more than any other book. By contrast Jesus did not quote from: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st Kings, 1st Chronicles, Job, and more than a dozen other books.

Don’t let this trouble you. By the time of Jesus, all the book of our Old Testament were a part of the Scripture recognized by the Pharisees and most other Jews. Indeed, more than l00 years before the birth of Jesus (132 BC) the Hebrew Scripture had been translated into Greek, which was the common tongue of the ancient world. The Greek version of Hebrew Scripture, the Septuagint, was the Bible most often used Jews living outside of their own country, and the Septuagint became the Bible of the the early Church. St. Paul, for example, quotes the text of the Septuagint on a number of occasions. The books of the Septuagint were almost certainly the Scripture that the author of 2nd Timothy 3:16-17 had in mind when he wrote:

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the (people) of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

But let us return to our original point. On many occasions, the Word of God was first spoken by God’s prophet, and then, after a lapse in time, sometimes a generation or more, it was written down, and once written down it was eventually recognized as Scripture.

Why the delay? There are a number of reasons, and I would mention two.

First, when you are caught up in some marvelous act of God, you don’t always take the time to write about what you are experiencing until after the initial mystery begins to wear off.

That is o.k. because in the time of Moses, and long after, people were still an oral culture, and they relied on their memories much more than we do today.

I think that Martin Buber was exactly right when he said that God gave us the Ten Commandments and ten fingers, so that we could use our fingers to remember the commandments. The prophets used other memory aids, too. Thus in Deuteronomy 11:18 Moses told the people to lay up the words given by God in their heart, and in their soul, and to bind them as a sign upon their hand, and to wear them as frontlets between their eyes, meaning. In other words, the people were told to memorize the Word of God, and make uses of memory aids to help them do it. Likewise, the special holy days set down in the Law helped the people to remember God’s graciously dealings with them. Thus the people of Israel ate the Passover supper standing, with their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hands, and they ate it quickly. And when they did, they remembered how the Angel of Death saw the blood of the lamb they had put on their door post and passed over their first born at the very time the first born of the Egyptians sickened and died. In the New Testament, on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed it, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my body which is given for you.This do, in remembrance of me.” And after supper, the cup, in the same way, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sin. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” The parallels are obvious. The passover reminds Jews how God sent Mose to deliver them from slavery; the Holy Communion reminds Christians how God sent Jesus to deliver the world from slavery to sin and death.

Second, in the case of Jesus and the gospels, the Word of God was not at first written down because the people were looking forward not backward.

For instance, it is obvious from Paul’s letters that the apostle was not primarily concerned with what Jesus was like in the days of his flesh; he was much more concerned with the Risen Christ who would soon come on the wings of the morning to reveal himself in all his power and glory. Thus, in 1st Thessalonians 4, St. Paul wrote that the same Christ who has ascended into heaven was coming back, soon, and when he came back the dead would be raised, and those who were still alive would be marvelously changed, and together, we would be caught up to Christ, to live forever with him.

What was true of Paul was true of all that first generation of Christians. They looked forward not backward. They lived from the future that was coming to them in Jesus Christ.

Of course, this did not stop people from wondering about what Jesus was like, and the original witnesses, like Peter, and the other apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers were eager to tell them what Jesus had said and done. They told stories about what Jesus said. Thus we know that, like Moses before him, Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets with two commandments: 1) Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, (Deut. 6:4) and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18) And we know that, unlike Moses, Jesus declared all foods clean, even the bacon and shrimp we ate from the food trucks at the Farmer’s Market. “For,” as he said, “It is what comes out of the mouth, not what goes into the mouth, that makes a person unclean.” (Matthew 15:11) They also told stories about what Jesus did. They told stories about his birth, his boyhood, and his baptism in the River Jordan by his cousin, John. They told about Jesus casting out evil spirits and healing the sick. They told about how Jesus calmed the wind and stilled the storm. They told how Jesus had raised the dead, and how Jesus had predicted his own death and resurrection. Those stories were told and retold by everyone.

Then something happened. The first generation of witnesses started to die out, and Jesus had still not come back. As the disciples passed from this life one by one, the people started asking for the stories about Jesus to be written down. Writing in the middle of the 2nd Christian century, a key figure in the early church named Papias told how a follower of Peter named John Mark wrote down what the Apostle Peter used to teach about Jesus. Papias tells us two very important things. First, he says that Mark did not write in chronological order, meaning that those people who worry about how the order of things differ in the different gospels worry needlessly. And, second, he tells us that John Mark was careful to write down only what Peter actually said about Jesus, adding nothing to it, and leaving nothing out. Papias wanted us to trust Mark’s gospel to be a faithful record of the oral tradition, for he himself he most certainly did.

Think about the gospels that we take for granted. Today, almost every scholar on the planet believes that Mark was the first gospel to be written down. For it is obvious from a careful reading of the gospels that both Matthew and Luke follow Mark, not just thought for thought; but, often, word for word, and when one departs from Mark, the other almost always continues to follow it. Matthew and Luke contain other material in common, too. Scholars have pulled from Matthew and Luke a long list of 114 common sayings. They think these saying may have come from a written source, and they have called it, “Q.” Q stands for the German word, Quelle, which in English means, “source.” The great Scottish New Testament scholar, William Barclay, said he thought that the disciple Matthew may have been responsible for the original version of the source document, and that is why the early church seemed to regarded the gospel of Matthew as older than the gospel of Mark. Of course, Matthew and Luke did not just copy what others had written. They also told stories that were unique to each alone. Thus Matthew preserves for us things like the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, and the long sermon we call, “The Sermon on the Mount.” Likewise, Luke preserves things like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels, for they seem to see with “a single eye.” John, the fourth gospel is different. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus uses short pithy sayings. In John’s gospel, Jesus is given to long monologues that sound a lot like sermons. One church father explains the difference, saying that what Matthew, Mark and Luke saw as “points of light,” John saw as “blazing suns.” This may be. Tradition says that John lived to a ripe old age, and was was the last of the disciples to die, probably around 96 .A.D. John certainly had longer to reflect on the meaning of what Jesus said and did, and on who Jesus was, than did Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

Anyway, as the first generation of witnesses started to die out, the gospels were written down. They were written down in one community, then circulated among the churches, one by one. In those days, copies of scrolls and books were still exceedingly rare and precious. Soon the communities that received a copy of one of the gospels treated it with the same reverence and care they gave the scrolls of Isaiah or Jeremiah. The churches did the same thing with letters from Paul, and some of the other apostles. Thus, in 2nd Peter we read that Paul’s letters are already being treated as scripture, “though there are some things in them that are hard to understand.” (2nd Peter 3:16)

So, over time, the Word of God spoken, became the Word of God written. And this writing was done by hand, line by line, precept by precept. Given that the work of copying was tedious, it is not surprising that these individual copies of the books of the New Testament differ from one another. The truth is that we possess more than 1,000 manuscripts of books and fragments of books in the New Testament, and there are more variations in these manuscripts than there are words in the text of the New Testament as a whole. Don’t let this worry you. One of my teachers, Bruce Metzger, was the greatest text critic of the 20th Century. The journalist Lee Strobell asked Dr. Metzger what effect the all those thousands of variations had on our understanding of faith. Metzger said all the variations did not affect in the slightest even a single important Christian doctrine. That is pretty amazing, and it gives us an idea how God works, for it serves notice that God is much more concerned with powerful, life creating, world changing ideas than with words on a page. People who get hung up on the words muddle through life always defending this and that. People who open themselves to the ideas contained in the words Master through life, for they learn through practice the truth contained in them. Remember, we do not use ideas; ideas use us. And that, I think, sets the table for the third sermon in this series,”The Word of God Made Flesh.”

We will talk about that next time. In the meantime, let me make a suggestion. Don’t just boast to your friends how much you revere the Bible. Take your Bible off the shelf, dust it off, and spend a little time with it. One hymnist calls the Bible “the golden casket in which gems of truth are stored.” Anybody can spot a ruby or a diamond in a pile, but Jesus said you have to search for the pearl of great price. And, of course, Jesus Christ himself is the most precious jewel of all. In Acts 4:11 the apostle says that he was the stone the builders rejected that has become the cornerstone of God’s whole plan of salvation. When we go to our Bibles, like the very first Christians, we want to learn more of him. He is there, in the words and between the pages, ready to meet us. In his book, The Word Made Flesh, the United Methodist missionary and evangelists E. Stanley Jones includes a picture of the entire text of the New Testament written on a single page. Each word is shaded light and dark so that, as you look at the words, a picture of the Living Word, Jesus Christ forms before your eyes. I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that the infallible task that God has appointed for the scripture is to reveal Jesus Christ to people who hunger and thirst after Him. If the Bible does that for you, you will know the Bible’s truth and value in and of yourself, and you will not worry about defending it to yourself or to anyone else.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

This morning I am beginning a short series of sermons on the Word of God. In the Bible the Word of God appears in three forms: 1) The Word of God Spoken, 2) The Word of God Written, and 3) The Word of God Incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Today, I am going to talk to you about the Word of God, spoken.

In Exodus 33:11 we read that God spoke to his servant Moses “face to face,” as a man speaks to his friend. God gave Mose the Ten Commandments, written on tablets of stone, and more than 900 laws which he ordered Moses to write down. The great Jewish scholar Martin Buber said it was no accident that God gave us Ten Commandments and ten fingers, perhaps intending that we should use our fingers to help us commit the commandments to the tablet of the heart.

Moses was the greatest of the prophets, but God spoke through other prophets, too. God spoke through prophets like Miriam, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha. Elijah was an important prophet, not just because he foretold the future, but because he spoke the Word of the God to people of God in his day. When the people of Israel were dividing their time between God and Baal, Elijah challenged them saying:

How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.

Elijah knew that it is impossible to keep one foot in God’s camp and one foot in the camp of another, hopping back and forth. That was unsettled and unsettling, and it still is! People who serve God on and off make life miserable for themselves and for everyone around them.

When any prophet speaks, God makes God’s Self heard. Thus God spoke to the prophet Isaiah saying, “I have put my words in your mouth.” (Isaiah 51) And God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah saying, “If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth.” (Jeremiah 15)

This seems a good time to say that there have always been true prophets and false prophets. The prophet Micah warned against false prophets who “divine for money,” and cry, “Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” (Micah 3) And the prophet Zechariah warned against “…dreamers (who) tell false dreams, and give empty consolation.” (Zechariah 10) According to the Hebrew Bible, it is easy to tell a false prophet from a true prophet: The word of the true prophet always comes to pass, whereas the word of the false prophet often fails.

Of course, there are times when God’s people have had to wait many generations to see the fulfillment of a particular prophecy. For instance, seven centuries before the Birth of Jesus the Messiah, the prophet Isaiah foresaw the promise of his coming and announced:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulders, and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Likewise, six centuries before the crucifixion of Jesus, a disciple of Isaiah spoke of God’s Suffering Servant, saying:

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53: 3-5)

Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of both these prophecies. In Mark 8, Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus then began to teach his disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

In calling himself the Son of Man, Jesus claims to be the fulfillment of a third prophecy. In the 7th chapter of the book of Daniel the prophet Daniel had a vision of one like a Son of Man, who received the Kingdom from the Ancient of Days, God. When Jesus called himself the Son of Man, he was laying claim to the kingdom, and the power, and the glory of God. Jesus embraced the roll of a suffering Messiah, but he knew he was more than that. Thus, in Mark 14, when Jesus was put on trial for his life, the high priest asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus answered, “I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” The disciples saw the glory of the risen Christ; but the world still waits to see Jesus the King revealed in all his glory, whether that revelation take place at the end of history as we know it, or beyond it.

When we think of prophets, we think primarily of the Old Testament prophets; but there were many prophets in the New Testament, too.

John the Baptist is the best known of the New Testament prophets; but, in reality, John was the last of the great Old Testament prophets who announced the coming of the Messiah. John was separated from Jesus not by six centuries but by six feet when he raised a bony finger and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

There are many other prophets in the New Testament; and, it might surprise you to know that, in one sense, you and I are are among them. According to the 2nd chapter of Acts, visitors from many lands were in Jerusalem on the morning of that first Pentecost. Suddenly, from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind. And tongues of fire appeared among the disciples, and rested on each of them. And they were all filled filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. The disciples caused such a commotion, and behaved so oddly, that people said, “These men are drunk!” But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said:

These men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only 9 o’clock in the morning; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams…’

Peter goes on to say that all who believe God’s Word about Jesus and submit to baptism, will be saved from sin and death, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit themselves. The meaning of Acts 2 is clear: All God’s people possess the Holy Spirit, and always will; so all of God’s people are prophets!

As individuals, we may not feel very prophetic, yet, together, we make up a prophetic community. The primary value in belonging to a prophetic community is that we can receive God’s direction. In John 16, Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth. And in Matthew 18 Jesus told his disciples that whatever they bound on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever they loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven. A good example of binding and loosing in found in Acts 15. Therein the disciples hold the first Church Council at Antioch to decide whether or not the gentiles who are coming to Jesus must become Jews before they can become Christians. The disciples discussed this throughly. Then they either reached a consensus, or they took a vote, and publish their decision to all the gentile churches everywhere saying:

28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols…and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.

Moses gave Israel the Ten Commandments and hundreds of “commandments in ordinances,”the primary purpose of which was to separate Israel from the nations, so that the nations might know the nation belonged to God. In one fell swoop, the first church council struck down all those commandments in ordinances, so that all nations would know they can belong to God. No wonder Paul could say in Galatians 3:24 that “the law was our custodian (or “schoolmaster” KJV) until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith.” Today there are about 9 million Jews on the earth—many of them still struggling with the commandments in ordinances, and there are about 2 billion Christians who never give them a thought. If the first church council had not acted so decisively, we might still be equally burdened, and our numbers might still be equally small.

You and I belong to a prophetic community. Together we can discern God’s will for our lives as individuals and as a community of faith. Of course, there are some members of the prophetic community who are more prophetic than others. In 1st Corinthians 12 St. Paul lists the gift of prophecy among the gifts of the Spirit that are distributed to various members of the church for the common good. In Ephesians 4 the apostle writes that when Christ ascended on high he gave us gifts, and his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor-teachers to equip the rest of us for ministry.

I think I have known a number of prophets. I will give you one example that acted like a Jeremiah, David, or Isaiah. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the Word of God in his day. Dr. King was trying to peacefully lead the United States into a new era of brotherhood and cooperation when he said things like: “”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And “We must live together as brothers (and sisters) or perish together as fools.” In a letter to his fellow clergymen, King said that he had come to believe that the real stumbling block in the Negro’s stride toward freedom was not organizations like the Klu Klux Klan, but white moderates who were more concerned with order than with justice. He said that when the victory was won, the people would not remember the words of their enemies so much as the silence of their friends. Ouch!

In his final speech Dr. King proved that could also predict the future with uncanny accuracy. The speech makes a clear reference to the last day of Moses. Dr. King said:

“I have been to the mountain top…(God) allowed me to go up the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And so I’m happy tonight for…‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’”

After that speech King returned to his motel room, was hit by an assassin’s bullet, and died in a pool of blood. You can tell a true prophet, because the word he speaks comes true.

The Spoken Word of God is a creative Word of Power. That is what the author of Genesis 1 is getting at when he said that God spoke and the World was created, Word by Word. And that is what St. Paul was getting at in 1st Corinthians 1:21 when he said, “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The King James translation of this verse makes clear that, in the act of preaching, a transfer of creative power takes place between the God who speaks and the believer who hears. The preacher like the prophet is just the channel through whom God speaks God’s powerful and creative Word.

God’s spoken word is always a creative word, and that word is infallible. It cannot fail. This is precisely what God was trying to tell Isaiah in chapter 55:10-11when he said:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

This morning I want to talk to you about the world that we want and the world that we have. The world we want is smooth and frictionless. It is a well marked four-lane highway that runs from the cradle to the grave. There are no detours, and traffic is never delayed. The world that we have is rough and filled with resistance. When we get off the four-lane, as we sometimes must, we find ourselves on a barely improved dirt road. It we see any road signs, they read, “Few have passed this way before.”

The world we want is filled with accolades like, “Atta boy!,” and “You, Go Girl!” The world that we have is filled with challenges like, “We have never done it that way before!,” and “Mr. Big Stuff who do you think you are?” I am not making this stuff up. On two occasions in the last two weeks I have received the gift of “the finger” (an obscene gesture) by two different young men in a hurry.

It was the collection of texts the lectionary sets before us this morning that started me thinking about “the opposition.”

The Psalmist was discouraged because he faced general opposition from all the people of his city. In Psalm 69:12 the Psalmist wrote, “I am the subject of gossip for (the important people) who sit in the gate (of the city), and the drunkards (who sleep in the streets) make songs about me.” The psalmist had no friends in high places, and unlike Garth Brooks he had no friends in low places, either.

Both the Psalmist and the prophet Jeremiah were discouraged because they faced personal opposition from the people they cared about. In Jeremiah 20:10 the prophet wrote, “All my close friends are watching for me to stumble…so they can take revenge on (me).” And in Psalm 69:8 the Psalmist wrote, “I have become a stranger to my kindred, an alien to my mother’s children.” It is pretty bad when your close friends plot against you and seek revenge. It is even worse when your brothers and sisters treat you like a stranger.

There is an opposition that is more personal and terrible still. It was Walt Kelly’s possum, Pogo, who said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” In Romans 7:15 St. Paul said exactly the same thing. He said, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, (instead) I do the very thing I hate.”

Nobody understood the opposition arrayed against us any better than Jesus. He knew that anyone who tried to do right and follow him would suffer. In Matthew 10:24-25 Jesus spoke about the general opposition saying:

“A disciple is not above his teacher, and a slave is not above his master. If (the opposition) (has) called the master of the house (the Devil!) how much more will they malign those who serve in his household!”

Then, in Matthew 10:34-39, Jesus spoke about the personal opposition saying:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

Finally in Matthew 10:38-39 Jesus takes up the opposition we we throw up against him, and since he is for us, against ourselves saying:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

In the the context of Matthew 10, those who find their life only to loose it are those who please everyone around them but fail to please Jesus; and those who loose their life only to find it are those put loyalty to Jesus ahead of all other loyalty, even family loyalties.

This is pretty heady stuff? Dare we go on? I think we must, for there are a few things we need to know.

1. We need to know that the opposition always gains power through the weight of numbers. E. Stanley Jones, the Methodist missionary and evangelist called the opposition the herd. It is the natural tendency of cattle and goats to follow the herd. Sheep follow the flock. Geese make up a gaggle. People are no different. We all have “the herd urge.” We all have love and belongingness needs. We all want to be a part of the crowd we care about. And we all want to avoid stirring the pot by calling attention to ourselves. I am one. You are one. The opposition may be one, or two, or two hundred, or twenty million.

2. We need to know that the opposition is tough to recognize, because it usually looks a lot like us. Let me give you an example that is either sublime or ridiculous, you decide. The Kent State massacre occurred in the spring of 1970, when I was a student at the University of North Carolina. At that time, my herd consisted of the students in Chapel Hill who grew our hair long, and stopped going to class to protest the shootings. It would not always be so. My draft number was 27. A little over a year later I was a newly commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Marines, and my herd looked a lot different. At that time, we wore our hair high and tight, and followed orders without protest or question. Now let me be honest. I did not find it particularly hard to grown my hair long and skip class; nor did I find it particularly hard to wear a buzz-cut and follow orders. For better or for worse, I was a part of both herds.

3. We need to know that it is never easy to break off from the herd and follow our own path.

For instance, many baby-boomers in this congregation grew-up in middle class families and our families expected us to go to college. Our families were already on the four-lane of success, and we simply followed it out of high school down to State or Carolina. Or we took 421 up to Appalachian. It is different for the son of a third-generation welfare family. He has to avoid drugs, and gangs, and work nights to finish high school. If he is just average and cannot win an an academic or athletic scholarship, before he can go to college, he has to join the Army or take off a few years and work so as to earn his own way. If he wants to succeed in life he will have to get off the expressway his family is on, for it leads nowhere, and build his own road. It is hard.

Or what about this? If we grew up in a Republican family, chances are we are still voting Republican. If we grew up in a family of Democrats, chances are we are still voting for Democrats. If you want to know how difficult change will be, just think what it would be like in your family if you switched your vote, and told your family at Thanksgiving Dinner.

I used political parties not religious denominations to illustrate how our families influence our choices, because many astute observers of our culture suggest that Americans no longer think of ourselves primarily as Baptists, or Methodists, or Moravians, but as Republicans, and Democrats, and Libertarians, and Independents. Writing more than 50 years ago, the Pulitzer Prize winner Bertrand Russell said that Christians have quit fighting over our denominational loyalties, because “politics and economics have taken the place formerly occupied by religion.”

That is a direct quote, and it is a disturbing development, because those of us who make politics and economics more important than our faith, run the risk of making Jesus our servant rather than our Master. Let me tell you a little about my politics.

I ache for our present political system. One party promises to uphold the Ten Commandments but sometimes fails to champion the needs of the poor. Another party champions the poor and dispossessed but sometimes seems to ignore basic moral imperatives. For my part, I would like President Trump a lot more if he would insist a more equitable tax structure, pushed green energy, and saved our national parks for our grandchildren. And I would like the Hillary Clinton a lot more if she would work, as she once promised, to make abortion “rare,” and had a better understanding of people of faith. I would like both parties more if they better balanced taxes and spending, and learned the art of compromise.

Now let me make a confession. I look at politics as an Independent, and we all know that Independents are the most troublesome folk of all. We belong to a herd, but our herd resembles a herd of cats. We find it easier to criticize the work of the parties, than to propose solutions of our own.

Now I have just mentioned politics. Some say that pastors should not. If President Trump has his way, that will change. I am not sure I want that change. Jesus commented on politics and was crucified for it. He took the side of the poor, and the lame, and the blind, and stood up against the powers of Jerusalem and Rome, and the powers fell on him like a ton of bricks. From God’s perspective, Jesus died for our sins—I believe that from the bottom of my heart; but from a human perspective, he was crucified as a political revolutionary.

In the same way, Saul of Tarsus—later the Apostle Paul, suffered because he turned his back on Jewish doctrine which awaited a conquering Messiah/King who would drive out the Romans, and embraced a Messiah who was hanged on a cross. Unlike many Jews, Paul did not stumble over the cross, he embraced it. In Philippians 3 the man we came to know as St. Paul writes about the four-lane highway he was traveling, and exchanged for a way that was narrow and hard. He writes:

4 If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, 6 as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

After Paul embraced Jesus as the Messiah he suffered for it. Once he was stoned, three times he was beaten with rods, five times he received forty lashes, less one. He endured jail time, treachery on all fronts, and privation of every kind. In all this he did not complain, rather, he boasted. In Galatians 6:17 he said, “From henceforth let no one trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” I celebrate forty years in the ministry this August, but I cannot make that boast. Can you?

It was this kind of risk-taking and faithfulness that Jesus was getting at when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him take up the cross (His cross!) and follow me.”

Jesus never told us to seek suffering; Jesus did tell us to expect it.

And how in the world can we bear with it when it comes. When it comes from family, when it comes from friends, when it comes from those who are closest to us, those we love the most. What can we do? Where can we go? St. Paul says we can. In Romans 6 he says that we who have been baptized were buried with Christ through baptism into his death. So, that “as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” This happens to us individually, but more than that it happens to us as a group, it happens to us as a people. In baptism we are one. We are united. This has to be the place where when we have to come here people have to take us in. This has to be the community when we can talk with each other, and disagree, and love one another. This has to be the place where the seeds of revolution are sown that will turn the world upside down yet once more.

Finis

Exodus 19:1   On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone
forth out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the
wilderness of Sinai. 3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to
him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of
Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to
myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my
covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the
earth is mine, 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation.

Rom. 5:2b …We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 More
than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces
hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to
us.

Matt. 9:35   And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching
in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every disease and every infirmity. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had
compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the
harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” …10:1   And he called to
him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits,
to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. 5
  These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the
Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And preach as you go, saying, ‘The
kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse
lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.”

What can we expect from God?

Some years ago, I was approached by a man who was disappointed with his
church. His pastor had promised that, if members of the congregation
would only tithe, God would visit them with a financial bonanza,
multiplying the remaining 90% many times over. My friend said, “I have
done my part; I have tithed; but I can see no evidence that God is
multiplying what I have left.” It was about this same time that I got
to know a young husband and wife who had just closed a business they had
loved, victims of the recession of 2008 They said, “We have continued
to pray, and go to church, but we have lost faith in the idea that
‘everything will come out alright in the end.” For them the end was not
the End of the World and the Triumph of God, but the end of a lifestyle
they had nurtured and loved.

After these conversations, and others like them, I found myself thinking
about how you, the members of this congregation, hear me. Though I have
discouraged “giving to get,” I have said that it is impossible to out
give God. That is the doctrine of the New Testament church and it is my
personal experience, too. Likewise, over the years, I have attempted
to comfort people with the word that God spoke to Israel through his
prophet in Jeremiah 29:11. “I know what plans I have for you,” says the
Lord, “plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a
hope.” In using this text, I have always pointed out that God made this
promise primarily to the whole nation of Israel, not to us as
individuals. Nevertheless, I believe, and have openly declared that
this text contains a promise for individuals, too. How could I think
otherwise and continue to preach?

But enough about me. What does the Bible say that we can expect from
God? That is the unspoken question that the various texts of the
lectionary seem perfectly poised to answer. What can we expect from
God?

First, I would point out that according to Exodus 19, it perfectly
reasonable to expect that God will help us in the future, in the same
way that God has helped us in the past.

In Exodus 19, God speaks to the people of Israel through his servant
Moses to remind them that he bore them out of the slavery of Egypt to
himself “as on Eagle’s wings.” It is a metaphor. In point of fact, the
children of Israel did not fly out of Egypt they walked out of Egypt and
across the desert. This text is a metaphor, but it is hardly an
exaggeration. In Exodus 14 we read how the people of Israel were
trapped between the army of Egypt and the waters of a great inland sea.
But God caused a strong east wind to blow all night and the waters were
divided, and stood in a heap to the right and the left. And the people
of Israel went across the sea on dry ground; but when the armies of
Egypt followed them into the midst of the sea, the sea rushed back upon
itself, and all Pharaoh’s horses, and chariots, and horsemen, were
destroyed. This deliverance at the Sea is the central miracle of the
Old Testament. It gave the people of Israel an historical event in
their collective past, upon which to pin their hopes for the present and
future. Over and over again, when the people of Israel got into
trouble, their priests, prophets, and leaders encouraged them saying,
“Do not be afraid—remember what the LORD did for you when he delivered
you from the slavery of Egypt.” The meaning is clear: What God has done
before, God can do again.”

In the same way, the Resurrection of Jesus is the central miracle of the
New Testament. Christians live in the knowledge that the same Power
that took Jesus from the tomb is available to us, not just in the moment
of death, but in the midst of life. Thus in 2nd Corinthians 1:10 and
following, St. Paul describes a situation in which he and his companions
were so bitterly and unbearably crushed that they despaired of life
itself. “This,” he said, “was to make us rely not upon ourselves, but on
God who raises the dead.” He continues:

“God delivered us from so deadly a peril…. and…on him we have set our
hope that he will deliver us again.”

When we experience the faithfulness of God, we expect faithfulness from
God. Have you experienced the faithfulness of God? I think I have.

In the summer of 1973 while I was still in the Marines, I felt called to
ministry. By January of 1975, I was out of the service, and enrolled in
Asbury Seminary near Lexington, Kentucky. Uncle Sam had our household
goods in storage; but Elayne and I had not found a place to live. We
went to the Lexington, and spent two days looking; but found nothing we
could afford. At the end of two long days, we decided we would get a
good nights rest, and then take a break and visit my parents in nearby
Indiana. The next morning we were leaving town, when we said, “Well—God
has called us here. God will make a place for us.” So we decided to
drive back to the seminary, a distance of about 17 miles, and check one
last time for a place to live. To our great delight, five minutes
before our arrival, a student had just posted the availability of a nice
little duplex on a quiet treelined street in the neighboring town. We
took the address from the registrar and rushed to see it. The
seminarian who had posted it lived in the other side of the duplex, and
he came out to greet us. He said, “There is one more couple looking at
this rental, so you may want to pray about it before taking it.” I
said, “Do they have a place to live?” He said, “Yes, they are right
down the street.” I said, “Good! Because I have been praying for just
such a place as this, and I am claiming it as an answer to prayer.”

Finding that place to live was a foundational miracle for me. My life
has not always gone that smoothly. Many hopes have been deferred and
many prayers have gone unanswered; but when I hit a rough patch, I find
myself remembering how God helped me in the past, and trusting that he
will give me the help I need in the future. Some of you know that I
have a modest collection of old, portable typewriters. Just this week, I
bought an old typewriter that is relative rare at a great price. I
never expected to really own one. This one contained the card of a
former owner, a Major in the Salvation Army. On the back of the card he
had written, “In God’s timetable He supplies all of my needs and even
some of my wants.” That is my experience, too.

2. We can expect training and discipline.

If it were up to us, none of us would ever willingly choose to live
through hardship, or sickness, or failure, or anything else that is
remotely unpleasant. Of course, we don’t get to choose, and these
things invariably come our way. The New Testament warns of this. In 1st
Peter 4:1 we read that Christ suffered in the flesh, and we ought to arm
ourselves with the same thought. Why would the apostle say this?
Because he wants us to know that life is hard. Why does he want us to
know that life is hard? simple, as the Christian psychologists Scott
Peck has said, “Life is hard, but the moment we know that life is hard,
life ceases to be as hard, because we know life is hard.” Evidently, it
takes a world with trouble in it to make us into the kind of people God
wants his children to be. Therefore, in Hebrews 5:8 we read that,
though Jesus was a son, yet he learned he obedience through what he
suffered. And, in Hebrews 12:7 we read that when we face difficulty, and
feel disciplined it is because God is treating us like children, too.
This is father’s day. In Matthew 6:8 Jesus taught that we have a
heavenly Father who knows what we need even before we ask him! He knows
even when we need training and discipline.

3. We can expect compassion.

According to Matthew 10, in the days of his flesh, Jesus looked out over
the people of Israel and had compassion on them, for “they were harassed
and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” This is a clear case of
like Father like Son, for Jesus reveals the heart of his Father. Psalm
100 teaches that we are the sheep of God’s pasture. And Psalm103:13
declares:

As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him.

It was immediately after Jesus saw the people were like sheep without a
shepherd that he turned to his followers and said, “The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the
harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Then Jesus sent the
twelve out to preach to the loss sheep of the house of Israel. He told
them not only to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but to
heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out evil
spirits.” Jesus tied preaching with helping. And he told his disciples
to give as freely as they had received. This is important for two
reasons. It is important for the people who receive our message, for
they want to know that we care, before they care what we know. It is
important to us, because it is in giving that we continue to receive.
St. John leaned that lesson. In 1st John 1:4, he wrote that he wanted to
share his joy with others so that his own joy would be full. Likewise,
St. Paul learned that lesson. In 2nd Corinthians 1:4 we read that:

God comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to

comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with 
which
we ourselves are comforted by God.

4. We can expect that whatever happens to do us good.

In Romans chapter five the apostle writes:

5:2b …We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 More than
that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces
hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to
us.

In this passage Paul talks about suffering, but suffering and failure go
hand in hand. Most suffering will pass, and most failure is not final.
Failure is not the end of the world, it is just the end of the world as
we know it, and this is is not necessarily bad. In his book, “Falling
Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,” Richard Rohr says
that God can hardly ever teach us all God wants us to know until we have
met with some great failure. Philosophers, psychologists and counselors
of every stamp all agree: We learn more from failure than we do from
success! Christians learn even more than most from our failures,
because we learn under the watchful eye of the God who has poured his
love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

Why is failure so important?

1. Failure makes us human, and approachable. People can seldom
identify with someone who has known nothing but success. When we
rejoice, we often rejoice alone because we stand out from the crowd.
When we grieve, we grieve with the whole human race, for failure is part
of what makes us human. If you doubt this, just read Genesis 1-3.

2. Failure makes us honest with ourselves and that enables growth.
Failure knocks the props out of our false confidence, and reveals our
weaknesses. Therefore failure teaches us humility, for true humility is
the ability to reflect reality. It was Clint Eastwood who said, “A man
has got to know his limitations.” It was St. Paul who said, “Do not
think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think, but think with
sober judgment.” This is father’s day. My father gave me many things.
I treasure most the text he gave me at my confirmation. Philippians
4;13 declares, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
My father left one thing unsaid: Before we can do all things through
Christ, we have to learn there are many things we can not do alone. We
have got to know our limitations.

3. Failure teaches us lateral thinking. We learn new ways of doing
things and new things to do. Scott Peck says that most people will stay
on the path they are on, even if it is the wrong path. Failure knocks
us off the wrong path so that we can find the right one. God guides by
open doors and closed, and when the right door opens, and we find the
right path, then, though we may be walking, slogging along step by step,
metaphorically speaking, it feels as if God is bringing us to himself on
eagle’s wings.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.