"Unapologetic: God and Grace"

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Isaiah 55:8-13

My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and don’t return there without watering the earth, making it conceive and yield plants and providing seed to the sower and food to the eater, so is my word that comes from my mouth; it does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend. Yes, you will go out with celebration, and you will be brought back in peace. Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you; all the trees of the field will clap their hands. In place of the thorn the cypress will grow; in place of the nettle the myrtle will grow. This will attest to the LORD’s stature, an enduring reminder that won’t be removed.

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This morning we are continuing a series of sermons where we look at what it means to have an unapologetic faith. At Grace, we could spend a lot of time apologizing for what other churches do in the name of faith. The author and priest Brennan Manning wrote, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Too often Christianity can be its own worst enemy, and I am sorry for that, but I don’t want to have a faith that is always responding and reacting to what others do, I don’t want a faith that is apologizing for them, I want to be able to express what I believe and why it matters.

Last week we looked at how our brains are wired for faith and spirituality. The full emotional scope of our lives, especially our faults and the moments that we feel with guilt, those moments when we are afraid of ourselves because we knew what was right and still chose to do wrong, point to a hope for something better, a longing within us for what could only be called holiness.

In looking at what Paul writes in the letter to the Romans that, “I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate” we saw that we can all admit to this gap within ourselves. We know the ideal, but too often we still don’t reach for it. In recognizing our faults and our failures, we don’t beat ourselves up, we hold ourselves accountable and find a way to be kind to ourselves and one another. It’s in owning our humanity, the fullness of our emotional life, that we can know our limits and connect to the longing for God.

There are times when all we can do is look up, long for someone, anyone, to hear us and help us. We know this search, and this desire for God, we cry out into the darkness and, let’s be honest, sometimes it feels like we reach out and nothing reaches back. The heavens don’t open, and an angel doesn’t come to us and says, “Don’t be afraid”. Instead of finding relief, we only find another moment of loss.

When we are crying out for salvation, when we know we can’t take it on our own anymore, in that dark night of the soul, when the light doesn’t shine in the darkness and we feel utterly alone, we know what Jesus meant on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The life of faith has just as many moments of doubt than the life of disbelief, if not more, because for us, the absence of God isn’t an idea, it’s a feeling of emptiness and absence.

We will get to what it means to unapologetically follow Jesus Christ next week, but for now, remember that as Christians our belief in the crucifixion is not about accepting a historical event happened and we are not merely invited to contemplate the death of Jesus on the cross, rather, we feel it, we undergo the experience of loss and doubt and forsakenness in our own lives.

It may or may not take three days, but for most of us, there comes a moment of resurrection.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but there have been moments in my own life where I prayed for something, I needed something, and it felt like I got nothing.

And yet, while nothing happened like I wanted, in retrospect, looking back, everything is different. Faith changes our perspective, our story is rewritten. It’s as if we start to notice, not that something started, it’s more that we notice how the movement of God has never stopped, never paused, and never faulted. This divine dance has been going on the whole time, so steady and continuous that we don’t notice it until it is the only thing we can desire.

Often desire has a bad reputation in the church. We think that we must put away and deny our desires. But think about the nature of desire. There are many things that we desire, wealth, health, fame, popularity, a Tesla if anyone wants to get an early start on birthday shopping for me, but not the truck, that thing looked awful. There are all sorts of things that we desire, but even in the midst of these, we are quick to acknowledge that our loved ones are the most desired. They bring life and light to our lives, and in our hearts, we feel the longing of desire for them.

And yet, when we speak of those that we love as more desirable than everything else, we end up placing them on the same plane as everything else. If we are not careful, we can see those that we love as one more thing that we want. This goes back to what we talked about last week – when our desires are displaced, when we hold the people that we love on the same level as a promotion at work, even though we say we desire them the most, even when we know what to do, we put our work before our relationships.

The desire that we have for those that we love is not more important than everything else, it’s a fundamentally different kind of desire.

Which is why loss is one of the most painful experiences that we have in life. We feel scorched, not only alone, but empty. When we lose those we love more than life itself we lose the very ability to desire. Even though we may long for a vacation to the Bahamas, that desire loses all luster when we have lost our beloved.

You can be sitting right next to someone, and yet, if you feel that they are no longer in love, it feels like you are worlds apart. At the same time, the one that we love could be on the other side of the world, and their longing and desire for us can sustain us even with their absence.

It is not merely that we have desires, we have the desire to be the desire of those we desire.

I know this is all sounding pretty academic, so think about it like this:

Every week a pastor would end their sermon by proclaiming that they go to a nearby town and serve the poor, oppressed, and cast aside, because this is what Christ would do. They would challenge their congregation and ask, “What are you going to do with your life? How will you show compassion with those in need?”

The congregation would applaud the pastor each week, waving and cheering them on as they left the service and hurried away from the church. But what the congregation didn’t know is that, in reality, the pastor really loved to play golf, and every week they would play at least one round.

After a few weeks, the pastor’s deception got on the nerve of an angel. They were furious at the pastor’s lies and wanted to see them punished. The angel reported the situation to God and after a little consideration, God said, “I will pay the pastor a visit next week and teach them a lesson they will never forget.”

The next Sunday the pastor, yet again, lied to their congregation about serving those in need and headed to the golf course, and God was there.

The pastor took their first shot, and to their amazement, the ball flew through the air, straight to the green, and dropped into the hole. At the second tee, the pastor took aim, hit the ball, and the same thing happened, another hole in one. And it happened at the third hole, and the fourth as well.

At the fifth hole, the pastor sliced the ball badly, but then a strong gust of wind straightened up the shot for another hole in one.

The angel was expecting to see this pastor punished and got more and more perplexed with every hole in one. They shouted at God, “I thought you were going to punish this lying pastor but instead you are giving them a perfect round.” God said to the angel, “Who is the pastor ever going to tell about this?”

Ultimately, our pleasure is not our own. Our joy, our desire, is intimately interwoven with those around us. We long to be seen, acknowledge, celebrated, mourned with, cheered on, and lifted up.

Being not only seen, but acknowledged and known, being celebrated, being mourned with, being cheered on and lifted up, what would we call this if not love?

When we come to feel the ground of our being, when we sense the source and the grace that is beneath everything, we are known, wholly and completely, utterly exposed and yet completely safe.

Feeling that connection with the cosmos can be awkward and undignified, that’s sort of the point in Genesis when Adam and Eve realize they are naked and reach for leaves. As much as we long to be completely accepted and embraced, we’re a little worried about exposure too, but, even then, we feel the truth of “Do not be afraid.”

This reality of God is more than an idea. It’s not a thought experiment, it’s the felt experience of our life.

Imagine that you go to work tomorrow and you notice a large group of people gathering around Ashley’s cubical. You walk over to see what’s going on and you learn that Ashley got engaged over the weekend. Everyone is gushing over Ashley, taking a chance to look at their ring, she can’t stop smiling, and you ask, “Tell us about your partner.”

Ashely says, “Their name is Alex, they were born on August 27th, grew up in Arkansas, drives and Jeep, is part of a bowling league and really doesn’t like celery.”

As Ashley continues to tell you facts about Alex, at some point you are going to think to yourself, “This is really odd.”

It’s odd not because Ashely is lying or avoiding the question or distorting the truth, it’s odd because they telling you objective truths and engagements are usually a little more poetic than that.

Or let’s say that your car is making a loud noise every time you get over 45 miles-per-hour. It starts to make a rumbling noise that only slightly makes you imagine the car is going to explode at any moment. You take your car into the shop, the mechanic looks things over and then comes to you and says, “The car is fine but it’s a little cranky, how have you been treating them recently?”

It’s at that moment you regret going to the trendy, new age mechanic in town.

Language is great, but it only takes us so far. Sometimes we need technical language, we need to know that in our car a specific part, with a name and serial number, has an identified problem that can be fixed. At the same time when Ashley and Alex fell in love we want to know what their love feels like, not their feelings about celery.

When I held my nephew for the first time, I was over the moon with excitement.

When I got married, I knew I found my other half.

My feet were firmly on the ground as I held my nephew, and I was never half a person, but you know exactly what I mean.

There is a moment in the Bible where Moses builds up enough nerve to ask God what their name is. Moses has been told by God, “I have heard the people’s cries for freedom and you are going to lead my people into freedom.”

Moses says back, essentially, that’s all well and good but if the people ask me who sent me, I should probably know your name.

God says to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM…Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’”

God says to Moses, I AM WHO I AM, almost saying, existence itself, the core of all that is and can be, is me.

This name, “I AM” in Hebrew is made up of the letter YHWH. They are all aspirated consonants, meaning they are all letters that sound like breathing. In Hebrew, the word for Spirit, ruach, is the same as the word for breath.

The name of God is the sound of our breathing.

Take a breath, slowly, and mean it, because breathing is something that we all too often take for granted, almost never wondering how the soft machines that are our bodies pump oxygen in and out in the symbiotic symphony that is life.

In sadness, we breathe with heavy sighs. In joy, it feels like our lungs might burst. In fear, we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly in order to calm down. When we are about to do something difficult, we take a deep breath to find our courage. It’s almost as if breathing is a kind of praying. Or as it’s written in the New Testament, “In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit [itself] pleads our case with unexpressed groans.”

God has a name that we can’t help but speak every moment of our lives.

When God is only a philosophical position, when we have faith in the god of the gaps, a god that only serves to make sense of the things we have yet to make sense of, the god of dues ex machina, “god out of the machine”, when God is a thought and not a lived reality, the absence and the presence isn’t felt because the absence and the presence doesn’t mean that much.

The term ‘deus ex machina’ goes back to plays in ancient Greece where a character would be lowered onto the stage by a hand-cranked machine to show their supernatural status.

Over time, the term got a bad name because it was used by lazy writers to resolve plot issues. One of the best examples of this comes from the TV show Dallas. This was before my time, and for some of you well after, but I’m trying to find a middle ground for pop-culture references here. In season six of Dallas, the actor Patrick Duffy wanted to leave the show, so the writers had his character killed off. But the ratings tanked. Season seven was dull and it became clear that Patrick Duffy’s character was one of the most popular on the show. The writers and producers convinced him to come back, but how were they going to explain the year he was dead?

As season seven ended, we see his widowed wife waking up from a dream, she walks into the bathroom and is shocked to find her husband alive and well, in the shower. Season seven was reduced to a dream.

That dream sequence had no connection to the internal logic of the story or show, it was simply dropped into the show to resolve a problem.

Sometimes that is how we treat God, as a resolution to a problem, but our lived reality, our emotional life experiences God in a different way.

We are compelled and challenged and inspired and hopeful not because of an idea or a thought, but because of the feeling of God moving in our midst, because, with every breath, God is with us and within us.

Whatever we say about God is always limited by the larger reality of that we can’t understand or express. Truth and beauty and meaning and grace always reside within a larger mystery and our knowing comes with a certain level of admitting there is a lot we don’t know.

When we talk about God, we’re talking about the breath that brings us to life, about our awareness of the reverence humming within us, about a nearness, and a farness that we know, that we don’t fully know, that is crystal clear and as more mysterious than ever.

As our reading today says, “My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and don’t return there without watering the earth, making it conceive and yield plants and providing seed to the sower and food to the eater, so is my word that comes from my mouth; it does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend. Yes, you will go out with celebration, and you will be brought back in peace.”

Our faith is a conviction that comes with humility. Every now and then I think about ending sermons by saying, “but I could be wrong.”

It is possible for us to hold our faith with open hands, living with a humble conviction, admitting that our knowledge and perspective will always be limited.

Our faith inspires us to believe that you and everyone else is a sacred creation of God with the divine breath flowing through you. There is a holiness with us and within us, and we can’t escape it.

As Christians, much of our faith comes to be expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, which is where we are headed for next week.

So for now, may you come to see that God is here, right now, with us all the time. It is God in which we live and move and breath. God is with us, God is for us, and God’s creative love is guiding us toward grace, justice and joy. When it comes to what we are talking about when we talk about God, we may be only scratching the surface, but we know the feeling of this itch that we have to scratch. There is a holiness and a grace and a purpose and a forgiveness that we long for, and with each breath we find the God that is always with us.

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Posted by GraceDesMoines on Sunday, January 19, 2020

January 20 – 25, 2020

Click on the day to expand the guide.

Monday

Read – Exodus 20:2-3, Exodus 3:11-15

Notice – Before listing any of the commandments, God reminded Israel that he alone had freed them from slavery. The commandments were not a way to earn God’s favor: “The giving of law presumes that mutual love and loyalty have been established between Israel and her divine suzerain. The Ten Commandments come to Israel after God redeems her from Egypt.” *God’s personal name, revealed in Exodus 3, played a huge role in Israel’s faith. “The name Yahweh (appearing in texts as only the four consonants, yhwh, the Tetragrammaton) and its short form Yah occur over 6,800 times in the OT—more than any other word….God is revealed as One who cannot be fully comprehended in a word.” ** There is no single clear definition of the meaning of this unique Hebrew word, though it appears linked to “being” or “creation.” *** What do both the meaning(s) and the mystery of God’s name teach you about the God you worship?

Pray – Lord God, you made me. You freed me. You are the source and sustainer of all that exists. Help me to worship and serve you, and you alone. Amen.

  1. * Article “Law” in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit and Tremper Longman III, general editors, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998, p. 491.
  2. ** Article “Name” in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit and Tremper Longman III, general editors, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998, page 584. Modern English translations generally render YHWH as LORD, a style the GPS follows. However, in this series we will use YAHWEH in the commandments to remind ourselves of the original Hebrew name
  3. *** Scholar John Walton lists as suggested meanings “Truly He!”; “My One”; “He Who Is”; “He Who Brings into Being”; “He Who Storms” in NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, eBook (Kindle Locations 20540-20541). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Tuesday

ReadPsalm 62:1-2, 5-8

Notice – Most of us at times “find rest” from everyday stress in a wide range of activities—taking a nap, bingewatching a favorite show, watching our favorite sports team, shopping, listening to chosen music, and the like. What are the more serious issues for which those everyday sources of rest do not work very well if at all? When do you, like the psalmist, find it essential to “find rest in God only”?

Pray – God, my hope comes from you. But there are times when I feel shaken indeed. Keep teaching me and reminding me that you are my strong rock even at those times. Amen.

Wednesday

ReadJeremiah 2:5-13

Notice – William Willimon wrote, “The Bible’s issue is invariably idolatry (‘Who is the god who is there?’) [In Jeremiah 2,] God accuses Israel of idolatry, or forsaking the Creator, who has steadfastly loved Israel. Forsaking that love, that ‘fountain of living water,’ people instead dig their own wells, seeking water that is self-derived.” * How has committing yourself to the living God drawn you away from things that “aren’t really gods at all” that you might have followed?

Pray – Jesus, I thirst for meaning, for purpose, maybe most of all for forgiveness and grace. Thank you for being the one source who can quench my inner thirst. Amen.

  1. * William Willimon, study note on Jeremiah 2:13 in The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, p. 1085.
Thursday

Read Matthew 4:8-11

Notice – “All the kingdoms of the world and their glory”—an offer like that would surely capture your attention, wouldn’t it? And the temptation made the price sound almost trivial: just “bow down and worship me.” But Jesus, with crisp decisiveness, dismissed the temptation and the tempter because it called him to violate one of the basic building blocks of his life. Deuteronomy 6:13, he said, made it clear that the ultimate, appropriate object of our worship is always and only the one God. Popularity, prosperity, prestige—all of us at times feel the inner drive to acquire the “kingdoms of the world and all their glory.” Hebrews 4:15 said Jesus “was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin.” Which “kingdoms of the world and their glory” have most tempted you to leave God’s kind of life? How can you, like Jesus, resist that temptation? (One of Jesus’ strategies was Scripture memorization. Try memorizing Matthew 4:10 from today’s reading.)

Pray – Jesus, keep teaching me that ultimately worship is not about dressing up or “going to church.” Worshipping God means making God and God’s kingdom my highest priority. Help me do that every day. Amen.

Friday

ReadMatthew 6:19-24

Notice – Jesus Sermon on the Mount similarly told his hearers that the human heart has room for only one supreme allegiance. Give that loyalty to God, not wealth, Jesus said. It is the better (and the safer) investment. Conduct a simple life audit. Review your calendar and your checkbook. Based on the time, energy and resources reflected there, what “master(s)” do those tools say you are serving? Can you see ways your loyalties are shifting as you choose to invest in heavenly treasure? Are there other changes you could make to give you greater freedom to fully serve God as Lord of your life?

Pray – Jesus, calling you “Lord” isn’t just a nice, polite title. It means you rule my life and my priorities. Give me the courage and devotion to truly mean it when I call you “Lord.” Amen.

Saturday

Read – John 11:17-26

Notice – If you have the time, read the whole story from John 11. Jesus’ friend Lazarus fell ill. However, Jesus did not arrive in Lazarus’ home town of Bethany until four days after his friend’s death. The man’s grieving sister Martha greeted Jesus with an “if only” type of statement. His answer began with the explosive words “I am”. Martha and her sister Mary had “if-only” questions for Jesus—“if only” he had done things differently, they thought, things would be better. Jesus made seven “I am” statements in the gospel of John (we’ll study them more next week). His words to Martha are probably the most cherished of those statements: “I am the resurrection and the life…everyone who believes in me will never die.” Jesus has many ways of bringing good news, hope, and new possibilities into the mess and grief of life. He asks us for trust, as he did Martha and Mary. Often our “if-only” questions, like theirs, reflect our time-limited, earth-bound understanding. We face the question Jesus asked Martha: “Do you believe this?” How easy or hard do you find it to trust that Jesus is working for your good, even when what you wish would happen doesn’t?

Pray – Jesus, sometimes it is hard for me to trust you amid my “if-only” questions. Thank you for offering me an eternal hope when I put my faith in you. Amen.

 

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