Fellowship Reformed Church of Holland

October 9, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Exodus 32:1-14

Created to Belong: Lay Down Your Idols! 

Part 1: Setting the Stage

Last Sunday we heard the story of the Passover from the OT book of Exodus.  How God remembered his people, the Israelites, who were enslaved by the Egyptians, and rescued them from bondage.

Through the leadership of Moses and Aaron, God led his people through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.  They were bound for the Promise Land, but first God brings them to Mt. Sinai.  Here God affirms his covenant with the Israelites and calls them his “treasured possession” and says that they will be a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation”—a light to all the other nations.

Then God gives them the Ten Commandments, the Law, to show them how they can live as a people who belong to God.  You see, the exodus was not just about being rescued from something—a life of slavery; it was just as much about being rescued for something—a new life of freedom with God.  The Law would guide them in the way of this new life of freedom.

When God speaks to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, the people all answered as one, “Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.”  They promised to keep the commandments and live as those who belong to God.

That’s where the story picks up today, in Exodus chapter 32.  God has summoned Moses once again to come up on the mountain to encounter God’s presence.  The LORD gives Moses instructions for how to build the tabernacle, a portable sanctuary in which God would come and dwell with his people as they make the wilderness journey.  

But Moses has been up there on the mountain with God for a while, and the Israelites are growing restless and impatient.  What’s taking him so long?  When will he return?  Will he return?  Listen to this next part of God’s Story and our story.  Read Scripture.

Part 2: Come, Make Gods for Us!

There is so much about this part of the story that is puzzling.

How is it that the Israelites, who could say with such enthusiasm one minute, “Everything the Lord has spoken we will do,” twelve chapters later are already breaking the first two commandments by worshiping an idol?

And how is it that Aaron, Moses’ right hand man, caves into this request and fashions for them a golden calf without a hint of hesitation or protest?

And what are we to make of this whole episode where God burns with anger and wants to destroy the Israelites, but Moses argues with him and convinces God to change his mind?

It raises lots of questions.  But as Josh and Marlin Vis reminded us last week, we don’t have to avoid the questions or be afraid of them.  The Bible invites us to engage the tough questions and to wrestle with story, much like Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord at the Jabbok River, trusting that in the wrestling there awaits a blessing.

So let’s engage this puzzling part of the story together.

It begins with Moses absent from his people, up on Mt. Sinai in the presence of the LORD.  How long has been gone?  Long enough for the Israelites to feel anxious and begin to wonder if he’s coming back.

So in their anxiety and impatience, the Israelites do what we all do.  They did what Adam and Eve did back in the Garden.  They take matters into their own hands.  They gather around Aaron and say to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

The Hebrew word translated as “gods” here is elohim, and it is unclear if it is being used in the plural or singular.  In the singular it is the same word used for “God”; in the plural you would translate it “gods.” So what are the people asking for here?  Are they demanding Aaron make them other gods?  Or are they asking Aaron to make them an image of the one true God?  It’s rather ambiguous.

What is clear is that in their anxiety and insecurity, they are trying to take control of the situation and they want a visible representation of the divine.  And Aaron provides that for them.  He tells them to take off their gold jewelry—most likely the gold they received from the Egyptians—and bring it to him.  He then forms it into a golden calf and presents it to them.  They declare, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Let’s not be too hard on Aaron here.  I suspect that he is doing his best to be a pastor to these people.  It seems to me that he is taking this visible idol and trying to steer them back to God.  That’s why he declares a festival the next day to worship the LORD.  And that’s what they do—they arise the next day and offer burnt offerings and sacrifices and eat and drink and worship.

But who or what are they really worshipping?  Whether in their mind they are worshipping other gods or a visible image of the one God, the problem with all of this is that they are clearly breaking the first and second commandments.  The two commandments upon which all the rest hang on.  You shall worship the Lord God alone and you shall not make any idols.  But that’s what they do.

Part 3: Are Idols More Than Just Golden Cows?

Let’s pause here and talk about idols.

Like I said earlier, it’s easy to be hard on the Israelites and Aaron.  To shake our heads in bewilderment and think, “How could they?”

But idols are tricky and subversive things.  We may tend to think of idols as little statues we worship or, like in this story, a golden calf.  And thank God we don’t have any little statues of false gods on our fireplace mantle at home…no golden calves in our sanctuary this morning.

Or do we?

Here’s something that I find intriguing about this whole golden calf episode.  The golden calf is fashioned out of the gold that God provided to the Israelites—from the Egyptians—when God led them out of slavery.  Think about that.  They make an idol out of a gift God gave them.

They take something good and they turn it into their god—the thing they look to for security and safety and to help them feel better.

So what if idols are not bad things but good things—gifts even—that we turn into the most important thing in our lives?  Things that we attach our security and safety to, things we look to give our lives meaning and purpose, things that we expect to save us?

This is exactly the point that Timothy Keller makes in his excellent book Counterfeit Gods.  He puts it this way:

“We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case.  The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes.  Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things” (p.xvii).

So what is an idol?  Keller goes on to describe idols this way: 

“[An idol] is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you only what God can give….[It is] anything so central to your life that, should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living.  An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought.  It can be family and children, or career and making money or achievement and crucial acclaim, or saving ‘face’ and social standing.  It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in Christian ministry…an idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I know I’ll have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure’” (xvii-xviii).

One of my best friends was gifted with exceptional abilities as a basket ball player.  In high school and college, basketball was his life.  He was a professing Christian, and would tell you that Jesus was his Lord and Savior, but by all practical purposes, basketball was really his lord and savior.  He wouldn’t have been able to name this for you at the time.  Which is kind of how idols work.  We don’t realize the kind of hold they have on our lives.  Then in college he suffered an injury that ended his basketball career.  He was devastated.  The one thing he loved most, the thing that defined him and gave him a sense of value and worth, taken away from him.  It was only then, once he lost basketball, that he realized how much of an idol it had become.  This was a spiritual breakthrough for him, and today he is a pastor and would say, in hindsight, losing basketball was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Here’s the point: an idol can be anything and everything, and we all have them.  It’s part of our human condition—to fashion idols and put our hope and trust in them.  John Calvin put it starkly: “The human mind and heart is a factory of idols.”  The question is not, “Do I have idols?  Rival gods competing for my heart?” Instead the key question is, “What are my idols?  What am I looking to, other than God, to define me and give me security and purpose?”

Sometimes our idols may not be things that take the place of God but can be false images of the true God.  False ideas that we construct about who God is and what God is like.  As Blaise Pascal put it, “God made us in his image, and then we returned the favor.” For many of us, myself included, we have a picture of God and Jesus that looks more like us than what we encounter in the Scriptures.

Part 4: Go Down, Moses!

So let’s go back to the story in Exodus 32.  The Israelites are reveling in the presence of the golden calf, and the scene shifts to up on the mountain where Moses is with God.  The LORD sees what is happening and is outraged.  God says, “Moses, go down at once!  Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them…” God goes further, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.  Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

This part of the story may not only be puzzling but even troubling.  Here we see God angry, ready to destroy the Israelites because of their disobedience and idolatry.  While God’s character, at its heart, is love and mercy; that does not take away from God’s holiness and passion for justice.  In fact, you could say that God’s mercy and justice are two sides of the same coin.  And so we encounter the main conflict in this story.  How is God to respond—the God who made promises to his people—when they are disloyal and disobedient?  What about when these two aspects of God’s character seem to collide: mercy and justice?

It’s a bad situation, but there is a bit of humor in it.  You see God and Moses arguing here like two exasperated parents who aren’t sure what to do with a stubborn and disobedient child.  Parents, you know what this is like.  When your child is behaving well, you’re happy to claim them.  But when they’re behaving badly, we say to our spouse, “Tell your son to shape up!” “Are you going to do something about your daughter?”   There’s some of that going on here.  God says to Moses, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt…”

But Moses says, “Whoa…wait a minute!  Lord, these are your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt…” And Moses stands in the gap and becomes a mediator between the people and God.  It’s hard to know what God was thinking in all of this—if he really planned to destroy his people or was just expressing frustration.  Or if he was perhaps testing Moses, to see if he really was committed to being faithful to God and sticking with the Israelite people.  After all, God’s offer must have been tempting: “Moses, forget them; let me make a nation out of you.”

If it is a test, Moses passes the test.  And he persuades God to show mercy instead of destroying the Israelites.  He appeals to God’s reputation, saying, “What will our neighbors think if you destroy your own people?” After all, one of the main points of God delivering is people from slavery was so that the Egyptians and the whole world would know the power and goodness of God.  Then he appeals to God’s covenant—made with Abraham and Sarah.  “Remember your promises…” Moses says.  Not that God has forgotten them, but Moses is speaking back to God his promises first made to Abraham under that star-lit sky.

And God changes his mind.  Which raises all kinds of questions about prayer that we’re not going to get into this morning, except to say that God invites us into a kind of authentic relationship with God in which our prayers really do seem to make a difference.

But here’s the key thing I want to emphasize, especially in light of what we’ve talked about regarding idols.  The truth is that idolatry was not just a matter of bad behavior for the Israelites—it was a deep heart issue.  And God is angry not just because they’ve dishonored him but because he knows that these counterfeit gods destroy us.  The gods we make end up making us—they hold us in bondage, take life, and ruin us.  God had delivered them from slavery; and here they are, putting themselves back into slavery with a counterfeit god. 

If the Israelites are to lay down their idols and turn their hearts back to God, it is not something they can do on their own effort.  God chooses to show mercy, to stay true to his promise even in the face of their disobedience.  And he sends Moses down to be the mediator.  “Go down, Moses!”   Moses is, in a real way, a representation of God’s presence (without becoming an idol).

Part 5: Another Mediator Comes!

Moses points us to the mercy and kindness of God that we will experience in another mediator who is to come—the Mediator-- Jesus Christ, God’s Son.  Moses is a precursor to Christ, God who comes down to be with us in the flesh, and does for us what we can’t do for ourselves: frees us from our idols.

What happens when God’s mercy and justice collide?  The cross and empty tomb happen!  Through Christ’s death and resurrection, God enables us not only to discern our idols but to lay them down, put them to death.  We want a visible representation of the invisible God?  God does that for us in Jesus.  Here is your God!  Not in the things and people and images all around us that our hearts tend to attach themselves to, but in the living Jesus who comes to be with us, brings God’s healing and forgiveness, and draws us into relationship with the one true God.

And if you can have the real thing, why would we settle for anything less?

C.S. Lewis once made the point that when we give Christ first place in our lives, then everything else in life is put in proper order.  When Christ is our first love, the good things in our lives, things that we are tempted to turn into idols, remain as gifts that are only enhanced.  We enjoy them more when we don’t look to them to save us!

So let me end with some questions for you today…

What idols or rival gods are competing for your own heart?  What are you looking to, other than Christ, to give you an ultimate sense of acceptance, meaning and purpose? 

One way to surface our idols is to reflect on how we spend most of our time.  Another way is to look at where we invest our money.  Here’s another clue: what preoccupies your thought world?  What consumes your emotions?  What is something that you say, “If I could only have this, it will make me happy?” Or “If I would lose that, I couldn’t live without it?”

Name those things today.   And turn to Christ.  Set your heart and mind on him, receive his presence and power, let him help you lay down your idols and step into a life of genuine freedom.  Let him transform you from the inside out, in the deep place of your heart.

It’s a process, of course, learning to lay down our idols and more and more set our hearts and minds on Christ.  But it is precisely this process that gets us on the road to discipleship, which is the true road to life, joy and freedom from the idols that seek to enslave us.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

October 9, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Exodus 32:1-14

Created to Belong: Lay Down Your Idols! 

Part 1: Setting the Stage

Last Sunday we heard the story of the Passover from the OT book of Exodus.  How God remembered his people, the Israelites, who were enslaved by the Egyptians, and rescued them from bondage.

Through the leadership of Moses and Aaron, God led his people through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.  They were bound for the Promise Land, but first God brings them to Mt. Sinai.  Here God affirms his covenant with the Israelites and calls them his “treasured possession” and says that they will be a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation”—a light to all the other nations.

Then God gives them the Ten Commandments, the Law, to show them how they can live as a people who belong to God.  You see, the exodus was not just about being rescued from something—a life of slavery; it was just as much about being rescued for something—a new life of freedom with God.  The Law would guide them in the way of this new life of freedom.

When God speaks to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, the people all answered as one, “Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.”  They promised to keep the commandments and live as those who belong to God.

That’s where the story picks up today, in Exodus chapter 32.  God has summoned Moses once again to come up on the mountain to encounter God’s presence.  The LORD gives Moses instructions for how to build the tabernacle, a portable sanctuary in which God would come and dwell with his people as they make the wilderness journey.  

But Moses has been up there on the mountain with God for a while, and the Israelites are growing restless and impatient.  What’s taking him so long?  When will he return?  Will he return?  Listen to this next part of God’s Story and our story.  Read Scripture.

Part 2: Come, Make Gods for Us!

There is so much about this part of the story that is puzzling.

How is it that the Israelites, who could say with such enthusiasm one minute, “Everything the Lord has spoken we will do,” twelve chapters later are already breaking the first two commandments by worshiping an idol?

And how is it that Aaron, Moses’ right hand man, caves into this request and fashions for them a golden calf without a hint of hesitation or protest?

And what are we to make of this whole episode where God burns with anger and wants to destroy the Israelites, but Moses argues with him and convinces God to change his mind?

It raises lots of questions.  But as Josh and Marlin Vis reminded us last week, we don’t have to avoid the questions or be afraid of them.  The Bible invites us to engage the tough questions and to wrestle with story, much like Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord at the Jabbok River, trusting that in the wrestling there awaits a blessing.

So let’s engage this puzzling part of the story together.

It begins with Moses absent from his people, up on Mt. Sinai in the presence of the LORD.  How long has been gone?  Long enough for the Israelites to feel anxious and begin to wonder if he’s coming back.

So in their anxiety and impatience, the Israelites do what we all do.  They did what Adam and Eve did back in the Garden.  They take matters into their own hands.  They gather around Aaron and say to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

The Hebrew word translated as “gods” here is elohim, and it is unclear if it is being used in the plural or singular.  In the singular it is the same word used for “God”; in the plural you would translate it “gods.” So what are the people asking for here?  Are they demanding Aaron make them other gods?  Or are they asking Aaron to make them an image of the one true God?  It’s rather ambiguous.

What is clear is that in their anxiety and insecurity, they are trying to take control of the situation and they want a visible representation of the divine.  And Aaron provides that for them.  He tells them to take off their gold jewelry—most likely the gold they received from the Egyptians—and bring it to him.  He then forms it into a golden calf and presents it to them.  They declare, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Let’s not be too hard on Aaron here.  I suspect that he is doing his best to be a pastor to these people.  It seems to me that he is taking this visible idol and trying to steer them back to God.  That’s why he declares a festival the next day to worship the LORD.  And that’s what they do—they arise the next day and offer burnt offerings and sacrifices and eat and drink and worship.

But who or what are they really worshipping?  Whether in their mind they are worshipping other gods or a visible image of the one God, the problem with all of this is that they are clearly breaking the first and second commandments.  The two commandments upon which all the rest hang on.  You shall worship the Lord God alone and you shall not make any idols.  But that’s what they do.

Part 3: Are Idols More Than Just Golden Cows?

Let’s pause here and talk about idols.

Like I said earlier, it’s easy to be hard on the Israelites and Aaron.  To shake our heads in bewilderment and think, “How could they?”

But idols are tricky and subversive things.  We may tend to think of idols as little statues we worship or, like in this story, a golden calf.  And thank God we don’t have any little statues of false gods on our fireplace mantle at home…no golden calves in our sanctuary this morning.

Or do we?

Here’s something that I find intriguing about this whole golden calf episode.  The golden calf is fashioned out of the gold that God provided to the Israelites—from the Egyptians—when God led them out of slavery.  Think about that.  They make an idol out of a gift God gave them.

They take something good and they turn it into their god—the thing they look to for security and safety and to help them feel better.

So what if idols are not bad things but good things—gifts even—that we turn into the most important thing in our lives?  Things that we attach our security and safety to, things we look to give our lives meaning and purpose, things that we expect to save us?

This is exactly the point that Timothy Keller makes in his excellent book Counterfeit Gods.  He puts it this way:

“We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case.  The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes.  Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things” (p.xvii).

So what is an idol?  Keller goes on to describe idols this way: 

“[An idol] is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you only what God can give….[It is] anything so central to your life that, should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living.  An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought.  It can be family and children, or career and making money or achievement and crucial acclaim, or saving ‘face’ and social standing.  It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in Christian ministry…an idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I know I’ll have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure’” (xvii-xviii).

One of my best friends was gifted with exceptional abilities as a basket ball player.  In high school and college, basketball was his life.  He was a professing Christian, and would tell you that Jesus was his Lord and Savior, but by all practical purposes, basketball was really his lord and savior.  He wouldn’t have been able to name this for you at the time.  Which is kind of how idols work.  We don’t realize the kind of hold they have on our lives.  Then in college he suffered an injury that ended his basketball career.  He was devastated.  The one thing he loved most, the thing that defined him and gave him a sense of value and worth, taken away from him.  It was only then, once he lost basketball, that he realized how much of an idol it had become.  This was a spiritual breakthrough for him, and today he is a pastor and would say, in hindsight, losing basketball was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Here’s the point: an idol can be anything and everything, and we all have them.  It’s part of our human condition—to fashion idols and put our hope and trust in them.  John Calvin put it starkly: “The human mind and heart is a factory of idols.”  The question is not, “Do I have idols?  Rival gods competing for my heart?” Instead the key question is, “What are my idols?  What am I looking to, other than God, to define me and give me security and purpose?”

Sometimes our idols may not be things that take the place of God but can be false images of the true God.  False ideas that we construct about who God is and what God is like.  As Blaise Pascal put it, “God made us in his image, and then we returned the favor.” For many of us, myself included, we have a picture of God and Jesus that looks more like us than what we encounter in the Scriptures.

Part 4: Go Down, Moses!

So let’s go back to the story in Exodus 32.  The Israelites are reveling in the presence of the golden calf, and the scene shifts to up on the mountain where Moses is with God.  The LORD sees what is happening and is outraged.  God says, “Moses, go down at once!  Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them…” God goes further, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.  Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

This part of the story may not only be puzzling but even troubling.  Here we see God angry, ready to destroy the Israelites because of their disobedience and idolatry.  While God’s character, at its heart, is love and mercy; that does not take away from God’s holiness and passion for justice.  In fact, you could say that God’s mercy and justice are two sides of the same coin.  And so we encounter the main conflict in this story.  How is God to respond—the God who made promises to his people—when they are disloyal and disobedient?  What about when these two aspects of God’s character seem to collide: mercy and justice?

It’s a bad situation, but there is a bit of humor in it.  You see God and Moses arguing here like two exasperated parents who aren’t sure what to do with a stubborn and disobedient child.  Parents, you know what this is like.  When your child is behaving well, you’re happy to claim them.  But when they’re behaving badly, we say to our spouse, “Tell your son to shape up!” “Are you going to do something about your daughter?”   There’s some of that going on here.  God says to Moses, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt…”

But Moses says, “Whoa…wait a minute!  Lord, these are your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt…” And Moses stands in the gap and becomes a mediator between the people and God.  It’s hard to know what God was thinking in all of this—if he really planned to destroy his people or was just expressing frustration.  Or if he was perhaps testing Moses, to see if he really was committed to being faithful to God and sticking with the Israelite people.  After all, God’s offer must have been tempting: “Moses, forget them; let me make a nation out of you.”

If it is a test, Moses passes the test.  And he persuades God to show mercy instead of destroying the Israelites.  He appeals to God’s reputation, saying, “What will our neighbors think if you destroy your own people?” After all, one of the main points of God delivering is people from slavery was so that the Egyptians and the whole world would know the power and goodness of God.  Then he appeals to God’s covenant—made with Abraham and Sarah.  “Remember your promises…” Moses says.  Not that God has forgotten them, but Moses is speaking back to God his promises first made to Abraham under that star-lit sky.

And God changes his mind.  Which raises all kinds of questions about prayer that we’re not going to get into this morning, except to say that God invites us into a kind of authentic relationship with God in which our prayers really do seem to make a difference.

But here’s the key thing I want to emphasize, especially in light of what we’ve talked about regarding idols.  The truth is that idolatry was not just a matter of bad behavior for the Israelites—it was a deep heart issue.  And God is angry not just because they’ve dishonored him but because he knows that these counterfeit gods destroy us.  The gods we make end up making us—they hold us in bondage, take life, and ruin us.  God had delivered them from slavery; and here they are, putting themselves back into slavery with a counterfeit god. 

If the Israelites are to lay down their idols and turn their hearts back to God, it is not something they can do on their own effort.  God chooses to show mercy, to stay true to his promise even in the face of their disobedience.  And he sends Moses down to be the mediator.  “Go down, Moses!”   Moses is, in a real way, a representation of God’s presence (without becoming an idol).

Part 5: Another Mediator Comes!

Moses points us to the mercy and kindness of God that we will experience in another mediator who is to come—the Mediator-- Jesus Christ, God’s Son.  Moses is a precursor to Christ, God who comes down to be with us in the flesh, and does for us what we can’t do for ourselves: frees us from our idols.

What happens when God’s mercy and justice collide?  The cross and empty tomb happen!  Through Christ’s death and resurrection, God enables us not only to discern our idols but to lay them down, put them to death.  We want a visible representation of the invisible God?  God does that for us in Jesus.  Here is your God!  Not in the things and people and images all around us that our hearts tend to attach themselves to, but in the living Jesus who comes to be with us, brings God’s healing and forgiveness, and draws us into relationship with the one true God.

And if you can have the real thing, why would we settle for anything less?

C.S. Lewis once made the point that when we give Christ first place in our lives, then everything else in life is put in proper order.  When Christ is our first love, the good things in our lives, things that we are tempted to turn into idols, remain as gifts that are only enhanced.  We enjoy them more when we don’t look to them to save us!

So let me end with some questions for you today…

What idols or rival gods are competing for your own heart?  What are you looking to, other than Christ, to give you an ultimate sense of acceptance, meaning and purpose? 

One way to surface our idols is to reflect on how we spend most of our time.  Another way is to look at where we invest our money.  Here’s another clue: what preoccupies your thought world?  What consumes your emotions?  What is something that you say, “If I could only have this, it will make me happy?” Or “If I would lose that, I couldn’t live without it?”

Name those things today.   And turn to Christ.  Set your heart and mind on him, receive his presence and power, let him help you lay down your idols and step into a life of genuine freedom.  Let him transform you from the inside out, in the deep place of your heart.

It’s a process, of course, learning to lay down our idols and more and more set our hearts and minds on Christ.  But it is precisely this process that gets us on the road to discipleship, which is the true road to life, joy and freedom from the idols that seek to enslave us.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

October 2, 2016

Preaching: Marlin & Josh Vis

Text: Exodus 12:1-13

October 2, 2016

Preaching: Marlin & Josh Vis

Text: Exodus 12:1-13

September 25, 2016

Preaching: Lindsay Small

Text: Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34, 50:15-21

INTRO

 If I ever teach a parenting class, I’m going to have everyone in the class read book of Genesis.

Parenting is hard…a seemingly endless battle to have kids not fight with each other, pick up their rooms, do their homework…and you know, grow them into faithful followers of Jesus…it can often feel like a losing battle.

Parenting is hard…and sometimes the best consolation is: well, at least my kids aren’t THAT BAD.

And never have I thought that so much than after reading Genesis…

Because at least…my kids have not tried to kill each (ala Cain and Abel), We have not been asked to sacrifice our firstborn (ala Abraham and Isaac…although that just turned out to be the world’s most extreme object lesson)…Madeline has not stolen Micah’s birthright…yet (ala Jacob and Esau)…and none of our kids have been thrown into pits and sold to Ishmaelites (more on that in a few minutes)…

So…really in comparison, I’d say we’re all mastering this parenting thing…

Genesis is the ultimate ‘feel-good’ book…I feel good because ’at least my kids aren’t THAT BAD.’

And today we land on a story that truly embodies family dysfunction…

-A Father with blatant favoritism…

-Brothers seeping with jealousy…

-And a favorite son who likes to rub it in a little too much…

Yes, maybe we aren’t THAT BAD, and yet at least for me, there are still entry points. Characters that I take on when playing out my many parts as parent, sister, spouse, and daughter.

Joseph, Jacob, Reuben, the angry brothers…characters that are extreme but also familiar…

But there was another reason these characters were so familiar…another reason these characters came to life in my head this week… I was in a perpetual flashback to my freshman year of college…when our entire class took the EL downtown to the Chicago Theatre and saw Donny Osmond as Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I have had the songs in my head for a week! And Kyle has not missed any opportunity to play them as loud as possible…

And so after countless family sing-a-longs…I actually started seeing the text in Two Acts…that’s really how the readings for this week are broken up:

ACT ONE: Sibling Rivalry

ACT TWO: well, I don’t want to give the whole story away just yet.

So settle back in your seats, get comfortable…and let’s hear Act One:

ACT 1

Hannah: “Remember this portion of the story of God as it is written in the book that we love…Act One:”

Right away in Act One, you can smell trouble. “Israel, or Jacob, loved Joseph more than any other of his children.”

No, no, no, no, no…you do not do this….there is no quicker path to therapy…for both child and parent…than to blatantly love one more than the other.

And yet here is Jacob…and he is unapologetic. In fact, he seems to want to get the word out there! Joseph is my favorite…and as a token of my blatant favoritism…here, have his amazing coat…with SLEEVES no less!

His bare-armed brothers stand there watching this whole thing unfold…seething with jealousy, feeling utterly unloved by their father…

How could Jacob not see trouble coming?

But Jacob, himself a youngest child, had cheated his older brother out of his birthright…He was never one for older children. He was not the favorite of his father…Esau was. And perhaps was anxious to bestow his favor on a younger child.

And so a hopeless triangle unfolds: a boy, a father, and his brothers.

Joseph seems to live somewhere between pride and utter ignorance. He is pleased to receive such a gift of his father…and seems to like to show it off a little…

He’s got a lot going for him…after all, to quote Andrew Lloyd Webber, “He is handsome, he is smart, he’s a walking work of art…”

But then, to make matters worse…he has a dream…a wonderful dream…if you’re Joseph. And he makes the terrible choice of sharing it gleefully with his brothers:

 “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7 There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.”

The text goes on to say, ‘So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.

If you ask me, Joseph was being a bit of a tool. If you are the KNOWN favorite, a little humility goes a long way. If you have a dream where you come out on top…you may not want to pronounce such dream to the people who are doing the bowing.

So there’s trouble…right here in Canaan City…wait, wrong Musical…

But whatever is brewing, both father and son seem oblivious…so Joseph heads out to a remote location to give his brothers a message…without a thought in his mind that his brothers are about to invite him to a new future.

At first when they see him, they conspire to murder him, and then in a laughable move towards compassion…to merely throw him in a pit…and sell him as a slave…after all, they concede, “he is our brother, our own flesh…”

Oh…how nice of you. Don’t hurt him…just sell him off and fake his death and make your father to believe his favorite son is dead. After all, he is our brother…

See, at least our kids aren’t THAT BAD…

These brothers seem so vile to us…how could they do this?

And yet, if I’m honest, I know that I’ve played their part before.

-I’ve seethed with jealousy towards a more preferred, a more beautiful, a more talented…

-We delight when the mighty fall…when people get what they have coming to them…just as long as it’s not us…

Reuben seems at first like a glimmer of hope…maybe we can play his part…but even Reuben shows us the underbelly of the human condition.

He wants to return Joseph to his father…in hopes that in returning him he could gain some much needed favor with his dad.

When he learns his brother has been sold…indeed he tears his clothes, but his words are telling…“The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?” The repetition of the “I” in the Hebrew is even more emphatic than it appears in the English.

Reuben is focused on himself instead of on the fate of his brother:

And so instead of confessing all to his father, Reuben goes along with the lie the brothers tell their father, that Joseph has been killed by wild animals.

Act One: the human condition.

Jealousy, rage, favoritism, pride…this is what happens when we are left to ourselves.

This is a pretty typical ending to Act 1…This is when the trouble peaks…when life unravels…when hope is lost…

At the end of Joseph…Act 1, he’s in prison. After a few good years in Egypt managing Potiphar’s house, Joseph is wrongly accused and thrown in jail.

Act 1 ends in loneliness: a father mourning the loss of his son, the son far away in a jail cell, and the brothers are alone with their burdensome secret.

Poor, poor Joseph…what’s he going to do?

---

Can you imagine if the story ended here?

Can you imagine if there wasn’t an Act 2?

-Joseph would stay in prison…

But not just in Joseph…what if other stories ended with Act 1?

-Simba would never take his place as rightful king of the Pride Land…

-Elsa would never bring back summer to Arendelle…

-The rebels in Les Miserable would be left singing ‘One day more” without…One more day!

And not just in these stories…what about in our story?

What if our story ended with Act 1?

-Left in our sin, our shame, our regret, our poor choices…

Act 1: the human condition.

But never, ever the end.

Our story…God’s story…ALWAYS has two acts.

There is always an ACT 2…

In my story, your story, and Joseph’s story:

And so hear now…ACT 2:

Hannah and Jackson

13 chapters have passed during intermission… and a lot has happened…Pharaoh, freedom, famine… a long expected reunion between Joseph and Jacob…

But this Act 2 is about restoration.

Brother to brothers.

With Jacob dead, the brothers are at first a little uneasy…will they finally get what they have coming to them? Will Joseph throw them into a pit?

And so instead they throw themselves before their brother…weeping and bowing down before him and presenting themselves as slaves…(huh…sound familiar?)

But Joseph has learned about humility…and forgiveness…and despite any temptation to proclaim, “See! I knew this would happen…remember that dream???” He resists.

And instead, Joseph says to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 20 Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.

What you intended for harm…God intended for good.

 If Act 1 is about our human condition…

Then Act 2 is about God redeeming our human condition.

 God brings good out of bad. It’s as simple and wonderful as that.

Paul will echo this later in Romans, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”

In everything…God means it for good. He said so in at the very beginning in Genesis 1 and again here in Genesis 50.

This is the plot to this story and every story.

Walter Bruggeman says, “The evil plans of human folks do not defeat God’s purpose. Instead, they unwittingly become ways in which God’s plan is furthered.”

Act 1 is the mess we’ve made.

Act 2 is God bringing about forgiveness, grace, and redemption from our mess.

Act 2 is the cross. God’s ultimate work of bringing good to the world to reign over evil.

Perhaps some of you feel like you’re stuck in Act 1…you feel resentful and hurt…maybe towards a sibling…or maybe a spouse, a friend, a parent.

And maybe throwing them into a pit hasn’t crossed your mind…until this morning…but certainly writing off the relationship has…

What would it take to get you to move to Act 2?

To charge ahead with reckless forgiveness and grace?

After all, that’s what God did with us. He brought us into Act 2 well before we deserved it.

Joseph forgave his brothers. God forgives us.

Friends, if nothing is out of the realm of God’s forgiveness…surely nothing should be out of the realm of our forgiveness…

There is always room for Act 2.

This morning, put down the script of Act 1: we know the lines all too well.

Time to watch and see how God is moving us all into Act 2:

Taking what we intended for harm, and intending it for good.

Let’s pray…

We thank you, Holy God, that there is always an Act 2. We thank you for the ultimate redemption you offer us through the cross. May we embody this Act 2 in all our relationships, so that we may be a conduit of your GOOD in the world.

September 25, 2016

Preaching: Lindsay Small

Text: Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34, 50:15-21

INTRO

 If I ever teach a parenting class, I’m going to have everyone in the class read book of Genesis.

Parenting is hard…a seemingly endless battle to have kids not fight with each other, pick up their rooms, do their homework…and you know, grow them into faithful followers of Jesus…it can often feel like a losing battle.

Parenting is hard…and sometimes the best consolation is: well, at least my kids aren’t THAT BAD.

And never have I thought that so much than after reading Genesis…

Because at least…my kids have not tried to kill each (ala Cain and Abel), We have not been asked to sacrifice our firstborn (ala Abraham and Isaac…although that just turned out to be the world’s most extreme object lesson)…Madeline has not stolen Micah’s birthright…yet (ala Jacob and Esau)…and none of our kids have been thrown into pits and sold to Ishmaelites (more on that in a few minutes)…

So…really in comparison, I’d say we’re all mastering this parenting thing…

Genesis is the ultimate ‘feel-good’ book…I feel good because ’at least my kids aren’t THAT BAD.’

And today we land on a story that truly embodies family dysfunction…

-A Father with blatant favoritism…

-Brothers seeping with jealousy…

-And a favorite son who likes to rub it in a little too much…

Yes, maybe we aren’t THAT BAD, and yet at least for me, there are still entry points. Characters that I take on when playing out my many parts as parent, sister, spouse, and daughter.

Joseph, Jacob, Reuben, the angry brothers…characters that are extreme but also familiar…

But there was another reason these characters were so familiar…another reason these characters came to life in my head this week… I was in a perpetual flashback to my freshman year of college…when our entire class took the EL downtown to the Chicago Theatre and saw Donny Osmond as Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I have had the songs in my head for a week! And Kyle has not missed any opportunity to play them as loud as possible…

And so after countless family sing-a-longs…I actually started seeing the text in Two Acts…that’s really how the readings for this week are broken up:

ACT ONE: Sibling Rivalry

ACT TWO: well, I don’t want to give the whole story away just yet.

So settle back in your seats, get comfortable…and let’s hear Act One:

ACT 1

Hannah: “Remember this portion of the story of God as it is written in the book that we love…Act One:”

Right away in Act One, you can smell trouble. “Israel, or Jacob, loved Joseph more than any other of his children.”

No, no, no, no, no…you do not do this….there is no quicker path to therapy…for both child and parent…than to blatantly love one more than the other.

And yet here is Jacob…and he is unapologetic. In fact, he seems to want to get the word out there! Joseph is my favorite…and as a token of my blatant favoritism…here, have his amazing coat…with SLEEVES no less!

His bare-armed brothers stand there watching this whole thing unfold…seething with jealousy, feeling utterly unloved by their father…

How could Jacob not see trouble coming?

But Jacob, himself a youngest child, had cheated his older brother out of his birthright…He was never one for older children. He was not the favorite of his father…Esau was. And perhaps was anxious to bestow his favor on a younger child.

And so a hopeless triangle unfolds: a boy, a father, and his brothers.

Joseph seems to live somewhere between pride and utter ignorance. He is pleased to receive such a gift of his father…and seems to like to show it off a little…

He’s got a lot going for him…after all, to quote Andrew Lloyd Webber, “He is handsome, he is smart, he’s a walking work of art…”

But then, to make matters worse…he has a dream…a wonderful dream…if you’re Joseph. And he makes the terrible choice of sharing it gleefully with his brothers:

 “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7 There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.”

The text goes on to say, ‘So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.

If you ask me, Joseph was being a bit of a tool. If you are the KNOWN favorite, a little humility goes a long way. If you have a dream where you come out on top…you may not want to pronounce such dream to the people who are doing the bowing.

So there’s trouble…right here in Canaan City…wait, wrong Musical…

But whatever is brewing, both father and son seem oblivious…so Joseph heads out to a remote location to give his brothers a message…without a thought in his mind that his brothers are about to invite him to a new future.

At first when they see him, they conspire to murder him, and then in a laughable move towards compassion…to merely throw him in a pit…and sell him as a slave…after all, they concede, “he is our brother, our own flesh…”

Oh…how nice of you. Don’t hurt him…just sell him off and fake his death and make your father to believe his favorite son is dead. After all, he is our brother…

See, at least our kids aren’t THAT BAD…

These brothers seem so vile to us…how could they do this?

And yet, if I’m honest, I know that I’ve played their part before.

-I’ve seethed with jealousy towards a more preferred, a more beautiful, a more talented…

-We delight when the mighty fall…when people get what they have coming to them…just as long as it’s not us…

Reuben seems at first like a glimmer of hope…maybe we can play his part…but even Reuben shows us the underbelly of the human condition.

He wants to return Joseph to his father…in hopes that in returning him he could gain some much needed favor with his dad.

When he learns his brother has been sold…indeed he tears his clothes, but his words are telling…“The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?” The repetition of the “I” in the Hebrew is even more emphatic than it appears in the English.

Reuben is focused on himself instead of on the fate of his brother:

And so instead of confessing all to his father, Reuben goes along with the lie the brothers tell their father, that Joseph has been killed by wild animals.

Act One: the human condition.

Jealousy, rage, favoritism, pride…this is what happens when we are left to ourselves.

This is a pretty typical ending to Act 1…This is when the trouble peaks…when life unravels…when hope is lost…

At the end of Joseph…Act 1, he’s in prison. After a few good years in Egypt managing Potiphar’s house, Joseph is wrongly accused and thrown in jail.

Act 1 ends in loneliness: a father mourning the loss of his son, the son far away in a jail cell, and the brothers are alone with their burdensome secret.

Poor, poor Joseph…what’s he going to do?

---

Can you imagine if the story ended here?

Can you imagine if there wasn’t an Act 2?

-Joseph would stay in prison…

But not just in Joseph…what if other stories ended with Act 1?

-Simba would never take his place as rightful king of the Pride Land…

-Elsa would never bring back summer to Arendelle…

-The rebels in Les Miserable would be left singing ‘One day more” without…One more day!

And not just in these stories…what about in our story?

What if our story ended with Act 1?

-Left in our sin, our shame, our regret, our poor choices…

Act 1: the human condition.

But never, ever the end.

Our story…God’s story…ALWAYS has two acts.

There is always an ACT 2…

In my story, your story, and Joseph’s story:

And so hear now…ACT 2:

Hannah and Jackson

13 chapters have passed during intermission… and a lot has happened…Pharaoh, freedom, famine… a long expected reunion between Joseph and Jacob…

But this Act 2 is about restoration.

Brother to brothers.

With Jacob dead, the brothers are at first a little uneasy…will they finally get what they have coming to them? Will Joseph throw them into a pit?

And so instead they throw themselves before their brother…weeping and bowing down before him and presenting themselves as slaves…(huh…sound familiar?)

But Joseph has learned about humility…and forgiveness…and despite any temptation to proclaim, “See! I knew this would happen…remember that dream???” He resists.

And instead, Joseph says to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 20 Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.

What you intended for harm…God intended for good.

 If Act 1 is about our human condition…

Then Act 2 is about God redeeming our human condition.

 God brings good out of bad. It’s as simple and wonderful as that.

Paul will echo this later in Romans, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”

In everything…God means it for good. He said so in at the very beginning in Genesis 1 and again here in Genesis 50.

This is the plot to this story and every story.

Walter Bruggeman says, “The evil plans of human folks do not defeat God’s purpose. Instead, they unwittingly become ways in which God’s plan is furthered.”

Act 1 is the mess we’ve made.

Act 2 is God bringing about forgiveness, grace, and redemption from our mess.

Act 2 is the cross. God’s ultimate work of bringing good to the world to reign over evil.

Perhaps some of you feel like you’re stuck in Act 1…you feel resentful and hurt…maybe towards a sibling…or maybe a spouse, a friend, a parent.

And maybe throwing them into a pit hasn’t crossed your mind…until this morning…but certainly writing off the relationship has…

What would it take to get you to move to Act 2?

To charge ahead with reckless forgiveness and grace?

After all, that’s what God did with us. He brought us into Act 2 well before we deserved it.

Joseph forgave his brothers. God forgives us.

Friends, if nothing is out of the realm of God’s forgiveness…surely nothing should be out of the realm of our forgiveness…

There is always room for Act 2.

This morning, put down the script of Act 1: we know the lines all too well.

Time to watch and see how God is moving us all into Act 2:

Taking what we intended for harm, and intending it for good.

Let’s pray…

We thank you, Holy God, that there is always an Act 2. We thank you for the ultimate redemption you offer us through the cross. May we embody this Act 2 in all our relationships, so that we may be a conduit of your GOOD in the world.

September 18, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Genesis 15:1-21

Movement 1: Setting the Stage

We have been created to belong. Hard-wired by God for connection and relationship. Created to belong to God, to one another, and to this world in which we live.

We talked about this last week when we heard the opening chapters of Genesis, where God creates the earth and the heavens. We saw that the very first act of God is an act of hospitality. God forms man and woman in his image, and makes room for them in the Garden. It’s a place of shalom...flourishing, wholeness, interconnectedness...the way the world is meant to be.

But it doesn’t stay that way. It isn’t long before tragedy strikes. Adam and Eve, deceived by the serpent, distrust God and rebel and shalom is disrupted. God seeks them out in their hiding, and in an incredible act of grace, God covers them in their shame. But there are consequences, and so they are expelled from the Garden, sent east of Eden with their bags packed.

Before the story gets better, I’m sorry to say it gets worse. There are two brothers—one named Cain and the other Able. Burning with jealousy, Cain kills Able and cries out, “Am I my brother’s keeper?’ as the blood of his own kin soaks into the ground.

Human civilization spreads and then more violence and darkness. Then a flood. A man named Noah and his family, and an ark full of animals bobbing on the surface of the water for forty days and forty nights.

God starts over. A world washed clean. But even after this new beginning, it is only a matter of time before human hearts, “prone to wander,” would once again “leave the God they love.” Next comes the building of a tower reaching up to heaven, another futile effort like in the Garden to become gods themselves.

It’s one tragedy piled onto another. This story is not going well. Is there any hope?

 But God.... Two words. Such powerful words.

  But God stays in the story. But God doesn’t abandon his creation or give up on us. But God acts. God pursues his creation and is determined to take the whole world back.

 God calls a man and his wife, nomads, to be the father and mother of a people who would be a channel of blessing to all the families of the earth; a light to all the nations. Abram is his name...he would later become “Abraham.” And Sarai is her name...she would later become “Sarah.”

To Abraham and Sarah God comes, places a call on their lives and makes a promise. A three-fold promise: to give them land, blessing, and a family. Here is it is in Genesis chapter 12:

 “Now the LORD said to Abram: ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

And Abraham and Sarah went. They pulled up their stakes and they went in faith. They bring along some relatives too—their nephew, Lot, and his family. And that ends up being a big mistake (which is probably no surprise). They go to Egypt, which is a whole other story in itself. And eventually they make it to the land of Canaan.

After having a family feud over who would get which parts of the Promise Land, Lot and Abraham agree to divide the land between their families. Abraham made the mistake of letting Lot pick first, and of course Lot chose the half that was fertile and lush around the Jordan River, leaving Abraham with the barren land to the west. You see, all of it was called “the Promise Land,” but some of it was more promising than others. And Abraham and Sarah got stuck with the less promising land.

But the next thing that happens is the worst of all. Chosen by God to be the father and mother of a great nation, Abraham and Sarah get the heartbreaking news that, after extensive medical tests, Sarah’s womb is as barren as the sorry land Lot had stuck them with.

They try to take matters into their own hands and Abraham names the child of one of his slaves as his heir. He needs to put somebody’s name on his will. Somebody needs to carry the family name forward. If God won’t follow through on his promise to give them children, they will do whatever it takes to make sure that there is an heir and thus a future.

But that doesn’t take away the heart ache or the disappointment. They were in their seventies when God first came to them and made the promise—to bless them with a land and offspring. Now many years have passed. How many? Hard to tell, but enough to bury the hopes and dreams they once carried. At some point you take the cards you’ve been dealt and you try to move on.

This is where our story picks up today. Hear the Word of the Lord from Genesis chapter 15. Read Scripture.

Movement 2: The Promise Affirmed

What do you do when someone you trust makes you a promise and doesn’t keep it? When someone gives you their word but doesn’t follow through?

What about when the one who made the promise is God?

This is the predicament in which Abraham and Sarah find themselves in this part of the story. God made a promise to them so long ago, but as far as their experience goes, God hasn’t done what he said he would do.

And then, years later, God appears to Abraham in a vision and reminds him of the promise. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be great.”

You can’t blame Abraham for the way he responds to God here. Unfortunately, the Bible isn’t audible in the sense that we get the tone and emotion in the words on the page. We have to interpret that. So when Abram says, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me...” I highly doubt he is saying this in a sweet, pious tone.

No, I hear this as a lament, a complaint, spoken in a place of frustration and resignation, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue to be childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?...You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”

In other words, “Lord GOD, you tell me not to fear? You tell me you are my shield and my reward will be great? You haven’t followed through on anything you promised. Why should I believe you now?”

I know what it’s like to feel this way. Do you? No, you can’t blame Abraham for his frustration, for the way he is guarding himself. When you’ve been hurt before, especially by God, you figure out how to keep your heart from being hurt again. Best just to keep the expectations low, to not dare to dream or hope. Then you won’t be disappointed, right?

But God doesn’t back down. God is serious about his promises. Not just speaking them to us, but showing us. God takes Abraham outside the confines of his tent and beneath the wide open expanse of the endless sky and says, “Look at the stars. And count them. So shall your descendents be.”

Movement 3: Learning to Trust in the Dark

One of the things that strikes me about this story is how much of it happens at night, in the dark. God first speaks to Abraham in a vision which happens at night. God takes Abraham outside and points up to the star-studded night sky. After God affirms the promise he causes Abraham to fall into a deep sleep in which a terrifying darkness descends upon him. And then God will later confirm his covenant with Abraham again in the evening, in the form of a flickering torch dancing across a pool of blood from animal carcases.

One way to hear this story is to pick up on the metaphor of night—those times in our lives when we can’t see a thing and we’re scared and the future looks uncertain or even empty. What St. John of the Cross would call “the dark night of the soul”—when our soul feels barren and empty as if God is far away or has even abandoned us.

It’s during these times—when we are scared or lost or waiting in the dark—that God has a way of showing up and affirming his promise. Don’t be afraid. I am your shield. I am with you and will do what I promised.

And God doesn’t just speak the promise. He shows us the promise. How? In many ways perhaps. But most often God shows us the promise in the sacraments—in the waters of baptism. In the bread and the cup. They are God’s way of drawing us out of the confines of our own darkness and fear and resignation and pointing up to the endless sky and saying “Look, this is to remind you that my promises are true. No matter how scared or uncertain or discouraged you feel—this reminds you that you belong to me. You belong to my Promise. I am with you. And my promises hold.”

Perhaps some of the dynamics involved in times when we feel let down by God may have to do with the way we understand God’s promises. When God says we belong to him and he is with us and has a future for us, I’ll be the first to admit that I want that to mean that my life will be struggle free and without disappointment. I want it to mean that God will just bless my plans and the script that I have written for my life.

But God never promised that. What he promises is that he will be our God, and we are his people. What he promises is that nothing will ever be able to separate us from his love in Christ. What he promises is that all things will eventually work together according to his purposes. What he promises is that he will be with us to the end, he will sustain us in every trial, and his grace will be sufficient for whatever we face. And in the end, all shall be made well.

Even after God affirms his promise to Abraham—to bless him with land and children—he doesn’t say anything about how it will be easy. In fact, he warns that it will be difficult and there will be hardship, but God will be with them.

God makes his promises to Abraham in the dark. And Abraham has to make a choice. Will he trust God, even when the promise seems so outrageous and beyond the scope of his imagination? Or will he hide in his place of self-protection and resignation?

Abraham chooses to trust God, even as he waits in the dark. “And he believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” I actually like the way the Jewish Study Bible says it better, which is closer to the Hebrew: “And he put his trust in the LORD, He reckoned it to his merit” (italics added).

Because maybe the most important thing isn’t that we are able to believe God’s promises. Maybe it’s more important that we choose to trust God himself, even when his promises seem too much to believe. So beyond our believing. The older I get, and the longer I’ve followed Jesus, the more convinced I’ve become that faith is less about certainty and more about trusting and obeying God in the midst of uncertainty.

Abraham chooses to put his trust in God, when the promise seemed too big. Trust that wasn’t easy. Trust that didn’t suddenly mean that all his pain and apprehension and doubt was just vanquished. In fact, right after we’re told that Abraham put his trust in God, we see Abraham doubt God’s promise, “O LORD God, how shall I know that your promise is true?”

There’s something really important here about what it means to choose to trust God in the dark. Could it mean that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive, that faith doesn’t preclude doubt? That the hospitality of God extends to make room for our doubts, mixed in with our faith, and that’s okay?

I love how Frederick Buechner says it: “If you don’t have doubts, you’re either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are ants in the pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.”

Here’s another way to say it: faith is not the absence of doubt but the decision to trust God in spite of our doubts and fears. How did that man say it in the New Testament, when he asked Jesus to heal his child? I remember: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Movement 4: Grasped by God’s Faithfulness

It’s what we see in Abraham, “Father Abraham,” who would become a model of authentic faith. Trusting God even when we have our doubts. I believe; help my unbelief.

Because maybe, in the end, the most important thing in this story—and in all of our stories—is not the size of our faith but the size of God’s faithfulness. Not the sturdiness of our belief but the steadiness of God’s covenant. This story ends with God passing through the carcass of animals in the form of a torch, a way of confirming God’s covenant with Abraham and his offspring.

The God who promises to be faithful to us even when we doubt and hide and struggle and worry and are faith-less. The God who has plans and a hopeful future that is more than we can understand or comprehend—the promise of a future that is bigger than any of us and pulls us outside of ourselves and into God’s hopeful future for the whole world.

This is where hope is found. Not in our faith but in God’s faithfulness. Not in our ability to hold onto God’s promises, but in God’s tenacious love that holds onto us. A love that whispers, “Keep trusting me.” A love that will never let us go. Not ever.

Not even in the dark.

Amen.

September 18, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Genesis 15:1-21

Movement 1: Setting the Stage

We have been created to belong. Hard-wired by God for connection and relationship. Created to belong to God, to one another, and to this world in which we live.

We talked about this last week when we heard the opening chapters of Genesis, where God creates the earth and the heavens. We saw that the very first act of God is an act of hospitality. God forms man and woman in his image, and makes room for them in the Garden. It’s a place of shalom...flourishing, wholeness, interconnectedness...the way the world is meant to be.

But it doesn’t stay that way. It isn’t long before tragedy strikes. Adam and Eve, deceived by the serpent, distrust God and rebel and shalom is disrupted. God seeks them out in their hiding, and in an incredible act of grace, God covers them in their shame. But there are consequences, and so they are expelled from the Garden, sent east of Eden with their bags packed.

Before the story gets better, I’m sorry to say it gets worse. There are two brothers—one named Cain and the other Able. Burning with jealousy, Cain kills Able and cries out, “Am I my brother’s keeper?’ as the blood of his own kin soaks into the ground.

Human civilization spreads and then more violence and darkness. Then a flood. A man named Noah and his family, and an ark full of animals bobbing on the surface of the water for forty days and forty nights.

God starts over. A world washed clean. But even after this new beginning, it is only a matter of time before human hearts, “prone to wander,” would once again “leave the God they love.” Next comes the building of a tower reaching up to heaven, another futile effort like in the Garden to become gods themselves.

It’s one tragedy piled onto another. This story is not going well. Is there any hope?

 But God.... Two words. Such powerful words.

  But God stays in the story. But God doesn’t abandon his creation or give up on us. But God acts. God pursues his creation and is determined to take the whole world back.

 God calls a man and his wife, nomads, to be the father and mother of a people who would be a channel of blessing to all the families of the earth; a light to all the nations. Abram is his name...he would later become “Abraham.” And Sarai is her name...she would later become “Sarah.”

To Abraham and Sarah God comes, places a call on their lives and makes a promise. A three-fold promise: to give them land, blessing, and a family. Here is it is in Genesis chapter 12:

 “Now the LORD said to Abram: ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

And Abraham and Sarah went. They pulled up their stakes and they went in faith. They bring along some relatives too—their nephew, Lot, and his family. And that ends up being a big mistake (which is probably no surprise). They go to Egypt, which is a whole other story in itself. And eventually they make it to the land of Canaan.

After having a family feud over who would get which parts of the Promise Land, Lot and Abraham agree to divide the land between their families. Abraham made the mistake of letting Lot pick first, and of course Lot chose the half that was fertile and lush around the Jordan River, leaving Abraham with the barren land to the west. You see, all of it was called “the Promise Land,” but some of it was more promising than others. And Abraham and Sarah got stuck with the less promising land.

But the next thing that happens is the worst of all. Chosen by God to be the father and mother of a great nation, Abraham and Sarah get the heartbreaking news that, after extensive medical tests, Sarah’s womb is as barren as the sorry land Lot had stuck them with.

They try to take matters into their own hands and Abraham names the child of one of his slaves as his heir. He needs to put somebody’s name on his will. Somebody needs to carry the family name forward. If God won’t follow through on his promise to give them children, they will do whatever it takes to make sure that there is an heir and thus a future.

But that doesn’t take away the heart ache or the disappointment. They were in their seventies when God first came to them and made the promise—to bless them with a land and offspring. Now many years have passed. How many? Hard to tell, but enough to bury the hopes and dreams they once carried. At some point you take the cards you’ve been dealt and you try to move on.

This is where our story picks up today. Hear the Word of the Lord from Genesis chapter 15. Read Scripture.

Movement 2: The Promise Affirmed

What do you do when someone you trust makes you a promise and doesn’t keep it? When someone gives you their word but doesn’t follow through?

What about when the one who made the promise is God?

This is the predicament in which Abraham and Sarah find themselves in this part of the story. God made a promise to them so long ago, but as far as their experience goes, God hasn’t done what he said he would do.

And then, years later, God appears to Abraham in a vision and reminds him of the promise. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be great.”

You can’t blame Abraham for the way he responds to God here. Unfortunately, the Bible isn’t audible in the sense that we get the tone and emotion in the words on the page. We have to interpret that. So when Abram says, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me...” I highly doubt he is saying this in a sweet, pious tone.

No, I hear this as a lament, a complaint, spoken in a place of frustration and resignation, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue to be childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?...You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”

In other words, “Lord GOD, you tell me not to fear? You tell me you are my shield and my reward will be great? You haven’t followed through on anything you promised. Why should I believe you now?”

I know what it’s like to feel this way. Do you? No, you can’t blame Abraham for his frustration, for the way he is guarding himself. When you’ve been hurt before, especially by God, you figure out how to keep your heart from being hurt again. Best just to keep the expectations low, to not dare to dream or hope. Then you won’t be disappointed, right?

But God doesn’t back down. God is serious about his promises. Not just speaking them to us, but showing us. God takes Abraham outside the confines of his tent and beneath the wide open expanse of the endless sky and says, “Look at the stars. And count them. So shall your descendents be.”

Movement 3: Learning to Trust in the Dark

One of the things that strikes me about this story is how much of it happens at night, in the dark. God first speaks to Abraham in a vision which happens at night. God takes Abraham outside and points up to the star-studded night sky. After God affirms the promise he causes Abraham to fall into a deep sleep in which a terrifying darkness descends upon him. And then God will later confirm his covenant with Abraham again in the evening, in the form of a flickering torch dancing across a pool of blood from animal carcases.

One way to hear this story is to pick up on the metaphor of night—those times in our lives when we can’t see a thing and we’re scared and the future looks uncertain or even empty. What St. John of the Cross would call “the dark night of the soul”—when our soul feels barren and empty as if God is far away or has even abandoned us.

It’s during these times—when we are scared or lost or waiting in the dark—that God has a way of showing up and affirming his promise. Don’t be afraid. I am your shield. I am with you and will do what I promised.

And God doesn’t just speak the promise. He shows us the promise. How? In many ways perhaps. But most often God shows us the promise in the sacraments—in the waters of baptism. In the bread and the cup. They are God’s way of drawing us out of the confines of our own darkness and fear and resignation and pointing up to the endless sky and saying “Look, this is to remind you that my promises are true. No matter how scared or uncertain or discouraged you feel—this reminds you that you belong to me. You belong to my Promise. I am with you. And my promises hold.”

Perhaps some of the dynamics involved in times when we feel let down by God may have to do with the way we understand God’s promises. When God says we belong to him and he is with us and has a future for us, I’ll be the first to admit that I want that to mean that my life will be struggle free and without disappointment. I want it to mean that God will just bless my plans and the script that I have written for my life.

But God never promised that. What he promises is that he will be our God, and we are his people. What he promises is that nothing will ever be able to separate us from his love in Christ. What he promises is that all things will eventually work together according to his purposes. What he promises is that he will be with us to the end, he will sustain us in every trial, and his grace will be sufficient for whatever we face. And in the end, all shall be made well.

Even after God affirms his promise to Abraham—to bless him with land and children—he doesn’t say anything about how it will be easy. In fact, he warns that it will be difficult and there will be hardship, but God will be with them.

God makes his promises to Abraham in the dark. And Abraham has to make a choice. Will he trust God, even when the promise seems so outrageous and beyond the scope of his imagination? Or will he hide in his place of self-protection and resignation?

Abraham chooses to trust God, even as he waits in the dark. “And he believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” I actually like the way the Jewish Study Bible says it better, which is closer to the Hebrew: “And he put his trust in the LORD, He reckoned it to his merit” (italics added).

Because maybe the most important thing isn’t that we are able to believe God’s promises. Maybe it’s more important that we choose to trust God himself, even when his promises seem too much to believe. So beyond our believing. The older I get, and the longer I’ve followed Jesus, the more convinced I’ve become that faith is less about certainty and more about trusting and obeying God in the midst of uncertainty.

Abraham chooses to put his trust in God, when the promise seemed too big. Trust that wasn’t easy. Trust that didn’t suddenly mean that all his pain and apprehension and doubt was just vanquished. In fact, right after we’re told that Abraham put his trust in God, we see Abraham doubt God’s promise, “O LORD God, how shall I know that your promise is true?”

There’s something really important here about what it means to choose to trust God in the dark. Could it mean that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive, that faith doesn’t preclude doubt? That the hospitality of God extends to make room for our doubts, mixed in with our faith, and that’s okay?

I love how Frederick Buechner says it: “If you don’t have doubts, you’re either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are ants in the pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.”

Here’s another way to say it: faith is not the absence of doubt but the decision to trust God in spite of our doubts and fears. How did that man say it in the New Testament, when he asked Jesus to heal his child? I remember: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Movement 4: Grasped by God’s Faithfulness

It’s what we see in Abraham, “Father Abraham,” who would become a model of authentic faith. Trusting God even when we have our doubts. I believe; help my unbelief.

Because maybe, in the end, the most important thing in this story—and in all of our stories—is not the size of our faith but the size of God’s faithfulness. Not the sturdiness of our belief but the steadiness of God’s covenant. This story ends with God passing through the carcass of animals in the form of a torch, a way of confirming God’s covenant with Abraham and his offspring.

The God who promises to be faithful to us even when we doubt and hide and struggle and worry and are faith-less. The God who has plans and a hopeful future that is more than we can understand or comprehend—the promise of a future that is bigger than any of us and pulls us outside of ourselves and into God’s hopeful future for the whole world.

This is where hope is found. Not in our faith but in God’s faithfulness. Not in our ability to hold onto God’s promises, but in God’s tenacious love that holds onto us. A love that whispers, “Keep trusting me.” A love that will never let us go. Not ever.

Not even in the dark.

Amen.

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-13, 21-24

There are certain questions your kids ask that you never forget.

 Questions that open up conversations that get etched into your memory and stick with you over time.  Some of them are funny.   Daddy, since your eyes are blue, does that mean you see everything in blue?

 Some of them are uncomfortable.  Mommy, where do babies come from?  Does Daddy know?

 And then there are those questions that catch you by surprise and have a way of haunting you.

 My oldest daughter asked me one of those “catch you by surprise” questions several years ago, when she was eight years old.  We were sitting at the breakfast table, and out of the blue she said:   “Dad, do you ever feel like you don’t belong?”

  “Well, ah…yes, I have times I’ve felt that way,” I stammered through a mouthful of granola cereal.  I turned the question back on her: “Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Yeah, I feel that way a lot.  I just wish, you know, that the other kids at school would accept me.”

 She said it so matter-of-factly, without even looking up from her cereal bowl.  Which made her words break my heart all the more, the way she seemed to have just sort of accepted this reality in her mind that she’s different from other kids and doesn’t fit in.

 I remember struggling with all of these issues of identity and belonging as a kid, but it is another experience entirely too watch your own child struggle through it.  How is it that, before kids can even read and write, they’re already figuring out how to tease and exclude others, who gets invited to birthday parties and who doesn’t, who gets to join in games at recess and who gets left out, who gets to sit with you on the bus and who has to sit alone?

 From the moment we enter this world, we are being measured, tested, evaluated, and compared with others.  As infants we are slotted into percentiles (with weight and height and even the circumference of our heads!).  In elementary school we are handed number two pencils and standardized tests to see how well we perform.  And it doesn’t get any easier from here.  Ours is a culture of performance where the pressure is on to make the grade, meet expectations, measure up and look good.  And if we’re honest, so often our harshest critic is the face that stares at us each day in the mirror. 

 At eight-years old, my daughter was already giving voice to deep longing within every human heart, which is this…

 We were created to belong… with a desire to be known and to know others…for connection and relationship.  To know that our lives matter, that we are worthy of love and acceptance.

 Can I put my daughter’s question in the space for us this morning, and ask you…

 Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?

 What if I told you that God made you to belong—to him, to others, to this world?  That God created this world and has made room for you and desires you to flourish and be whole?  That your life, your story, is part of a story that is bigger than just yourself?

 Would you believe me?

 The Bible opens with the book of Genesis, which tells the story of how, in the beginning, God created this universe and everything in it.   There are really two different creation stories in Genesis, and they both go together. 

 The first, Genesis 1, gives us a picture of a transcendent Creator who is awesome in power and majesty—a God who creates this entire universe and everything in it by the sheer power of his Word and his Spirit.  God says, “Let it be…” and it happens!  And after each act of creation, God declares it “good.”  

 This first story of creation gives us a cosmic, bird’s eye view—like we’re getting a view of God’s creative act from the Hubble space telescope.  We are pulled into the wonder and awe of swirling galaxies and spinning planets and fiery stars.  The earth suddenly exploding with vegetation and flowers and all kinds of living creatures.

 Then there’s a second creation story, the one we heard earlier, in Genesis chapter 2.  It gives us a different picture.  Instead of viewing God’s act of creation from the Hubble Telescope, Genesis 2 shows us God’s act of creation from here on earth, from the ground up.  Genesis 2 gives us a picture of a God who is imminent, a God who is not far off in the distance but who is present with us, who gets his hands dirty and forms us and rest of the creation by playing in the dirt. 

Whereas Genesis 1 tells us “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”, Genesis 2 switches the order: “In the day the LORD God made the earth and the heavens…”

Take both of these stories together, and we are given an incredible picture of who God is and what God is like—a Creator who is awesome in power and who is intimately present with us.  What both of these stories show us is that God, at his heart, is a God of hospitality.  The first act of God—creating the earth and the heavens and everything in it—is an act of hospitality.

 Not hospitality in the Martha Stewart sense of the word.  But hospitality in the truest biblical sense of the word, which is all about making room for others and embracing others with unconditional love.

 God is supreme and self-sufficient, all powerful and perfectly sovereign.  God didn’t need to create the earth and the heavens.  God didn’t need to create us.  And God wasn’t obligated to make room for us in the world, in relationship with him.

 But this is precisely what God does.  In his extravagant love, God forms humanity from the dust of the ground, and breathes his breath into our nostrils, and we are given life.  And if that were not enough, God creates a world, a Garden, and puts Adam and Eve in it—a place for them to belong.  And God gives them purpose, shares his power, by allowing them to till the earth and keep it.  Two words, “till” and “keep”, that are not about exploiting or abusing but “serving” and “protecting.” 

 It’s such a beautiful picture of the way things are intended to be.  The Hebrew word is shalom, and it means deep interconnectedness, flourishing, wholeness.  God says to us: You belong.  You belong to me.  You belong to each other.  You belong to the creation and it belongs to you.  This is what it means to bear God’s image: to recognize that every human being, every person, is inherently worthy of love and reflects the image of God.

 But then something happens.  Something tragic.  There are two significant trees in the Garden.  One is the tree of life, and God says, “eat from this tree, and every other tree, all you want…save one.  This tree here, this one tree in the Garden, is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and you must not eat from this tree.  For the day you do it, you will surely die.”

 God loves us unconditionally, but his love has boundaries.  And his instructions to Adam and Eve were not a prohibition for its own sake; rather it was a prohibition for their own good, for their own flourishing.

 But then there’s a serpent, the craftiest of all the animals that God made.  And the serpent twists God’s truth and convinces Adam and Eve to tell themselves a different story.  “Did God really say…” “God isn’t concerned about your own good; he’s concerned about keeping you in your place, keeping you from becoming like him.”

 And Adam and Eve take the bait.  Before they bite the fruit they bite the lie and start to question God’s trustworthiness, doubt God’s love for them.  Can we really trust God?  Does he really love me?  Will he really provide and care for me?  Or do I need to take matters into my own hands and look out for myself?

 I know what its like to be tempted by that fruit.   Do you?

 Stories are powerful things.  The stories others tell us and we believe; the stories we tell ourselves and believe.  Stories about God.  Stories about ourselves.  More than we realize, our stories shape the way we think, feel and live.

 Adam and Eve start to tell themselves a different story about God, about themselves, about each other, about how to flourish in the garden.  And the focus shifts from God at the center, trusting God, loving God, and seeing themselves and each other as God sees them.  Now the focus is on themselves, their own anxiety and fear.  Can God really be trusted…? 

 They act out of their anxiety and fear and they eat the forbidden fruit instead of trusting God.  They take matters into their own hands, move from being content to be like God to wanting to be their own gods.

 And now we’ve got a mess on our hands.  Shalom is disrupted, broken, shattered.  Their relationship with God is broken.  Their relationship with each other is broken.  Their relationship with creation is broken.  Their relationship with themselves is broken.  And our experience is now not one of belonging—to God, to each other, to the world—but one of isolation, loneliness, disconnect and shame.

 It’s one of the most striking parts in the story.  Before they ate the fruit, when things were the way God intended, Genesis tells us, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” (2:24)

 Which is to say that they were completely vulnerable, comfortable in their own skin (literally), and there was no shame.

 But now, after their act of distrust that led to disobedience, we’re told “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked.” And they are flooded with shame.  This story is not primarily about sex, its about something much deeper.  It’s about trust, and it’s about vulnerability and embracing our worth and calling as image-bearers of God.

 We need to pause here, because this is such a critical part of the story, and the experience of every human being.  There’s a reason that Brene Brown’s Ted talk on shame is the most highly watched Ted Talk still today.  Shame is a real and crippling experience for most of us, dare I say all of us?

 Whereas embarrassment and guilt (which can be good things) get at the way we feel when we do something we shouldn’t do or don’t do something we should, shame is something else all together.  Shame strikes at our core identity, our deep sense of worth.  Embarrassment or guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.” Embarrassment or guilt says, “I failed at that effort.” Shame says, “I am a failure.”   At its heart, shame whispers to our souls: “You are not worthy of love.  If you are to be loved and accepted, you have to hustle for it.”

 Adam and Eve are naked and feel shame, and so they for a second time take matters into their own hands.  They stitch together fig leaves to cover their vulnerability and shame.  Really?  Fig leaves?  Is that really going to do the trick?  I bet that was the man’s idea!

 Whereas love embraces vulnerability and moves us towards each other, shame leads us to cover up our vulnerability, to self-protect and withdraw.  We hide.  We hide from God.  We hide from each other.  We even hide from ourselves.

 And this is the crazy thing: we were created for belonging—to be connected to God, to one another, to ourselves, to creation.  We most deeply crave to be known and loved as we are.  Yet, in our anxiety, fear and shame, we do the opposite!  We self-protect, we conceal, we pretend and put on a front to look good, we withhold ourselves and pull away.

 The story could have ended here.  I suppose you could say it should have ended here.  But it doesn’t.  I absolutely love the next part.

 God seeks his children out.  Though his love has been spurned, though his children have distrusted him and disobeyed him, God comes looking for them.

 God calls out to his children, who are hiding in the trees, “Where are you?”

 It’s another one of those questions that catches you by surprise and haunts you.

 Where are you?

 God’s not asking it for himself, as if God is ignorant of where his children are hiding.

 He asks it for their sake.  He asks the same question of us for our sake.

 Where are you?

 It’s not a rebuke thundered from the mouth of an angry disciplinarian who’s about to fly off the handle.

 It’s an invitation spoken in the sorrow and love and grace of a broken-hearted parent.

 Where are you?

 Where are you hiding?  Behind what are you hiding?  How are you self-protecting?  In what ways are you still trying to perform, please, hustle, control, keep me and others at a distance?

 Where does your shame have you stuck?

 Name it.  There is power in naming.  Shame thrives in secrecy.  It loses its power when you name it.

 And come out of hiding and into my presence.  Trust me.  Let me remind you of the true story of who you are, why you were made, of how much you are so deeply and extravagantly loved.  Loved not as you should be but as you are.

 After Adam and Eve shuffle out of hiding, heads down in shame, and play the blame game, God shows tough love and explains the consequences of their distrust and disobedience.  And there are consequences.

 But these consequences don’t change the fact that, at their core, they are still loved by God.  They still belong to God, although they will now have to live east of Eden and life will be hard.  They still belong to each other.  They belong to the world.  God is not finished.  Not with them, not with the story.  The rest of the Bible, with all of its different stories and authors, will tell a cohesive story about how God will be reckless and extravagant in his love to restore shalom and set things right.

 And he gives a preview in a simple and beautiful gesture.  God takes them in their place of shame, in their vulnerability, and he does for them what they cannot do for themselves (God knows they already tried).

 God covers their shame. 

 They tried to cover it up.  Covering shame and “covering it up” is a world of difference, let’s not confuse them.  “Covering it up” won’t work.  It needs to be covered, they need to be covered, clothed in the grace and the love of God.  And that’s exactly what God does.

 And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.

Our shame, our sin and brokenness, needs more than just being covered up.  It needs to be dealt with, healed, removed.  We need to be forgiven and made whole.  Only God’s grace can do this.

 All of this is a precursor to another who would come—a man from Nazareth named Jesus Christ who would be stripped of his own clothes, humiliated on another tree, cut off and isolated from everyone, abandoned even by his closest friends.

 One who, as the very embodiment of Love and Hospitality, would go the distance to find us all in our place of hiding, take our shame upon himself, so that by his wounds we might be healed.

 Restored in our relationship with God.  Restored in our relationship with one another. Mended in our relationship with ourselves.  The whole creation healed and made new.

 And he covers us with his very garments of righteousness, clothes us with himself—his very life and love—and makes us new.

 Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?

 Can I tell you today that there is one who loves you, is seeking you, calling out to you to come out of hiding and come as you are, with all your shame, and let him cover you?

 What is your only comfort in life and death? asks the Heidelberg Catechism. 

That I am not my own but I BELONG…in body and soul, in life and death, to may faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-13, 21-24

There are certain questions your kids ask that you never forget.

 Questions that open up conversations that get etched into your memory and stick with you over time.  Some of them are funny.   Daddy, since your eyes are blue, does that mean you see everything in blue?

 Some of them are uncomfortable.  Mommy, where do babies come from?  Does Daddy know?

 And then there are those questions that catch you by surprise and have a way of haunting you.

 My oldest daughter asked me one of those “catch you by surprise” questions several years ago, when she was eight years old.  We were sitting at the breakfast table, and out of the blue she said:   “Dad, do you ever feel like you don’t belong?”

  “Well, ah…yes, I have times I’ve felt that way,” I stammered through a mouthful of granola cereal.  I turned the question back on her: “Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Yeah, I feel that way a lot.  I just wish, you know, that the other kids at school would accept me.”

 She said it so matter-of-factly, without even looking up from her cereal bowl.  Which made her words break my heart all the more, the way she seemed to have just sort of accepted this reality in her mind that she’s different from other kids and doesn’t fit in.

 I remember struggling with all of these issues of identity and belonging as a kid, but it is another experience entirely too watch your own child struggle through it.  How is it that, before kids can even read and write, they’re already figuring out how to tease and exclude others, who gets invited to birthday parties and who doesn’t, who gets to join in games at recess and who gets left out, who gets to sit with you on the bus and who has to sit alone?

 From the moment we enter this world, we are being measured, tested, evaluated, and compared with others.  As infants we are slotted into percentiles (with weight and height and even the circumference of our heads!).  In elementary school we are handed number two pencils and standardized tests to see how well we perform.  And it doesn’t get any easier from here.  Ours is a culture of performance where the pressure is on to make the grade, meet expectations, measure up and look good.  And if we’re honest, so often our harshest critic is the face that stares at us each day in the mirror. 

 At eight-years old, my daughter was already giving voice to deep longing within every human heart, which is this…

 We were created to belong… with a desire to be known and to know others…for connection and relationship.  To know that our lives matter, that we are worthy of love and acceptance.

 Can I put my daughter’s question in the space for us this morning, and ask you…

 Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?

 What if I told you that God made you to belong—to him, to others, to this world?  That God created this world and has made room for you and desires you to flourish and be whole?  That your life, your story, is part of a story that is bigger than just yourself?

 Would you believe me?

 The Bible opens with the book of Genesis, which tells the story of how, in the beginning, God created this universe and everything in it.   There are really two different creation stories in Genesis, and they both go together. 

 The first, Genesis 1, gives us a picture of a transcendent Creator who is awesome in power and majesty—a God who creates this entire universe and everything in it by the sheer power of his Word and his Spirit.  God says, “Let it be…” and it happens!  And after each act of creation, God declares it “good.”  

 This first story of creation gives us a cosmic, bird’s eye view—like we’re getting a view of God’s creative act from the Hubble space telescope.  We are pulled into the wonder and awe of swirling galaxies and spinning planets and fiery stars.  The earth suddenly exploding with vegetation and flowers and all kinds of living creatures.

 Then there’s a second creation story, the one we heard earlier, in Genesis chapter 2.  It gives us a different picture.  Instead of viewing God’s act of creation from the Hubble Telescope, Genesis 2 shows us God’s act of creation from here on earth, from the ground up.  Genesis 2 gives us a picture of a God who is imminent, a God who is not far off in the distance but who is present with us, who gets his hands dirty and forms us and rest of the creation by playing in the dirt. 

Whereas Genesis 1 tells us “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”, Genesis 2 switches the order: “In the day the LORD God made the earth and the heavens…”

Take both of these stories together, and we are given an incredible picture of who God is and what God is like—a Creator who is awesome in power and who is intimately present with us.  What both of these stories show us is that God, at his heart, is a God of hospitality.  The first act of God—creating the earth and the heavens and everything in it—is an act of hospitality.

 Not hospitality in the Martha Stewart sense of the word.  But hospitality in the truest biblical sense of the word, which is all about making room for others and embracing others with unconditional love.

 God is supreme and self-sufficient, all powerful and perfectly sovereign.  God didn’t need to create the earth and the heavens.  God didn’t need to create us.  And God wasn’t obligated to make room for us in the world, in relationship with him.

 But this is precisely what God does.  In his extravagant love, God forms humanity from the dust of the ground, and breathes his breath into our nostrils, and we are given life.  And if that were not enough, God creates a world, a Garden, and puts Adam and Eve in it—a place for them to belong.  And God gives them purpose, shares his power, by allowing them to till the earth and keep it.  Two words, “till” and “keep”, that are not about exploiting or abusing but “serving” and “protecting.” 

 It’s such a beautiful picture of the way things are intended to be.  The Hebrew word is shalom, and it means deep interconnectedness, flourishing, wholeness.  God says to us: You belong.  You belong to me.  You belong to each other.  You belong to the creation and it belongs to you.  This is what it means to bear God’s image: to recognize that every human being, every person, is inherently worthy of love and reflects the image of God.

 But then something happens.  Something tragic.  There are two significant trees in the Garden.  One is the tree of life, and God says, “eat from this tree, and every other tree, all you want…save one.  This tree here, this one tree in the Garden, is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and you must not eat from this tree.  For the day you do it, you will surely die.”

 God loves us unconditionally, but his love has boundaries.  And his instructions to Adam and Eve were not a prohibition for its own sake; rather it was a prohibition for their own good, for their own flourishing.

 But then there’s a serpent, the craftiest of all the animals that God made.  And the serpent twists God’s truth and convinces Adam and Eve to tell themselves a different story.  “Did God really say…” “God isn’t concerned about your own good; he’s concerned about keeping you in your place, keeping you from becoming like him.”

 And Adam and Eve take the bait.  Before they bite the fruit they bite the lie and start to question God’s trustworthiness, doubt God’s love for them.  Can we really trust God?  Does he really love me?  Will he really provide and care for me?  Or do I need to take matters into my own hands and look out for myself?

 I know what its like to be tempted by that fruit.   Do you?

 Stories are powerful things.  The stories others tell us and we believe; the stories we tell ourselves and believe.  Stories about God.  Stories about ourselves.  More than we realize, our stories shape the way we think, feel and live.

 Adam and Eve start to tell themselves a different story about God, about themselves, about each other, about how to flourish in the garden.  And the focus shifts from God at the center, trusting God, loving God, and seeing themselves and each other as God sees them.  Now the focus is on themselves, their own anxiety and fear.  Can God really be trusted…? 

 They act out of their anxiety and fear and they eat the forbidden fruit instead of trusting God.  They take matters into their own hands, move from being content to be like God to wanting to be their own gods.

 And now we’ve got a mess on our hands.  Shalom is disrupted, broken, shattered.  Their relationship with God is broken.  Their relationship with each other is broken.  Their relationship with creation is broken.  Their relationship with themselves is broken.  And our experience is now not one of belonging—to God, to each other, to the world—but one of isolation, loneliness, disconnect and shame.

 It’s one of the most striking parts in the story.  Before they ate the fruit, when things were the way God intended, Genesis tells us, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” (2:24)

 Which is to say that they were completely vulnerable, comfortable in their own skin (literally), and there was no shame.

 But now, after their act of distrust that led to disobedience, we’re told “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked.” And they are flooded with shame.  This story is not primarily about sex, its about something much deeper.  It’s about trust, and it’s about vulnerability and embracing our worth and calling as image-bearers of God.

 We need to pause here, because this is such a critical part of the story, and the experience of every human being.  There’s a reason that Brene Brown’s Ted talk on shame is the most highly watched Ted Talk still today.  Shame is a real and crippling experience for most of us, dare I say all of us?

 Whereas embarrassment and guilt (which can be good things) get at the way we feel when we do something we shouldn’t do or don’t do something we should, shame is something else all together.  Shame strikes at our core identity, our deep sense of worth.  Embarrassment or guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.” Embarrassment or guilt says, “I failed at that effort.” Shame says, “I am a failure.”   At its heart, shame whispers to our souls: “You are not worthy of love.  If you are to be loved and accepted, you have to hustle for it.”

 Adam and Eve are naked and feel shame, and so they for a second time take matters into their own hands.  They stitch together fig leaves to cover their vulnerability and shame.  Really?  Fig leaves?  Is that really going to do the trick?  I bet that was the man’s idea!

 Whereas love embraces vulnerability and moves us towards each other, shame leads us to cover up our vulnerability, to self-protect and withdraw.  We hide.  We hide from God.  We hide from each other.  We even hide from ourselves.

 And this is the crazy thing: we were created for belonging—to be connected to God, to one another, to ourselves, to creation.  We most deeply crave to be known and loved as we are.  Yet, in our anxiety, fear and shame, we do the opposite!  We self-protect, we conceal, we pretend and put on a front to look good, we withhold ourselves and pull away.

 The story could have ended here.  I suppose you could say it should have ended here.  But it doesn’t.  I absolutely love the next part.

 God seeks his children out.  Though his love has been spurned, though his children have distrusted him and disobeyed him, God comes looking for them.

 God calls out to his children, who are hiding in the trees, “Where are you?”

 It’s another one of those questions that catches you by surprise and haunts you.

 Where are you?

 God’s not asking it for himself, as if God is ignorant of where his children are hiding.

 He asks it for their sake.  He asks the same question of us for our sake.

 Where are you?

 It’s not a rebuke thundered from the mouth of an angry disciplinarian who’s about to fly off the handle.

 It’s an invitation spoken in the sorrow and love and grace of a broken-hearted parent.

 Where are you?

 Where are you hiding?  Behind what are you hiding?  How are you self-protecting?  In what ways are you still trying to perform, please, hustle, control, keep me and others at a distance?

 Where does your shame have you stuck?

 Name it.  There is power in naming.  Shame thrives in secrecy.  It loses its power when you name it.

 And come out of hiding and into my presence.  Trust me.  Let me remind you of the true story of who you are, why you were made, of how much you are so deeply and extravagantly loved.  Loved not as you should be but as you are.

 After Adam and Eve shuffle out of hiding, heads down in shame, and play the blame game, God shows tough love and explains the consequences of their distrust and disobedience.  And there are consequences.

 But these consequences don’t change the fact that, at their core, they are still loved by God.  They still belong to God, although they will now have to live east of Eden and life will be hard.  They still belong to each other.  They belong to the world.  God is not finished.  Not with them, not with the story.  The rest of the Bible, with all of its different stories and authors, will tell a cohesive story about how God will be reckless and extravagant in his love to restore shalom and set things right.

 And he gives a preview in a simple and beautiful gesture.  God takes them in their place of shame, in their vulnerability, and he does for them what they cannot do for themselves (God knows they already tried).

 God covers their shame. 

 They tried to cover it up.  Covering shame and “covering it up” is a world of difference, let’s not confuse them.  “Covering it up” won’t work.  It needs to be covered, they need to be covered, clothed in the grace and the love of God.  And that’s exactly what God does.

 And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.

Our shame, our sin and brokenness, needs more than just being covered up.  It needs to be dealt with, healed, removed.  We need to be forgiven and made whole.  Only God’s grace can do this.

 All of this is a precursor to another who would come—a man from Nazareth named Jesus Christ who would be stripped of his own clothes, humiliated on another tree, cut off and isolated from everyone, abandoned even by his closest friends.

 One who, as the very embodiment of Love and Hospitality, would go the distance to find us all in our place of hiding, take our shame upon himself, so that by his wounds we might be healed.

 Restored in our relationship with God.  Restored in our relationship with one another. Mended in our relationship with ourselves.  The whole creation healed and made new.

 And he covers us with his very garments of righteousness, clothes us with himself—his very life and love—and makes us new.

 Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?

 Can I tell you today that there is one who loves you, is seeking you, calling out to you to come out of hiding and come as you are, with all your shame, and let him cover you?

 What is your only comfort in life and death? asks the Heidelberg Catechism. 

That I am not my own but I BELONG…in body and soul, in life and death, to may faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.